ISO 259 is a series of international standards for the

romanization Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, a ...

of Hebrew characters into

Latin characters The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern ...

, dating to 1984, with updated ISO 259-2 (a simplification, disregarding several vowel signs, 1994) and ISO 259-3 ( Phonemic Conversion, 1999).

ISO 259

ISO 259, dating to 1984, is a

transliteration Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus ''trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or L ...

of the Hebrew script, including the

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...

al signs (''

niqqud In Hebrew orthography, niqqud or nikud ( or ) is a system of diacritical signs used to represent vowels or distinguish between alternative pronunciations of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Several such diacritical systems were developed in ...

'') used for

Biblical Hebrew Biblical Hebrew (, or , ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite branch of Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Israel, roughly west of t ...

. The '' dagesh'' (dot inside the letter) is always transcribed with an

overdot When used as a diacritic mark, the term dot is usually reserved for the '' interpunct'' ( · ), or to the glyphs "combining dot above" ( ◌̇ ) and "combining dot below" ( ◌̣ ) which may be combined with some letters of t ...

: ''ḃ'', ''ġ'', ''ż'', etc. The apostrophe (‎) in the table above is the Hebrew sign '' geresh'' used after some letters to write down non-Hebrew sounds: , , , etc..

ISO 259-2

ISO 259-2 simplifies the diacritical signs for vowels of ISO 259, and is designed for

Modern Hebrew Modern Hebrew ( he, עברית חדשה, ''ʿivrít ḥadašá ', , '' lit.'' "Modern Hebrew" or "New Hebrew"), also known as Israeli Hebrew or Israeli, and generally referred to by speakers simply as Hebrew ( ), is the standard form of the He ...

. The '' dagesh'' is not transcribed excepted in the indicated cases. The apostrophe (‎) in the table above is the Hebrew sign '' geresh'' used after some letters to write down non-Hebrew sounds.

ISO 259-3

ISO 259-3 is

Uzzi Ornan Uzzi Ornan ( he, עוזי אורנן; ISO 259-3: ˁuzzi ˀornan; 7 June 1923 – 3 November 2022) was an Israeli linguist and social activist. Ornan was a member of the Academy of the Hebrew Language, professor of natural languages computing at ...

's romanization, which reached the stage of an ISO Final Draft ( FDIS) but not of a published International Standard (IS).Search for ISO 259
on the ISO website. It is designed to deliver the common structure of the Hebrew word throughout the different dialects or pronunciation styles of Hebrew, in a way that it can be reconstructed into the original Hebrew characters by both man and machine. It is neither a character-by-character

nor a

phonetic transcription Phonetic transcription (also known as phonetic script or phonetic notation) is the visual representation of speech sounds (or ''phones'') by means of symbols. The most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet, such as the I ...

of one pronunciation style of Hebrew, but is instead phonemic from the view point that all the different dialects and pronunciations of Hebrew through the generations can be regarded as different realizations of the same structure, and by predefined reading rules every pronunciation style can be directly derived from it. Each consonant character in the Hebrew script is converted into its unique Latin character. ISO 259-3 has five

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (len ...

characters, corresponding to the five vowel phonemes of

: a, e, i, o, u. In addition there is a sixth sign for denoting the vowel or that is written followed by ⟨⟩ in common Hebrew spelling: . The dagesh ''forte'' (

gemination In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...

in Biblical Hebrew) is transcribed with a double consonant. Non- phonemic vowels are ignored, such as: *

schwa In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it rep ...

, which is however transcribed with an underscore (_) between two identical consonants in order to distinguish it from a geminate consonant: "boys" = ''yladim'', " Hallelujah" = ''hal_luyah'', * "

segolate Segolates are words in the Hebrew language whose end is of the form CVCVC, where the penultimate vowel receives syllable stress. Such words are called "segolates" because the final unstressed vowel is typically (but not always) ''segol''. These ...

" vowel (on the second to last consonant an unaccented vowel , which can also be the vowel on some laryngeal consonants, or , etc.) : "

golem A golem ( ; he, , gōlem) is an animated, anthropomorphic being in Jewish folklore, which is entirely created from inanimate matter (usually clay or mud). The most famous golem narrative involves Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the late 16th-century ...

" = ''golm'', "opening, window" = ''cohr'', * "furtive" ''

pataḥ Pataḥ ( he, פַּתָּח ', , Biblical Hebrew: ') is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign represented by a horizontal line underneath a letter. In modern Hebrew, it indicates the phoneme which is close to the " sound in the English word ''far'' ...

'' (an unaccented sound before some final laryngeal consonants): "breeze, spirit" = ''ruḥ'', but ISO 259-3 also allows -- (in section 5., "SIMPLIFIED VERSION") -- the transcription with ''a'' for non-linguistic purposes: ''ruaḥ''.ISO 259-3
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ISO 259

ISO 259-2

ISO 259-3

References

See also