=alphabet Transliteration of alphabets, such that one and only one letter of the original language corrsponds to each 'significant' letter in the transliteration. Transliteration is case-sensitive. ------------------------------------------------------------------- HEBREW: Aleph: A Bet B vet v (lower case) Gimmel G Dalet D Hay H Vav V (upper case) ; or O or U (when used as vowel) Zayin Z Chet Ch Tet t (lower case t; but not Ashkenazi s) Yod Y or I Kaf Kh , K (when no dagesh) (Sofeet forms are have no seperate symbol; they are apparent because sofeet and only sofeet forms are followed by a space.) Lamed L Mem M Nun N Samekh s (lower case) Ayin ' (apostrophe) (do not use back-apostrophe) Pay P or F (no dagesh) Tzadeh Tz (cap T + lower-case z) Qof Q Resh R Shin, Sin Sh or S Tav T ------------------------------- Vowels (nekudot): My transliteration system does not extend to nekudot. Again: from my transliteration you can unequivocally reconstruct the Hebrew text, without nekudot. But you cannot unequivocally reconstrucdt the nekudot. All nekudot are represented by non-significant letters, so there is flexibility; different vowels can be used to express standard (Isreali, Sfard) or Ashkenazi pronounciation kammats, patah, khatf patakh -- a segol, khataf segol -- e khrik -- i khrik gadol -- iY (not a mere nekud, but a nekud followed by a significant letter ) kholam -- O (not a nekud khataf kammats -- o or a shorook -- U ( a 'consonant_vowel' or 'significant_vowel') kooboots -- u Shavah -- no transliterated symbol. ======================================================== I turned next to Greek. I no longer have that doc However, I did post a copy to the R. Shlomo LIST in Autumn, 1999. Probably shortly after Sukkot, around early October. So let's take a try at it. The point of reference would be classical Greek, not modern Greek. A whole sort of red-shift took place in Greek; as T.S. Eliot so snidely insinuates, ("demotic Greek", The Waste Land) it was a degeneration. OK: Alpha: A Beta: B Gamma: G Delta: D Epsilon: E Zeta: Z H eta: eH Theta: Th Iota: I Kappa: K Lamda: L Mu: M Nu: N Xi: X Omicron: o (lower-case o. Or: O' ) Pi: P Rho: R (no need for Rh) Sigma: S Tav: T Upsilon: uY (or maybe: Yu. Or one could use just U; that seems best. One could stipulate that lower-case h is the analog of a vowel in Hebrew; it can be inserted ad lib. That would give us back hUPNOS (hypnos(is)). No, huYPNOS is better.) Phi: Ph Chi: Ch Psi: Ps Omega: O (upper case) I'm not sure how well this will work out. Probably ok. Let's try a few sample words, from the alphabet of http://kwoodward.net/greek/greek6.jpg ASTER BIoGraPhIA GRAPhIKoS DIAGTRAMMA EPIGRAMMA ZONeH (Curiously, the Hebrew for 'whore' is Zona: Maybe a red-light district. I would suppose Greek is derived from Hebrew eHThoS (conventional: ethos. Not unduly awkward.) TheaTRoN IDIoS KRISIS LoGoS METAPhoRA NeKTAR EXoDoS oNoMaToPoIIA (conventional: onomatopoeia) PERIMETRON RINoKEROS SuYMMETRoS TAKTIKoS uYPNoS (I suppose one could use huY as well as uY for upsilon. And one could also use Yu for YuPSILoN. That would give us here: huYPNOS -- it does read better.) But then Phi--uYpsilon You see: so far we've brought in u (lower-case u) and h (lower- case h) as non-significant letters; they do not reference, neitehr singly nor in combination, a Greek letter. Also e (lower-case e) as non-significant, to make eHTA more palatable. (No; h is 'secondarily significant'; T followed by h is `back_transliterated' as Theta, not as Tau ; and P followed by h is PhI, not PI In general, lower-case letters are non-significant in themselves, although they may determine the significance of the upper-case letter that preceedes them. o is a significant lower-case letter, standing for omicron; where O (upper-case o) stands for Omega. Of course it was an arbitrary call; one could have done the reverse. The middle and final forms of Sigma are determined from context: if there's a space to the left, it's Initial, if there's a space to the right, it's final; if neither, it's middle. PhILoSoPhIA ChoRoS, ChaRaKTeHR PsEuYDOS OKEANoS, ODeH =========================================================== OK, one can work out a system for Russian; and should, especially in Israel. I don't know Russian; but here's a stab at it: Ah -- A Beh -- B B - veh -- v (lower-case v) Geh G Deh D E (yeh) yE E (yo) yE' Zheh Zh Zeh Z ee I ei eI Kgh K L ehl L M ehm M N ehn N O O P P R R C S T T Y uY efh F Khab Kh Ts Ts Cheh Ch Sh Shu, She ------------ vowels: eh e yoo yu yah ya Well, obviously Russian follows closely the Hebrew-Greek-Roman alphabets, but uses very different symbols; as if the Greek orthodox Church has imposed their own symbology upon the alphabet. It's hard for me to show this without the symbols. =============================================================== Ok, let's see what we can sketch for Arabic. I dashed off a transliteration sketch, by asking Shevki, at Zenith 1999; and added that to my transcription-support documents; I don't now have it, but had sent out copies, so it should be retrievable. So ok, here's a sketch: Alif -- A Beh B teh t (lower-case t) theh Th (pronounded s in Egypt) jeem J (pronounced g in Egypt) hah Ch khah Kh Dal D thal z (lower-case z) (pronounced d in Egypt) reh R Zayn Z seen S sheen Sh sahd s (lower-case s ) dahd d (lower-case d) tah T (upper-case T) thah z (lower-case z) ayn ' (apostrophe, like Hebrew Ayin) rayn r (lower-case r) feh F qahf Q (?glottal-stop in Egypt?) kaf q (lower-case q -- but I'm flying blind here) lam L meem M noon N heh H wow W yeh Yi, Yo Well, without knowing any Arabic, nor having examples at hand, I can't refine this sketch.