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Aside from that, Spanish, Catalan, and Occitan have historically been written using both the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets, by their respective user communities.

by lh7 10y ago

Aside from that, Spanish, Catalan, and Occitan have historically been written using both the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets, by their respective user communities. Same for Yiddish, linguistically a Germanic language, which was often written using Hebrew script. Turkish seems to flip from Arabic to Latin and vice-versa every few decades. English written in Arabic script looks surprisingly natural to me.

planteen 10y ago
Is there a simple algorithm for Latin letters to Arabic ones (meaning logic input letters, not shaped ones)? Or are there lots of complexities? My understanding of the Arabic language is that most vowels are omitted in writing, but that might be wrong.
- schoen 10y ago
  It would have to depend on what language you're trying to transliterate, because the phonetic meaning of the Latin letters is different depending on the language they're used to represent (and for many languages, depending on the particular word). For example, ti- will usually be /tʃi/ in Brazilian Portuguese and /tɪ/ in English. Typically each orthography is specific to a language and a script doesn't encode sounds in a consistent language-independent way, so you have to know something about both the source and target languages to devise a transliteration system.
- lh7 10y ago
  Languages work more on holistic than algorithmic principles, so no, there is no algorithm, just a loose set of conventions that people may or may not be aware of and may or may not choose to follow. The omission of vowels in writing is not a problem for someone familiar with the language¹, whether it be Arabic or Judeo-Provençal, although when writing non-Semitic languages, some letters may take a vocalic role. ¹ See for example modern "SMS-speak" or old Latin inscriptions, both of which make heavy use of abbreviation, yet are/were perfectly intelligible within their respective user communities.

by lh7 10y ago

planteen 10y ago

Is there a simple algorithm for Latin letters to Arabic ones (meaning logic input letters, not shaped ones)? Or are there lots of complexities? My understanding of the Arabic language is that most vowels are omitted in writing, but that might be wrong.

schoen 10y ago
It would have to depend on what language you're trying to transliterate, because the phonetic meaning of the Latin letters is different depending on the language they're used to represent (and for many languages, depending on the particular word). For example, ti- will usually be /tʃi/ in Brazilian Portuguese and /tɪ/ in English. Typically each orthography is specific to a language and a script doesn't encode sounds in a consistent language-independent way, so you have to know something about both the source and target languages to devise a transliteration system.
lh7 10y ago
Languages work more on holistic than algorithmic principles, so no, there is no algorithm, just a loose set of conventions that people may or may not be aware of and may or may not choose to follow. The omission of vowels in writing is not a problem for someone familiar with the language¹, whether it be Arabic or Judeo-Provençal, although when writing non-Semitic languages, some letters may take a vocalic role. ¹ See for example modern "SMS-speak" or old Latin inscriptions, both of which make heavy use of abbreviation, yet are/were perfectly intelligible within their respective user communities.