Re: Arabic transliteration

as everyone else has come up with a system, here's one
of my own devising

| b t `t j h h' d `d r z s `s s' d' t' `d' ( or z' )
:' `g f k' k l m n `h w y

also g p v &c for non-arabic sounds

( i've chosen | for alif as it looks similar ! as for
the diacritics, ' after a letter makes it 'thicker' ;
` before makes it 'lighter'. you might want to think
about which of `h h and h' you use for each of the
letters )

hamza :

vowels a i u

raised alif as a vowel could be aa, otherwise the long
vowels should probably be a| iy uw

arabic peculiarities ( undotted y read as |, double
dotted `h read as `h or t, nunation &c shouldn't be a
problem if you're just dealing with the script. if you
wanted to transcribe arabic itself i would be tempted
to writed something like y-|, `h-t, a-n, i-n, u-n, or
simply use the letter it's pronounced as, maybe with a
'this is an alternative reading' diacritic )

-----------------------------------------------

another system is to use the letter shapes themselves
:

| i, :i .:i z, z .z 7 .7 j .j w .:w b .b 6 .6 3 .3 .9
:9 /7 l f .i o q i;

( . marks a dot above, : two dots above, .: three dots
above, , marks one below, ; two below and ;, three
below — you could even mark the four dots found in
some northern indian languages with :: and ;; )

vowels you could use ' for a, - for i and 9 for u ;
then " for an, = for in and 8 for un

other marks : 0 for missed vowel ( forgotten the name
), ^ for doubled consonant

this would be handy for non-conventional shapes, but
gives absolutely NO idea what the sounds should be !

bn

mktbh = maktabah = f/7:ii,:o = f'/70:i'i,':o
ktbtna = katabtunna = /7:ii,:i.i = /7:i'i,0:i9.i^'

=====
bnathyuw | landan | arR
stamp the sunshine out | angelfish
your tears came like anaesthesia | phèdre

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