Wiktionary:About Arabic

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Contents

Romanization

The wiktionary romanization system for Arabic is based on the qalam system, with the following modifications:

  1. Diacritics are always transliterated
  2. ع gives 3 (widely used on the internet for transliterating that letter)
  3. ة gives a(t)
  4. the character - is used to remove ambiguities such as between ش (gives sh) and سْه (which would give sh also). In the latter case, the correct transliteration is s-h (the ALA-LC system uses ′)
  5. 'alif madda transliterates to 'aa
Letter Rom. IPA Notes
ا aa aː when in initial position, the 'alif represents a weak initial hamza. It then transliterates to the short vowel it supports (a, i, or u)
ب b b
ت t or t- t use t- when transliterating ـتْهـ to avoid confusion with ث
ث th θ
ج j ʒ
ح H ħ
خ kh x
د d or d- d see ت for d- usage
ذ dh ð
ر r r
ز z z
س s or s- s see ت for s- usage
ش sh ʃ
ص S sˤ
ض D dˤ
ط T tˤ
ظ Z ðˤ
ع 3 ʕ
غ gh ɣ
ف f f
ق q q
ك k k- k see ت for k- usage
ل l l lˤ
م m m
ن n n
ه h h
و w or uu w uː
ي y or ii j iː
ء ' ʔ
ة a(t) a at isolated words should use a(t), if not isolated, a or at should be used.
Short vowels
ـَ a a
ـُ u u
ـِ i i
ـً an
ـٌ un
ـٍ in
Long vowels and diphtongs
ى ا aa aː
آ 'aa ʔaː
ـَو aw aw
ـُو uu uː
ـَي ay ay
ـِي ii iː
  • Hamzas are always written ' regardless of which letter they sit on
  • Orthographic و and ا occurring at the end of certain verbs are not transliterated
  • ال always gives al- regardless of elision and sun and moon letters rules
  • To transliterate shadda, the concerned consonant is written twice.

Arabic words—organizing by root—proposal

The English-Arabic dictionary section has the potential to be a very useful section for English speaking students of Arabic. However, the fact that virtually all Arabic words are based on a three (very rarely 4) letter root, with standard prefixes, suffixes and infixes, presents unique problems for organizing an English dictionary of Arabic. Simply organizing the dictionary alphabetically would be unwieldy and difficult to use; when looking up an Arabic word, one typically identifies the 3 root letters, then the "form" of the verb it is associated with (there are 10 common forms) and looks up the entry alphabetically by the root letters, to find the definition.

The advantage here is that all related words are grouped together instead of being spread throughout the dictionary. Also, if a dictionary were not organized by root, most words would begin with one of three letters: the equivalent of "Y", "M" or a glottal stop.

I propose the following variation, then, to the standard Wiktionary word page, for Arabic words:

Word This would be the entire word, which could still be searched for directly, without deciphering the root letters, for instance منظمة

Arabic Language, as per wiki normal

ROOT in the above example, this would be ن ظ م without the prefix "m" letter and the suffixed "a" sound.

PATTERN NUMBER The above word is form II, or as Arab dictionaries describe it: wazn فعّل

Part of Speech —Here I don't know whether it makes sense to use English grammar terminology, which only loosely describes Arabic grammar functions: I suggest it would be helpful to also include the Arabic grammar terms (masdar, etc.).

pronunciation 'munáthama' Definition. 'organization' References etc...

--Jackbrown 13:51, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

To make this proposal simpler to implement, I’ve added sample code at Category talk:Arabic language, the Talk: Arabic Language page, which can be EDIT:Copy:Pasted into new word definition pages. All and sundry should feel free to improve both on this idea and the sample page; I really meant it as a proposal to be discussed. --Jackbrown 12:17, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Arabic verb form templates

Please comment. For a usage example see خ د ر.Hakeem.gadi 08:20, 12 June 2008 (UTC) I am planning on doing the nouns too.

Arabic root entry

Use template {{ar-root-entry}} to get the root along with a transcription into IPA and another way of transcription.

Templates pertaining to Arabic

Welcome

{{Template:ar:welcome}} ({{ar:welcome}}) may be placed on the talk page of new Arabic-speaking contributors.

ar

The template {{etyl|ar}} should be used in the etymology section of entries in non-Arabic languages whose origin may be derived from an Arabic word. For example, on the page for the English word djinn, the Etymology section contains the following code:

===Etymology===
From {{etyl|ar}} {{term|جن|sc=Arab|lang=ar|tr=jinn||a mythical race of supernatural creatures}}.

Which produces the following display:

From Arabic جن (jinn), “‘a mythical race of supernatural creatures’”).

The template does three things:

  1. It displays the name of the language of origin;
  2. It links to the Wikipedia article about Arabic; and
  3. Automatically categorizes the entry in the Category:Arabic derivations.

This template also works for languages other than English if another parameter is added using the ISO code for the language. So, for the Spanish word cero, the Etymology section contains the following code:

From {{etyl|it|es}} {{term|zero|lang=it}}, from Biblical Latin {{term|zephyrum|zephy̆rum|sc=unicode|lang=la}}, from {{etyl|xaa|es}} {{term||tr=ṣífr|sc=Arab|lang=xaa}}, from Classical {{etyl|ar|es}} {{term|صفر|صفـر|tr=Sifr|sc=Arab|lang=ar|zero, nothing, empty, void}}.

Which produces the following display:

From Italian zero, from Biblical Latin zephy̆rum, from Andalusian Arabic  (ṣífr), from Classical Arabic صفـر (Sifr), “‘zero, nothing, empty, void’”).

and classifies the entry in Category:es:Italian derivations and Category:es:Arabic derivations.

Arab

The template {{Arab}} should be placed around any text in an Etymology or Translations section that is written with Arabic script. If using this within {{term}}, specify the sc=Arab flag.

For example, the code

:*Arabic: {{term|قاموس|tr=qaamus|sc=Arab|lang=ar}}, {{term|معجم|tr=mo3jam|sc=Arab|lang=ar}}

produces the text:

Using the template ensures that text written in Arabic script will display correctly on a wider range of computers and correct for many font problems.

Preposition inflections

The template {{ar-prep-inflection}} is used to show prepositions with bound pronouns. See for example ل and ب.

Regional pronunciations

The template {{arabic-dialect-pronunciation}} can be used to display pronunciations in the modern dialects of Arabic. See for example قابلة.

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