LINGUIST List 13.935

Fri Apr 5 2002

Qs: Arabic Transliteration Rules, Apostrophe Rules

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

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Directory

  1. Kurt S. Godden, Arabic Transliteration Rules
  2. Daniel Buncic, Apostrophe rules

Message 1: Arabic Transliteration Rules

 Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2002 15:37:53 -0500
From: Kurt S. Godden <kgoddenatl.lmco.com>
Subject: Arabic Transliteration Rules


Does anyone know of a website or other easily accessible source of
info for transliteration rules for Arabic into Roman (mainly English)
alphabets? I am primarily interested in personal names and
organization names. Thanks.

- 
Kurt Godden, Ph.D.					
Principal Member of the Engineering Staff		
Advanced Technology Labs
Lockheed Martin Corporation
1 Federal Street, AE 3W
Camden, NJ 08102 USA
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Message 2: Apostrophe rules

 Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2002 08:26:58 +0200
From: Daniel Buncic <dbuncicweb.de>
Subject: Apostrophe rules

Dear Linguist List,

The apostrophe is often neglected in graphemic descriptions (it is regarded
neither a proper punctuation mark nor a letter). At the same time it is the
object of a fervent battle against popular misspellings in several languages
(e.g. English _thank's_, _is'nt_, German _Peter's Kneipe_, _gib'_). This and
other observations have given me the idea that the true function of the
apostrophe is misunderstood if it is defined as a mark of omission. Instead,
in my opinion it should be defined exclusively as a marker of
morpheme-boundaries (probably in all languages!). I am writing a comparative
paper about this, so I would be happy if you could help me with the
following questions:

1. Where are apostrophes placed in your language? 

2. Do the rules define it as a mark of omission, as a marker of boundaries,
or as something else?

3. Are there frequent deviations from the rules?

4. Do you know any historical data about the origin of the apostrophe? Why
does it look the way it looks (')?

Thank you very much in advance. Please send your answers to dbuncicweb.de,
and I will post a summary to the list.

Daniel Buncic
=================================================
Bonn University Seminar of Slavonic Philology
Lenn�str. 1, D-53113 Bonn
Phone: + 49 228 73-7203
E-mail: dbuncicweb.de
Homepage: http://www.uni-bonn.de/~dbuncic/
=================================================
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