The Hans Wehr transliteration system is a system for

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 Arabic alphabet into the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and th ...

used in the Hans Wehr dictionary (1952; in English 1961). The system was modified somewhat in the English editions. It is printed in lowercase

italics In typography, italic type is a cursive font based on a stylised form of calligraphic handwriting. Owing to the influence from calligraphy, italics normally slant slightly to the right. Italics are a way to emphasise key points in a printed ...

. It marks some consonants using diacritics (

underdot 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 th ...

macron below Macron below is a combining diacritical mark that is used in various orthographies. A non-combining form is . It is not to be confused with , and . The difference between "macron below" and "low line" is that the latter results in an unbroken ...

, and

caron A caron (), háček or haček (, or ; plural ''háčeks'' or ''háčky'') also known as a hachek, wedge, check, kvačica, strešica, mäkčeň, varnelė, inverted circumflex, inverted hat, flying bird, inverted chevron, is a diacritic mark (� ...

) rather than digraphs, and writes long vowels with macrons. The transliteration of the Arabic alphabet: * Hamza () is represented as ʼ in the middle and at the end of a word. At the beginning of a word, it is not represented. * The '' tāʼ marbūṭa'' () is normally not represented, and words ending in it simply have a final ''-a''. It is, however, represented with a ''t'' when it is the ending of the first noun of an ''iḍāfa'' and with an ''h'' when it appears after a long ''ā''. * Native Arabic long vowels: ''ā ī ū'' * Long vowels in borrowed words: ''ē ō'' * Short vowels: ''fatḥa'' is represented as ''a'', ''kasra'' as ''i'' and ''ḍamma'' as ''u''. (see short vowel marks) * ''Wāw'' and ''yāʼ'' are represented as ''u'' and ''i'' after ''fatḥa'': ''ʻain'' "eye", ''yaum'' "day". * Non-standard Arabic consonants: ''p'' (), ''ž'' (), ''g'' () * ''

Alif maqṣūra Aleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician , Hebrew , Aramaic , Syriac , Arabic ʾ and North Arabian 𐪑. It also appears as South Arabian 𐩱 and Ge'ez . These lette ...

'' (): ''ā'' * ''Madda'' (): ''ā'' at the beginning of a word, ''ʼā'' in the middle or at the end * A final ''yāʼ'' (), the ''nisba'' adjective ending, is represented as ''ī'' normally, but as ''īy'' when the ending contains the third consonant of the root. This difference is not written in the Arabic. * Capitalization: The transliteration uses no capitals, even for proper names. * Definite article: The Arabic definite article is represented as '' al-'' except where assimilation occurs: ''al-'' + ''šams'' is transliterated ''aš-šams'' (see

sun and moon letters In Arabic and Maltese, the consonants are divided into two groups, called the sun letters or solar letters ( ar, حروف شمسية ', mt, konsonanti xemxin) and moon letters or lunar letters (Arabic: ', mt, konsonanti qamrin), based on wh ...

). The ''a'' in ''al-'' is omitted after a final ''a'' (as in ''lamma šamla l-qatīʻ'' "to round up the herd") or changed to ''i'' after a feminine third person singular perfect verb form (as in ''kašafat il-ḥarbu ʻan sāqin'' "war flared up").

Notes

References

*Wehr, Hans. ''

Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic The ''Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic'' is an Arabic-English dictionary compiled by Hans Wehr and edited by J Milton Cowan. First published in 1961 by Otto Harrassowitz in Wiesbaden, Germany, it was an enlarged and revised English version ...

''. {{DEFAULTSORT:Hans Wehr Transliteration Romanization of Arabic

See also

Notes

References