From: linguist@artstein.org
Date: Wed Jul 28 2010 - 17:09:01 CDT
Quoting CE Whitehead <cewcathar@hotmail.com>:
> 'g' is a non-Arabic sound ... and there is no "g" in Standard
> Arabic although there are two ways to write it ...
Oh, there are many more than two ways to write the [g] sound in
Arabic. Standard Arabic traditionally transcribes foreign [g] as ghain
U+063A, as in Granada. But particular locales have devised their own
characters:
Morocco: kaf with 3 dots U+0763, as in Agadir:
http://www.casafree.com/modules/xcgal/albums/userpics/10070/normal_DSCN5410.JPG
Tunisia: qaf with 3 dots U+06A8, as in Gafsa:
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y131/LuXuS3000/Tunisia%20Airliners/Gafsa-Ksar.jpg
Israel: jeem with 3 dots U+0686, as in Giv'at Shemuel:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/62/Givat_shmuel_sign.png
Then there are dialects of Arabic that do have the [g] sound -- in
Egypt jeem U+062C is pronunced as [g] (think of Gamal Abdel Nasser),
and in many other places qaf U+0642 is pronounced as [g] (think of
Muammar al-Gaddafi). And that's just Arabic...
Persian and Urdu write [g] using a kaf character with a line above
U+06AF, while Pashto uses kaf with a ring U+06AB. It really should be
that simple. You might expect a substitution if someone does not have
a character in their font or doesn't know how to access it from a
keyboard. However, I noticed the Persian character alongside the
Pashto one inside a single Pashto document, and that's just strange.
-Ron.
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