User talk:Aghniyya

Thank you for the translations, and Conrad.Irwin 09:43, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Adding translations
Please note that you may add several translations at the same time. This will help reduce the number of edits, making it easier to keep track of changes and patrolling the Wiktionary's recent changes. Thanks in advance! --Eivind (t) 10:02, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Romanization proposal
Hi, Aghniyya. please visit Arabic Romanization proposal.

Regards, Anatoli 03:47, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

User page
Try the "Babel" template, like this:. --EncycloPetey 22:41, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Arabic transliteration
Hi Aghniya,

I have just edited translations for censorship and added the Arabic transliteration. I sometimes (when the site works!) check the pronunciation of Arabic words using this tool: http://qamoos.sakhr.com/. Anatoli 00:39, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Please acknowledge - Arabic transliteration

 * Copying my reply, so you notice, you don't seem to be acknowledging my replies. Anatoli 22:59, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Anatoli: Normally I have been adding the transliterations. And yes, the system you suggested is the best option, I agree. It's much faster to add transliterations than can be typed using a normal English keyboard. It's not the prettiest system, but it gets the job done. We have a chance to create a great translation resource for under-served languages like Arabic, and I'd say we are already half way there. --Aghniyya 09:05, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh, one thing: Please don't add a "t" in paratheses after taa marbuuta (ة). That really is overkill and it's very uncommon in any transliteration system (I've never seen it, and I'm a graduate student). If a person wants to simply pronounce a word and doesn't know Arabic, you don't need a (t). If they are going to use it, they will need a knowledge of Arabic grammar to know when the "t" is added anyway, and any knowledge of Arabic grammar presumes a knowledge of Arabic script. In short, I like your transliteration suggestion because it is simply and gets the job done. This is an unneeded complication. --Aghniyya 09:09, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * One more comment. I much prefer the usual qalam system of distinguishing between hamza and ayn.  The "3" is baffling to non-Arabs, who are the target audience of these translations.  I certainly learned the Arabic alphabet years before I learned that 3 means ع.  Thus ' and ` are better choices.  They match their respective letters and are not confusing for neophytes.  --Aghniyya 09:16, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank you, you missed the discussion to which I invited you but you didn't join (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary_talk:About_Arabic#Romanization_proposal). I had the same reservations against 3 and I am not so happy about -a(t) either but I wanted to be consistent, so that we establish some rules and follow them. The rules were suggested by User:Beru7. Please reignite the discussion if you are not happy. Anatoli 10:33, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Here's the tool Beru7 has developed: http://www.enselme.com/beru/trans2arab.htm Anatoli 23:00, 5 May 2009 (UTC)


 * What's the tool for? I have an Arabic keyboard.  --Aghniyya 23:18, 5 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Beru7 suggested the new romanisation method, to which I opposed at first, then agreed. The tool produces 2 version of Arabic - with and without vowels and 2 romanisations. It makes sense for us to discuss and agree on how to romanise Arabic. If you wish to reply, please go to http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary_talk:About_Arabic#Romanization_proposal. Anatoli 23:41, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi Aghniyya ! Anatoli is right: the romanization system has been approved of - at least until now, so it has to be used ! Contributors have to follow rules, that's how wiktionary works, and that's why it works. If you want to challenge something, do so in the appropriate place and way but please, please don't go about just doing things your own way and remember that you might like or dislike the choices that were made, but that they were made for precise reasons, and that they have been discussed already. Thank you.

Now a few comments about your concerns. First, have you read this Transliteration ? The goal of transliteration in the wiktionary is not to give pronunciation, but rather to reflect the original spelling. Pronunciations should be given using IPA or SAMPA which are unambiguous.

Knowing that, I'm sure you will understand the choice for -a(t). If you have a better idea, we're open to suggestions but -a, -ah and -at do not seem acceptable to me as there is no indication of the original letter used.

Concerning the ع, yes the usage of 3 is not pretty, but at least it cannot be confused with ء. The only other alternative I know of is ʕ, but it is not really more comprehensible, and harder to type. I think nothing can be worse for neophytes than to think ع and ء are somehow related, which they aren't, as you know. Beru7 13:42, 6 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Beru7, the other alternative is `, regardless if you have it on your keyboard. I don't it looks similar to ', to be confusing. I agreed to your suggestion, although please take into account we are not the only editors. Aghniyya, if you have something to say, please do. Anatoli 12:59, 7 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I'll say it here, and then I'll copy this onto Beru7's page. First of all, sweet name, Beru7.  But beyond that, I don't agree with what you're saying.  These are all just your own personal judgments.  None of what you say is back up by normal scholarly practice in English language books.  The gold standard of Arabic translation, which all Anglophone Arabic learners are told to buy in their classes, is the Hans Wehr Arabic-English dictionary.  This dictionary uses two forms of an apostrophe to indicate the ayn and the hamza (similar to ' and `), and it simply uses "a" for taa marbuuta.


 * There is not a single scholarly transliteration system that uses your suggestions, at least none that I've ever seen in any of the many books I've read (I'm a grad student in Mideast studies). There are a couple ways of expressing the ayn, but a 3 is never used, except in chat, which is not a scholarly system.  Secondly, "a(t)" is never used at all.  The reason why it is not, I think, is that this makes an unnecessary point about grammar.  Yes, the taa marbuuta is untied in an idaafa.  But you need to know Arabic grammar to know what an idaafa is at all!  The point of a translation is not to teach Arabic grammar, just to the give the word.  --Aghniyya 16:47, 7 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Aghniyya, you are right, my two propositions are completely unorthodox. They are, however, consistent. Remember that we have certain requirements because we are not a book. We're a wiki, meant to be read on a computer screen. ` and ' are really easily confused on a screen. Especially when they represent two letters that have absolutely nothing in common. By the way, the main contributor to arabic here, who also happens to be one of the main contributors in the whole of the wiktionary agrees with me on this.
 * I think ʕ could be fine, it is actually used in textbooks I have, if that is what is important to you. I chose 3 because it is the most popular way of writing ع on the internet and the wiktionary is not and never will be a scholarly work since it is not built by scholars, nor for scholars. I agree, this last point is my own opinion.
 * Concerning the taa marbuta, it is much more than that:
 * in most cases, it indicates the feminine form, especially in singular words
 * it does not represent the sound a, but it is always, as a rule, preceded by a fatha, hence the a. If it represents anything, it is a t.
 * it is not only tied in idaafas, it is also pronounced in full form (ex: مَلِكَةٌ, malikatun)
 * lastly, it is replaced by a t when a suffix such as a personal pronoun is added to the word.
 * So you see, there are a lot of reasons to actually have this letter represented in the transcription. Note that the handling of taa marbuta in qalam is recognized as a bug of the system. (See )
 * Again remember, in the wiktionary the goal of transcription is not to give pronounciation, it is to transliterate into latin alphabet. I'll quote from the official policy page: "Transliteration: Rendering of written text from one alphabet or syllabary into another, letter by letter. In Wiktionary we are mainly concerned with transliteration from a foreign system into the Latin alphabet (a subset of romanization)." A very different goal from the Wehr which gives transcription because the arabic text in it is not vowellized. Most dictionaries I have just show diacritics and no transcription at all. But we are not just another dictionary, right ? --Beru7 19:41, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

No, all dictionaries show both diacritics and pronunciation. I have no idea why a wiki should go ahead and invent an entirely new way of transliteration just because it is an online dictionary and not a paper dictionary. I really don't even care to discuss these issues, because they are so totally unprecedented. I refuse to reinvent the wheel here; all dictionaries already contradict what you want to do. I think it is obvious to follow the lead of the Hans Wehr dictionary.

You say that a ` is confusing, but in fact, for an Anglophone Arabic learner, a 3 is far more confusing, because it is a sign that has no lexical meaning to them at all. People who have not lived in Arab countries will not associate it with the ayn; I didn't know about it until my third year of Arabic. There is a reason why apostrophe-like signs are used to represent both ayn and hamza in all major transliteration systems. ʕ is not used in normal transliteration in scholarly books, although it is used in the occasional textbook. Plus, it's far too inconvenient, as other posters have said.

Again, not a single dictionary ever gives the nominative form of the noun, because again that is a grammar lesson and not the word itself. Taa marbuuta is transliterated in scholarly historical essays as "a" without exception, and occasionally in dictionaries or textbooks as "ah".

I am looking through literally all of my grammar books and dictionaries, in English and German, and all of them use a apostrophe-like form for the ayn and a simple "a" for the taa marbuuta: al-kitaab, langenscheidt's lehrbuch des modernen arabisch, badawi's modern written arabic, hans wehr dictionary, hava dictionary, etc.


 * I know, but it still doesn't comply with wiktionary transliteration policies. I have given you the link twice already so I won't bother giving it a third time.
 * None of the works you cite are user-edited, none are websites, none are trying to have entries for all inflections of all words in all languages.
 * All are using transliteration for pronunciation; we do not.
 * And by the way, each uses its own modified system that fits its needs, just like we do. The system used in the Wehr dictionary, is not the same as the one used in Ryding's grammar, Library of congress uses yet another, Lane's lexicon and Wright's grammar do not use any transliteration at all, nor do any arabic/french dictionary or grammar.
 * Our system is properly described and explained, unambiguous, and easily readable. Yes, there are a couple of unusual things, the ones you mentioned, and t-h for example. They were not added on a whim, but because they were required. Beru7 14:34, 8 May 2009 (UTC)


 * What on earth does being a website have to do with anything? Their needs are our needs; they are model dictionaries, and we are an aspiring one.  And no, I disagree that Wehr's or others' are merely pronunciation.  After all, pronunciation of fuS-Ha is only an ideal anyway, so all dictionaries do is transliterate, not give any "real" pronunciation, which in any case does not exist.  The example given on the Wiktionary page with Russian is more like giving istithnaa' as istisnaa' b/c many Arabs pronounce it that way.  That's obviously not what this is about.
 * What offends your excessive sense of order here is that normal transliteration systems have some very slight ambiguity with the taa marbuuta. Yes, both "raja`a" and "kitaaba" are transliterated with an "a" on the end, but ambiguity is not a crime and any Arabic learner will recognize the difference (verbs and nouns are different like that).  All European writing systems have at least one brief moment of ambiguity, as do transliteration systems of any language, so why not Arabic transliteration?  It's not forbidden by the Wiktionary guidelines.  We could also easily use "ah", which is not ambiguous.
 * In any case, none of this applies to the ` as a transliteration for the ayn. It is unambiguous, and it is quite similar to all standard transliteration systems, in contrast to using 3, which is not taught in any course and will baffle language learners.  And I have no idea why the discussion has to rise to this level of pedantry...  Perhaps an overcompensation for the fact that Wiktionary will be seen as an informal source anyway? --Aghniyya 15:25, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Maybe it gets that way because you are only resorting to arguments of authority, denying the fact, for example, that a computer screen is not a sheet of paper. Or that we have different requirements than other works (by the way I still have to read exactly what were the requirements that guided the choices of Wehr and others in this matter).
 * Anyway, as I told you in the first place: you can try and have these things changed. But it has to be done the proper way and in the proper places. I am not the one making those decisions. It's a shame you didn't participate in last month's discussions, as Anatoli suggested. Because if things change now it'll be a lot of work to change all the transliterated text that has been written in the meantime.
 * But remember that if you don't get these details changed, then you are just wasting your and other's people time transliterating things the way you do, because we will have to standardize at one point and correct everything - one way or another. Beru7 17:43, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Quite the contrary, all editors up to this point have used a simple "a" to indicate taa marbuuta. There can only be a handful written the other way. It would take a Herculean and wasted effort to change them to a new format. Moreover, new editors may not get the memo and will be unlikely to use a(t) and will be even more unlikely to want to use it (because it is so unorthodox). So yes, I will take my case now to the Arabic transliteration page, and I will try to prevent new transliterations from being "a(t)" and "3", both of which will be surprising to non-Wiktionarians (and some Wiktionarians). --Aghniyya 08:30, 9 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Please continue the discussion Wiktionary_talk:About_Arabic. We need to have some standard. Anatoli