User talk:Stephen G. Brown/Arabic entries

Arabic entries
Hi Stephen! I was just wondering, are there any standards here (policies and such) about adding Arabic entries with article al-? When I seach for some of these words with al- in Arabic dictionaries (online), I'm redirected to versions without al-. I know that for some specific words al- should be left, but there are many Arabic words here that use it. I am just not sure if we should leave it, redirect it, or remove it. --Dijan 06:56, 13 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, in general nouns should be entered without "al-"...however, as you said, there are some words that require it (such as today). In cases where "al-" is not semantically required, the words should be redirected to the spelling without "al-". There are similar problems regarding various diacritics. Also, there are some words that of necessity must end in or  without dots, but in practice people regularly also write  and  without dots as well, so that  =, and  = . These words also need redirects, but you have to be careful, since some words actually require the undotted form. —Stephen 21:55, 13 May 2006 (UTC)