32 Transliteration Table

Transliteration

Until the advent of computers and then cell-phones, there was little Romanization (i.e.  the use of the Latin characters we use in English) of the Arabic alphabet to represent the sounds of Arabic.  The Romanization that did go on was was mainly done by Western scholars when they wanted to discuss Arabic in Western languages in publications, a practice which still goes on today in scholarship, using dots and macrons  (such as “ḥ” and “ā”) for some sounds not in European languages.

However, since the 1990s, the wide proliferation of cell phones using Latin characters but not Arabic ones, has led to people in the Arab world to apply their own transliteration systems to communicate using phones that do not have the Arabic alphabet on them.  There is no single, universal universal method of transliteration for Romanizing Arabic letters.

 

The table below is one system some Egyptians use.  We will try to be consistent in using it, though some handouts and charts we borrow from other sources use slightly different systems aasif ma3laysh (sorry never mind!).

 

 

 

 

Transliteration

(if letter is unexplained it is similar to English sound made by letter)

aa “a” as in dad ا
b ب
t ت
th as in “think” (not “the”) ث
j/g as in joy or give ج
H aspirated “h” ح
kh no equivalent خ
d د
dh th as in “this” ذ
r ر
z ز
s س
sh ش
S “S but darkens” the “a” sound

as the o in “not”

ص
D D but”darkens” the “a” sound

next to it as the o in “not”

ض
T t but”darkens” the “a” sound next to it as the o in “not” ط
DH or Z “th” as in “the” but

darkens….

ظ
3 no equiv ع
gh no equiv غ
f ف
q no equiv ق
k ك
l ل
m م
n ن
h ه
w or uu or aw و
y or “ii” ي
ء
a َ
u ُ
i ِ

Note: several of the letters have no equivalent sound in English, such as the “3”, and the “kh”.

Note: thaa (“th” ث ) makes the sound of “th” as in “think” but not “th” as in “the”.

For the sound  that comes in the first part of the word “this” the letter in Arabic is ذ (dhaa’) and uses the transliteration “dh”.

 

 

Letters with sounds quite different from English

ح  خ  ع  غ  ص  ض  ط   ظ

H   Kh   3  GH  q   S  D  T DH

 

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Introduction to Arabic: Egyptian Arabic for first-year students Copyright © 2023 by David Hollenberg; Amira Ghazy; Abdulrahman Eissa; Hanan Elsherif; Benjamin Loy; and Kerlos Rizk is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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