ISO 259 is a series of international standards for the
romanization
In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Latin script, Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and tra ...
of
Hebrew characters into
Latin characters, 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 the year 1984, is a
transliteration of the
Hebrew script, including the
diacritical signs (''
niqqud'') used for
Biblical Hebrew
Biblical Hebrew ( or ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite languages, Canaanitic branch of the Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Isra ...
.
The ''
dagesh'' (dot inside the letter) is always transcribed with an
overdot: ''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.
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's romanization, which reached the stage of an ISO Final Draft ( FDIS) but not of a published International Standard (IS). 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 transliteration nor a phonetic transcription 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 speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
characters, corresponding to the five vowel phonemes of Modern Hebrew: 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 Biblical Hebrew) is transcribed with a double consonant. Non- phonemic vowels are ignored, such as:
* schwa , 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" vowel (on the second to last consonant an unaccented vowel , which can also be the vowel on some laryngeal consonants, or , etc.) : " golem" = ''golm'', "opening, window" = ''cohr'',
* "furtive" '' pataḥ'' (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''.]
See also
* List of ISO transliterations
* ISO 233 for Arabic transliteration
References
{{ISO standards
Hebrew alphabet
#00259
#00259
ceb:Sulat Inebreo#Romanisasyon