Talk:fatHa

RFV discussion: March 2011–January 2012

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fatHa

Really? With this exact capitalization? -- Prince Kassad 16:58, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

At best, it needs cleanup. It links to redirects that should either be created as full entries, or deleted as unacceptable. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:02, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

It seems very marginal. Google Books turns up only three independent English uses: in Arabic for Dummies‎ (and Arabic Phrases for Dummies)‎, in Java Internationalization‎, and in A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic‎. All three use it, but all three treat it as transliterated Arabic (via boldface, italics, and italics, respectively). And all three are specifically talking about Arabic; it's not like using a Latin phrase in a legal context, but more like using a Latin phrase while teaching Latin class, or while discussing Latin in a linguistics class. I would delete it, personally. —Ruakh_TALK 17:20, 16 March 2011 (UTC) last sentence struck 20:15, 16 March 2011 (UTC) per others' comments below

fatha seems citable. I think fatHa is probably citable too. [1], [2], [3] and [4] are four Usenet hits with that capitalization. Naturally, it's going to be used when talking about Arabic, since it's an Arabic letter, but those hits don't seem to be using it as a transliteration.--Prosfilaes 19:01, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Keep in this exact capitalisation, also fat7a, fat-ha, fat-Ha. Capital H is used to transliterate letter ح /ḥā’/ as opposed to ه /hā’/ or خ /xā’/ and also indicates that it's not read as /ð/ or /θ/. Spellings fatha or fathah are also but are more ambiguous to Arabic learners. --Anatoli 19:35, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I think we all know what the capital H is used for, insofar as it's used at all; but "fatha", despite its shortcomings, is many times more common than all of the alternatives put together. —Ruakh_TALK 20:15, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

No question about that. So should this be moved to fatha and the rest listed as alternate spellings? (I'd like to see citations for most of those Anatoli gave; fat7a has no Google Books hits (as anything but bad OCR) and the Usenet hits were either Arabic or code switching.)--Prosfilaes 21:53, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Ruakh, even if fatHa is less common than fatha, it is also citable, to avoid /ð/ or /θ/ pronunciation, fat-ha or fat'ha forms are also used. It's OK with me if everything is moved to fatha and other forms remain as alternatives (not redirects). The form "fat7a" seems to be only used in chats and Arabic language forums where the distinction between various realisations of "h" in Arabic is important. I think User_talk:Beru7 had a different view on the usage of numbers for letters. Me and User:Stephen G. Brown had to agree with him on using number "3" to transliterate ع - the sound /ʕ/. See also Wiktionary:About_Arabic, which could be revisited but by people who actually work with Arabic, you can see a few capital letters used for transliteration of Arabic. Prosfilaes, the hits you cited use "fatHa" as the transliteration. --Anatoli 22:11, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Anatoli, I think we might be talking at cross-purposes here. It's obvious that 'H' is used in transliterating Arabic; no one would suggest otherwise. What's at issue here is whether "fatHa" is an English word. So Wiktionary:About Arabic is not relevant, and the phrase "as the transliteration" in your last sentence would imply that we shouldn't count those cites as English, which I don't think is what you mean to be arguing. Also, Prosfilaes provided those links to augment his sentence, "I think fatHa is probably citable too", so obviously he already realized that they use "fatHa". And he argued that said "hits don't seem to be using it as a transliteration" (emphasis mine), so you should probably be agreeing with him! —Ruakh_TALK 03:51, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Thirded. The only issue is attestability in English. Give it a month (or two; we often do) and if it's cited as an English word, keep it. Otherwise don't. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:51, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

And it does seem to be attestable; I disagree that the three Google Book hits are mentions or purely transliterations. I'd accept those three cites; and even if I didn't, there are another four Usenet ones that appear to be independent, meaning that as long as any three of the seven are ok, this is attestable. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:18, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, all seven cites are obviously uses. I don't think anyone has suggested otherwise. (They're not all quite in our sense — some are referring to the vowel itself, rather than to the diacritic that denotes it — but that's easily addressed by adjusting the definition.) —Ruakh_TALK 15:48, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for taking time to respond. I checked some books at home. The spelling "fatha" does indeed look more like English, rather than all weird spellings I have given before but the more academic the source is, the more strange the English spelling is both for the diacritic symbol ـَ and for the vowel it represents, cf. spelling Qur'an and Koran. Of course, "fatha" is used more often because it looks more English but this spelling is seldom used in serious books about Arabic. As you know, "th" can be interpreted as variation combination of Arabic letters, that's why it's avoided in Arabic dictionaries or textbooks. Hans Wehr uses "fatḥa" فتحة‎‎ and "ḍamma" ضمة‎‎ (Damma) (for diacritic ـُ) and a few other grammar references and textbooks. In the books where ḥ and ḍ are not used, H and D are used. There is no single transliteration, hence theEnglish spelling can also vary. As I already said, I don't mind fatha being the main entry and some others as alternative spellings. --Anatoli 23:26, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I've cited four hits on Usenet.--Prosfilaes 14:22, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Struck as passed. - -sche (discuss) 19:52, 29 January 2012 (UTC)