From: Tom Emerson (tree@basistech.com)
Date: Mon May 23 2005 - 17:05:03 CDT
Dean Snyder writes:
> Latin r in no way resembles Latin z; Arabic "r" & "z" are exactly alike
> except for the tiny dot above "z".
And in Buckwalter's transliteration reh (U+0631) is transliterated to
'r' while zain (U+0632) is transliterated to "z". There is a
one-to-one correspondence between the arabic letters and the latin
letters used to transcribe them.
Perhaps our definitions of transliteration are different? It is true
that there are dialectical differences between the phonolgical
realization of 'r' and 'z', but these differences are not generally
reflected in orthography. The presence of the dot *is* the
differentiating factor between reh and zain or between "dal" and
"thal" or "sad" and "dad"...
> You can when they're rendered; and I have been talking all along about
> loss of GLYPHIC correspondences in transliterations.
Who says that glyphic correspondence is a requirement for
transliteration? There are adhoc Arabic transliterations where ASCII
numerals are used for certain Arabic letters due to their glyphic
similarity, e.g., '3' for 'ain' and '3.' (or '.3' or "'3") for 'gain'.
This all comes down to different transliteration schemes server
different purposes. The need for reversiblity or similarity to the
original are axes along which they differ.
-tree
-- Tom Emerson Basis Technology Corp. Software Architect http://www.basistech.com "Beware the lollipop of mediocrity: lick it once and you suck forever"
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