Hebrew alphabet english transliteration3/24/2024 ﺹ – This letter makes a deeper “s” sound produced as a pharyngealized voiceless alveolar sibilant. In chat Arabic the number 7’ or 5 is used and in the IPA “x” and is therefore known as the letter “kha” or “7’a” or “5a” or “xa”. The consonant digraph “kh” is used, such as in the names “Khalid”, “Khartoum” and “Khomeini”. ﺥ – This letter is a voiceless velar fricative. In chat Arabic the number 7 is used and in the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) “ ħ” and is therefore known as the letter “ ħa” or “7a” or “ha”. The English letter “h” is used, such as in the words “humus” and “hijab”. ﺡ – This letter is a voiceless pharyngeal fricative. When transliterating these nine letters the following are used: In Arabic there are nine letters with no direct counterpart in English: ﺡ, ﺥ, ﺹ, ﺽ, ﻁ, ﻅ, ﻉ, ﻍ, and ﻕ. Here is some background to explain the reasons behind the inconsistencies and the challenges one faces when transliterating a Hebrew or Arabic name into English. “ ” (with an h instead of a ch after the letters “peta”). Another example is that the city of פתח תקוה is transliterated by the municipality as Petach Tikva in their website, but the website address is For instance, the Golan Heights town of קצרין has been transliterated as Qatsrin, Qasrin, Katsrin or Katzrin. For many years now the transliteration on street signs from Hebrew to English has been inconsistent, if not downright incorrect. Recently in Israel a preliminary bill was unanimously advanced in the Knesset (Israeli parliament) requiring “uniform, correct spellings in English for street signs”. Do you translate literally, do you use explication, or outright omission if the word may be difficult to translate? How do you translate idioms in one language which may not be expressed in another language or expressed in a parallel idiom? What is less familiar are the challenges of transliteration. It is well known that translation of a source text in one language to the target text of another language involves many challenges, especially between languages not related to each other, such as when translating from Arabic or Hebrew (Semitic languages) to English (a Latin-Germanic fusion).
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