From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Mon Aug 15 2005 - 16:28:49 CDT
On 15/08/2005 20:49, Philippe Verdy wrote:
> ...
>
>> "x" is commonly used, at least in informal ascii-based and other
>> translits.
>
>
> Yes but it looks like a "geek" convention understood only by
> specialists of Arabic when they wanted to communicate with obsolete
> ASCII-only terminals and protocols... So this is deprecated. For most
> other people, "x" does not fit well, because it translates to the
> equivalent of a "ks" ligation among Latin users (not for Greek and
> Cyrillic native speakers where it is the equivalent of a sharp "kh"
> ligation and still does not transcript well the Arabic "k'h" sound...)
[x] is the most correct IPA transcription of this letter (Arabic
U+062E). In some Latin-script languages (at least Azerbaijani and Uzbek,
but also at least some dialects of Spanish) "x" has this sound, and the
Cyrillic equivalent U+0445 has this sound, as does Greek chi U+03C7 in
modern Greek (although in classical Greek it may have been more like an
aspirated k, or k followed by h, I'm not sure if that is what Philippe
means by "a sharp "kh" ligation".) In at least Azerbaijani and Uzbek
(Latin) Arabic names and loan words are routinely transcribed with "x"
for this Arabic letter; and professional linguists are also likely to do
this, as they use IPA. So don't deprecate this usage too quickly.
-- Peter Kirk peter@qaya.org (personal) peterkirk@qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/ -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.338 / Virus Database: 267.10.9/72 - Release Date: 14/08/2005
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