# extra letters in foreign word transliteration



## Anatoli

Some questions on transliteration. Letter *ج* "JEEM" is pronounced as G in Egyptian Arabic and is used to write English, England - Ingiliizi, Ingiltera (saw too many romanisations for the same word!). Is ج pronounced as J in other Arabic countries in the same word? I also saw it written with "kaf" *ك* Is there a standard way to show G sound in Arabic (not just Egyptian)?

Letter *ڤ*  (veh =  feh with 3 dots above) is used to convey  V
Letter *پ*  (peh =  beh with 3 dots below) is used to convey  P

Letter *چ*  (tcheh =  jiim with 3 dots below) is used to convey  ch or j (in Egyptian Arabic only?)

Is "e" (as in pen) usually replaced with "a" (tanis = tennis) or "i" (tilifizyuun)?
Is "o" usually replaced with "u" in foreign words?

SC Unipad software has some Arabic symbols for which I haven't seen any description, to mention some:
*ٯ
ٺ
ٻ
ټ
ٽ
ٿ
ڀ
ڃ
ڄ
څ
ڇ*

Are some of these used in other languages using Arabic script or are they special symbols for some othe purposes?


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## elroy

Anatoli said:
			
		

> Some questions on transliteration. Letter ج "JEEM" is pronounced as G in Egyptian Arabic and is used to write English, England - Ingiliizi, Ingiltera (saw too many romanisations for the same word!). Is ج pronounced as J in other Arabic countries in the same word?


No - at least not in Palestinian Arabic.  We say "Ingliizi" and "Ingeltra."


> I also saw it written with "kaf" ك Is there a standard way to show G sound in Arabic (not just Egyptian)?


Generally, a ج is used but as you have observed a ك is also possible.


> Letter ڤ (veh = feh with 3 dots above) is used to convey V
> Letter پ (peh = beh with 3 dots below) is used to convey P
> 
> Letter چ (tcheh = jiim with 3 dots below) is used to convey ch or j (in Egyptian Arabic only?)


To me it is used to convey "g."  For "ch" I would simply write تش and for "j" I'd use ج of course.


> Is "e" (as in pen) usually replaced with "a" (tanis = tennis) or "i" (tilifizyuun)?


 "i," undoubtedly


> Is "o" usually replaced with "u" in foreign words?


 yes


> SC Unipad software has some Arabic symbols for which I haven't seen any description, to mention some:
> ٯ
> ٺ
> ٻ
> ټ
> ٽ
> ٿ
> ڀ
> ڃ
> ڄ
> څ
> ڇ
> 
> Are some of these used in other languages using Arabic script or are they special symbols for some othe purposes?


Besides the first three you mentioned (before the list), we do not use any non-Arabic symbols.  Anything else would have to be part of other languages that use the Arabic script.


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## MarcB

Anatoli,
Elroi’s comments are invaluable. Remember there are differences in colloquial that do not exist in MSA. I will add that ج is g in Northern Egypt not Southern Egypt. I have heard gineh the unit of currency pronounced jineh in the south. It is also g in the Adeni variant of Yemeni Arabic. For foreign/loan words; on a menu the French word gateau was written with ج and a man requested jatoh. Peugeot spelled with ب, And ف for v. Back to colloquial in the Gulf including Iraq چ ch local pronunciation of ك . I do not think it is common but in Tunisia, I have seen ڤ for g the southern and Bedouin pronunciation of ق in song lyrics. The Gulf and Iraq use گ for the g sound of ق. As for the other letters you wrote they are called modified Arabic letters ( note their origin is Arabic but they represent sounds not found in classical Arabic) See Urdu, Farsi, Uigur/Uyghur alphabets on Wikipedia or other sources.By the way Parsi is the original name for Farsi before the Arabic alphabet was used.


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## Anatoli

Thanks, guys.

Elroy,

I saw in a textbook "jeep" transliterated as both* چيپ *and* جيب* The "jeem" is written with 3 dots to distinguish from Egyptian G and "ba" with 3 dots is a "pa". Is it only Egyptian usage?


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## Whodunit

The letter "v" *ڤ *is used in words like "Vienna". I haven't come across any other "normal" word (except for persons' names) yet. The letter *پ*  is not used in MSA either. I have seen it in the Anglicized word for bariid, which is pusta = *پوستة*. Is it used in the Arab countries?


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## Josh_

It also might be noteworthy to say that which Arabic letter is used to transliterate a foreign word with a 'g' sound might depend on the position of a 'g' in the word and/or the vocal combination of surrounding letters.

As well as ج and ك being used to transliterate غ is also used.  For example, the word gorilla has found its way into Arabic as:

غوريلا
(ghuuriila)

This would not work for for the word "English" because a voweless ن followed by a غ results in a difficult pronunciatory liaison.

Unfortunately, I can't think of any other examples at this time.  If I do, I will post them.


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## Whodunit

It might be interesting how they spell the word "garage" in Iraqi and Egyptian Arabic:

*كراج* (Iraqi)
*جراج* (Egyptian)

Can someone confirm this or do our Egyptian and Iraqi members disagree?


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## Anatoli

Can someone confirm/deny that  *چ *can be used to transliterate "j" (jeep), it's probably only for Egypt to make sure it's not pronounced "g"? Elroy said it looks likes like jiim but this one has three dots. Also, has someone seen *پ* (pa') used in Arabic (not other languages)?*
*
Can't find it any more but Seven Up could be written something like* سڤنأپ* (?), not sure about the alif but the "ve" and the "pe" were there.


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## linguist786

Whodunit said:
			
		

> It might be interesting how they spell the word "garage" in Iraqi and Egyptian Arabic:
> 
> *كراج* (Iraqi)
> *جراج* (Egyptian)
> 
> Can someone confirm this or do our Egyptian and Iraqi members disagree?


Why not just *ﺝﺍﺭﻏ *?


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## Josh_

Anatoli said:
			
		

> Can someone confirm/deny that  *چ *can be used to transliterate "j" (jeep), it's probably only for Egypt to make sure it's not pronounced "g"? Elroy said it looks likes like jiim but this one has three dots. Also, has someone seen *پ* (pa') used in Arabic (not other languages)?
> Can't find it any more but Seven Up could be written something like* سڤنأپ*(?), not sure about the alif but the "ve" and the "pe" were there.


Maybe they are used in some parts of the Arab world to transliterate words, but generally, I would say it is not used.


			
				Whodunit said:
			
		

> It might be interesting how they spell the word "garage" in Iraqi and Egyptian Arabic:
> 
> *كراج* (Iraqi)
> *جراج* (Egyptian)
> 
> Can someone confirm this or do our Egyptian and Iraqi members disagree?


Garage can also be spelled جراش .


			
				linguist786 said:
			
		

> Why not just *ﺝﺍﺭﻏ *?


I thought of that myself, but, I guess, for some reason or another, the pronunciation of garage has become standardized (at least in Egyptian Arabic) with the normal 'g' sound. 

I did think of another foreign word, though, with gheen.  Michigan is normally transliterated as ميشيغان (miishiighaan)


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## cherine

Hey guys, so many questions to answer ! 
I'll try to help you as much as I can :

I'll start with the "g" being transliterated as ك :
In Egypt we do _not_ do this, it always looks strange to us seeing the words نكليزية-كراج in some texts, specially those coming from the Levant الشام (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine), for us (Egyptians) they're إنجليزية - جراج and we pronounce them ingilizeyya - garaaj.
Like the Jeep car, we write it جيب with a regular ج and pronounce it jeep, because we know that's how it's called, just like the jeans جينز we pronounce it like in English, and we wite in with regular Arabic ج .


			
				Josh Adkins said:
			
		

> As well as ج and ك being used to transliterate غ is also used. For example, the word gorilla has found its way into Arabic as:
> غوريلا (ghuuriila)
> Unfortunately, I can't think of any other examples at this time. If I do, I will post them.


What about جغرافيا  goghrafia (geography) ? 


			
				Whodunit said:
			
		

> The letter "v" ڤ is used in words like "Vienna". I haven't come across any other "normal" word (except for persons' names) yet. The letter پ is not used in MSA either. I have seen it in the Anglicized word for bariid, which is pusta = پوستة. Is it used in the Arab countries?


The letters ڤ and پ , and also چ are not widely used in the Arabic transliteration of foreign words. Specially the first two. The sound "v" and "p" do not exist in Arabic, many people find great difficulty pronouncing the "p", so even if it's transliterated it won't make much difference.
The word "pusta", for example, is pronounced -at least here in Egypt- bosta. So as you see, there would be need for taking the trouble of transliterating it this way (i.e. with the three dots).

I don't know about the other countries, but I rarely see Arabic texts with the three dots.


			
				Anatoli said:
			
		

> Can someone confirm/deny that چ can be used to transliterate "j" (jeep), it's probably only for Egypt to make sure it's not pronounced "g"?


In Egypt we don't pronounce the sound "j" unless for foreign words that we know they are pronounced like that.
Examples: John, Joseph, Jeep, Jeans, Georgia....
And we transliterate them with the ج (with one dot) 


> Also, has someone seen پ (pa') used in Arabic (not other languages)? Can't find it any more but Seven Up could be written something like سڤنأپ(?), not sure about the alif but the "ve" and the "pe" were there.


It's hard to find it in an Arabic text, because it's really very rarely used.
I think Seven Up may be one of the very few -if not the only one- to transliterate their name like this, maybe they wanted to make sure people would pronounce the name right. But it's written like this سڤن أپ


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## Anatoli

I dug this out: Jeep can be written (but there are methods) in Arabic as *چيپ* with both *چ *and *پ* . It's probably another rarity.

_(EDIT: corrected missed letter, thanks Cherine, I lost it when copying from a word processor)_

Here they mention letter چ in Egyptian usage:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_phonology

For rare foreign words with J I would spell them with چ, so that no-one had doubts how to pronounce them but I see Cherine, that this letter is not too popular in Egypt and other 3-dot letters (except for ث, of course).

Interesting, this situation with borrowed letters is similar to Japanese. In Japanese, like in Arabic, there is no "v". They use "b" or "w" syllables to transliterate and invented the "v" syllables (in katakana syllable alphabet), people still pronounce "b" or "w", even if it's spelled with the letters.


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## cherine

Anatoli said:
			
		

> I dug this out: Jeep can be written (but there are methods) in Arabic as *چيپ* with both *چ *and *پ* . It's probably another rarity.


I corrected a little typo, if you don't mind 
Yes, the word Jeep can be written like this, but in Egypt we write it like this جيب and we pronounced it almost like Jeep (almost because of the "p" not the "j"  ) most people say jee*b*.



> Here they mention letter





> چ in Egyptian usage:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_phonology


Don't forget that wikipedia is not excatly the perfect source of knowledge 
As I said, we know those symbols, but we almost never use them. Specially not on a computer  I don't have them on my Arabic keyboard (little confession : I copy from your post and past them )




> For rare foreign words with J I would spell





> them with چ, so that no-one had doubts how to pronounce them but I see Cherine, that this letter is not too popular in Egypt and other 3-dot letters (except for ث, of course).


We can't compare these symbols with ث which is a "genuine" Arabic letter.
And you forgot the ش which also has 3 dots


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## Anatoli

You're right Cherine, they are not on standard Arabic keyboard. I agree, these Persian letters are not worth using in Arabic. I used SC UniPad to enter them.


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## elroy

Let me talk about what I've seen in Palestinian publications:

Generally, we do not use ك to transliterate "g," but I have seen it done.

The three characters ڤ, پ, and چ _are_ used relatively frequently, to transliterate "p," "v," and "g" (_not_ "j") respectively.  Otherwise, one just uses, ف, ب, and ج (or ك).  Note that this is done only when a word is foreign and the "p," "v," or "g" sound is pronounced by those who can.  The word "bosTa" does not count, because it is pronounced with a "b" by everybody, even those who can pronounce the sound "p."  This word can almost be considered an Arabic word.  Such is not the case with foreign names, for example, which are more likely to be transliterated using non-Arabic characters.  I hope the distinction is clear.


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## Anatoli

Strange that *چ* and *ج* have almost the reverse usage (transliteration) in Egypt and Palestine 

I saw in a textbook Jakarta written with a *چ* in Egyptian context to represent J sound.

Is another Persian letter *گ* (gaf) used at all? It differs from "kaf" by an extra stroke above.


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## MarcB

See post #3, but only for colloquial,pronounced ch.


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## cherine

Anatoli said:
			
		

> Strange that *چ* and *ج* have almost the reverse usage (transliteration) in Egypt and Palestine


Interesting -and intelligent- remark Anatoli   I've never thought of that 


> Is another Persian letter *گ* (gaf) used at all? It differs from "kaf" by an extra stroke above.


I've never seen it in any transliteration, I think it's because it may be mistaken for a ka (kaf+fa7a كـَـ)


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## Whodunit

cherine said:
			
		

> I've never seen it in any transliteration, I think it's because it may be mistaken for a ka (kaf+fat7a كـَـ)


 
Only if it is the initial letter. The other forms of the gaaf look very different from the Arabic letter kaaf + fat7a.


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## Lugubert

Anatoli said:
			
		

> SC Unipad software has some Arabic symbols for which I haven't seen any description


Try the Unicode site (it is Unicode.org but I may not post url's yet) and the file U0600-arab.pdf. Lots of "Arabic" letters you perhaps haven't seen before, from Pashto, Dargwa, old Malay, Uighur... Explanations included.


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## Nanon

cherine said:


> I don't know about the other countries, but I rarely see Arabic texts with the three dots.



Reviving an old thread... 
Dear Cherine, I send you a delightful example here. These are "Caprice" caramel sweets from Algeria (at first I was wondering if I was learning to read Arabic properly, because of the Persian پ !)


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## cherine

Nanon said:


> Dear Cherine, I send you a delightful example here. These are "Caprice" caramel sweets from Algeria (at first I was wondering if I was learning to read Arabic properly, because of the Persian پ !)


 
Chère Nanon,

As I said previously, in some countries we sometimes use the b with 3 dots to transliterate the sound "p" that doesn't exist in Arabic.

But the use of this symbol is not as commonly used in Egypt as the ج with the 3 dots. We use the ج for (g) and the one with 3 dots for the sound (j), although not all the time.


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## Anatoli

I found an interesting usage for Persian letters پ and ڤ in Arabic, even if they miss on keyboards. They are actually used, less ambiguously to render Roman letters *P* and *V*. Of course, B can be called بيه or بي (same as B), PC - *بي سي*, Pocket PC -  *بي سي جيب*. V can also be called وي and في, e.g DVD is *دي في دي*.

Arabic Wikipedia has some info on how Roman or English letters are called in Arabic.

I can confirm that Hans Wehr dictionary occasionally uses additional letters for some words like "virus", "jeep", I've seen about 10 examples after a short search but they are not common on the web for the reasons discussed before.


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## WadiH

MarcB said:


> The Gulf and Iraq use *گ*



Just Iraq. It's rarely used in the Gulf.

Iraqis even spell قال as كال, which I've always felt was unnecessary.

In Saudi Arabia it's common to use ق, at least by ordinary people on the web (as opposed to formal writing). There's even a brand of food products called قودي (from "Goody").


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## Xalpatlahuac

I saw these letters (some of them borrowed from _Fārsi_) in texts from different countries from _mashreq_ to _maghreb_: *گ* for *g*(ale), *پ *for *p* and most often* ج *for *j*(oke); sometimes seen also: *ژ* for *zh* (IPA [ʒ], like in plea*s*ure. or *j*e in French, *ж* or *ž* in many languages) and *ڤ* for *v*.
I found them most often in ’Irāqi transcriptions of songs or popular tales, but not only — e.g. in (often poor) Morrocan and Algerian phrasebooks to “learn” Tamazight, or in subtitles on the Moroccan تمازيغت or the Algerian قناة الامازيغ 4 TV channels (often to impose the Arabic script i.o. _Tifinaɣ_…).

For my part, I use a Persian keyboard for Mac computers to get all characters you can find in languages using the Arabic or derived ابجدیة. The sole language which is difficult to write with this keyboard (and others, too) is Uyghur, especially when it comes to words beginning with a vowel, which are written with an initial -ئـ, which often appears as an isolated ئ, depending on the encoding your PC uses.

Another point is about the use of گ or ق to transcribe the “hard” *g* sound (apart from the most populous part of Egypt), I noticed that it depends more on the period than on the country factor: twenty years ago it was still ق which was used, as this is the way the _qāf_ is pronounced in many dialects (e.g. the name قرفتي in  Morocco, pron. like /Gorfti/), then, fifteen years ago, the گ appeared here and there, except that *ݣ* is used in Morocco in some well-defined cases (official translitteration of “Berber” place names like إنزڭان or unofficial written _darija_).

A few words still to say that if Wikipedia is definitively not a fully reliable source — despite their policy known there as “non-personal point of views” —, their entry about the *Arabic alphabet* can be a helpful start for beginners not willing to buy good grammars and learning books.


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