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The following articles discuss Hebrew phonology, transliteration and transcription:

See also Category:Hebrew language for related topics and varieties of Hebrew. jnothman talk 03:05, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

The following style guide (not policy) explains the general use of foreign language in Wikipedia articles.

s for ת

It seems as though no one but me thinks s is appropriate for ת. But that's the traditional Ashkenazi pronunciation: we shouldn't ignore it! (I'm talking about the "standard" not the "academic" transliteration, if we wind up splitting it up.) —msh210 20:53, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

And I'm referring not to modern Israeli stuff but to Jewish stuff. E.g., tzaraas, bris, etc. —msh210 19:14, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
However, modern spoken Hebrew != traditional rabbinic/biblical Hebrew; therein lies the problem. When transliterating pesukim (p'suqim? pisooqeem? etc. ), there are multiple proper transliteration schemes (Ashkenazic, Sephardic, Yemenite, Lithuanian, Galician, Syrian, etc.). Spoken modern hebrew, however, always takes the Sephardic pronounciation. So, are we to have multiple schema depending on the source and purpose of the transliteration? Avi 20:32, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree with msh210. How many Orthodox Jewish Wikipedians are sfardim (No offense to those who are bu I am trying to make a point here, so, forgive me for anything that may seem rude or offensive to you)?? Ask that to yourself, and then ask yourself this. Once you think that, think how many Ashkenazic Yidden in the world use wikipedia, and having grown up knowing, expecting and understanding the Ashkenazic Loshon (and no, I dont mean Yiddish) only. Never hearing the sfardic loshon untill maybe they were in Eretz Yisroel. If you dont give over the Ashkenazic version, people may be confused. I was when I first found Wikipedia. Another thing to input on the "Academic" version of Hebrew. How in the Shem HaKodosh Boruch Hu are we supposed to understand that. It's just a blob of symbols on top of english letters that, when it comes down to it, makes no sense. In my opinion, We should just leave it as it is. I reject Gilgemesh's proposal because, as I stated above, its just not understandable. In conjunction, how in the Shem HaKodosh Boruch Hu can we understand the Tiberian Transliteration. I tried reading it, and the only way I got through it was because I know those Pisukim by heart. Shaul avrom 23:49, 15 August 2006 (UTC) and --Shaul avrom 21:03, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
What about all the Israelis who will be confused? Hebrew is the official language of Israel, not Brooklyn. Mo-Al 00:36, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Yeah. All in all, you've probably got about equal people using the Ashkenazi pronunciation and an Israeli/Sefaradi one. So you have to weigh the two. The Israeli pronunciation is simply a bit closet to the historical Tiberian pronunciation, and is of course an official language. Of course, all articles that this affects should have redirects and muliple namings in their introduction paragraphs. I think that only a topic which is specifically Ashkenazi should have the Ashkenazi pronunciation (for instance, names of Ashkenazi Hasidic rabbis). --Eliyak T·C 02:56, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
First of all, the Israeli pronunciation system is not the same as the Sefardic one; it's a compromise between the Sefardic and the Ashkenaz that, wherever the two differ, strives for the simpler option. Second of all, there are definitely more people who use the Israeli pronunciation than who use the Ashkenaz, seeing as Reform and Conservative Jews in the U.S. both use the Israeli pronunciation system. (That said, there are many things for which Americans use the Yiddish word rather than the Hebrew, so e.g. "bris" is infinitely more common in the U.S. than "brit" in referring to a brit mila; but then it's not a matter of how we transliterate Hebrew, but rather of which language we use. I think we should mention both the Hebrew and the Yiddish forms, personally.) Ruakh 12:05, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Your wrong with that Conservative Yidden use only the Israeli pronunciation. I was talking with the rov at the local conservative shul (Baltimore is an orthodox city, we have only 4 conservative shuls and 3 reform "shuls". Thats about 9% of Baltimore's shuls. ) and he said, he only uses the Israeli Pronunciation in front of the Kehilla. at home and elsewhere he uses only ashkenazic pronunciation. We shouldn't change the way we speak the loshon Kodesh, the Holy Languge, AND that we shouldn't change to Modern Hebrew, Because doing either will lead to Apikorsus, or heresey. Its better, for the person who is making the edit, is they are Ashkenazic to write in the ashkenazic Havoroh (Dialect), and if they're Sefardic They should write in the Sefardi Havoroh. If mixed, go by the custom of your father. I.E., I'm of mixed heritage, but my father is ashkenazic, so I type, write, and speak in the ashkenazic havoroh. See here for what Reb Moshe Feinstien TZVK"L said It is the second post. -Shaul avrom 15:06, 25 August 2006 (UTC) and --Shaul avrom 22:01, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

But Modern Hebrew is an essentially secular language. It doesn't matter what should have or shouldn't have been changed - that doesn't change how Hebrew is pronounced nowadays. Mo-Al 22:58, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Your missing the point. Modern Hebrew is a secular language. It should never be used for anything related to religion. And with that knowledge, I quickly took to my fathers Havoroh. . --Shaul avrom 20:58, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
The problem with this is that one I tried to address before and eventually got shot down—if you provide one religious dialect, you have to provide them all (which I tried to—Tiberian, Yemenite, Sephardi, Ashkenazi, Israeli), and it gets far too cluttered (because them there are conventions of Dutch Ashkenazim, Lithuanian Ashkenazim, Babylonian Jews, and so forth). That's why one religious dialect for all of them—Tiberian vocalization as prescribed by the Masoretes in medieval Tiberias, from which virtually all the religious dialects and Israeli Hebrew descend—is most appropriate, academically conservative and neutral in Wikipedia article texts, as it is inclusive of all these traditions and excludes none of them, because they all are descended from it with regular phonetic change. Wikipedia is not the exclusive domain of dialect-specific know-nothing transcriptions. - Gilgamesh 20:40, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
How many yidden use the tiverian transcription and dialect. Tell me, how many. As I stated in a previous post, The tiverian transcription is just not understandable. And, by the way, in Reform "Shuls" the most used Havoroh is still the ashkenazic havoroh. The tiverian "Mesorah" just dowsn't work. The Mesorah for most of the world's Yidden is the Ashkenazic Mesorah. Just stick to it if you are ashkenazic. --Shaul avrom 13:41, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
I believe religious dialects should be determined by actual religious users based on actual religious use, not by academics (or, for that matter, an editor's rebbe's) edicts. I particular disagree with the idea of using an historical-interest dialect no-one actually uses on grounds it forms a sort of linguistic average. Imagine a proposal that an add-on on driving directions should be based on how to drive an ox-cart on grounds that there are multiple ways to drive a car while the ox-cart, being the ancestor of all, is academically the most relevant content in terms of the academic study of human transportation. Transcription is a service to users, much like driving directions, and I suggest keeping that in mind at all times. Except in articles specifically on Hebrew and Hebrew linguistics and philology, where it is doubtless highly relevant, the question of what is "academically" good, conservative or otherwise, strikes me as being as inappropriate a basis for content as in the analogy. Transcription is a practical undertaking -- it is there to help people get places -- and I believe the question should be phrased in terms of the needs of, and what would benefit, Wikipedia's audience. What is our market here? This is the English Wikipedia. How many English-speaking Jews use Tiberian Hebrew as opposed to other dialects? It seems to me that the transcription dialect(s) should be based on audience use, except in articles intended to inform them otherwise. I certainly don't object to linguistically minded folks filling in information about "historical interest" dialects if they want, but the rest of us can hardly be expected to accept this as a standard. That said, user:Shaul avrom, you've made a number of claims about the standardization and extent of Ashkenazic use in the English-speaking world. Evidence to support your claims would be appreciated. --Shirahadasha 19:10, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
The problem with both of your arguments is that it's discriminatory majoritarianism rooted in a narrow systemic bias that doesn't balance all the world's lasting traditions. I, for one, am not Jewish but still use Hebrew heavily, and Tiberian vocalization is what I studied since the beginning. As for others, there are still plenty of Sephardi Jews, and Babylonian Jews, and Yemenite Jews, and each of them preserve their own distinct religious Hebrew traditions. And then there are all the Christians that make heavy use of Hebrew—it may be easy to forget that most of the commonly used Hebrew terms in the panreligious English-speaking world actually come from the King James Version of the Bible, and even the Jewish Publication Society's English translation of the Tanakh reuses KJV naming conventions, to the point where a great many verses read identically. So, we should ask ourselves—what is best for all English-speaking encyclopedia-readers as a whole, regardless of their religious affiliations or lack thereof? - Gilgamesh 05:35, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
I don't think we can hope to "balance all the world's lasting traditions" -- I see no reason to undertake something I perceive as having no hope of success -- but we can hope to come up with a system so that when English-speaking users search for a topic in Hebrew, most of the time they will find it. If this is seen as the task, then empirical information about what people use as search criteria becomes relevant to the discussion. I personally think standard Israeli Hebrew should be generally used; Ashkenazic Hebrew for Ahkenazic pronouns; perhaps both for specifically religious terms. I wouldn't object if some editors want to add in King James Bible type language for Biblical terms, or if some editors wish to add Tiberian Hebrew, but requiring either would be inappropriate for many articles on standard Jewish religious topics. This may be a situation where "The best is the enemy of the good" (Aristotle. My basic suggestion is to subdivide into categories. Require no more than 2 different versions of Hebrew, and identify the versions appropriate to the categories. Editors can always add additional ones if they wish. --Shirahadasha 06:22, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
This sounds reasonable, and it seems to be already something of a status quo. I will still add Tiberian transcriptions at editorial discretion if they seem relevant. - Gilgamesh 12:34, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Tsadi: ts for צ

Israel's Academy of the Hebrew Language recommends "ts" for "tsadi" in its Tatik Mukal. I had updated the project page to reflect this. (Should've known better than to think this wasnt controversial!). --Haldrik 20:56, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Announcement

It's better to follow the Academy's recommendation as much as possible. Without objection, I'll update the article accordingly from "tz" to "ts", on Wednesday. --Haldrik 03:20, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

TZ is the most used transliteration in the frum community. I.E. Tzitzis, never tsitsis.--Shaul avrom 21:21, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Tz is generates confusion, because tz or z are never used in English to represent this sound except in words borrowed from German (like Mozart or pretzel) and Hebrew. I've heard people (ignorant people, to be sure) talk about "kletzmer" music and The Brothers Karamatzov", because they assume that a z in a foreign word must mean the sound ts. On the other hand ts never indicates any other sound. So, if it's a German word, use the German spelling. Otherwise, it would be better to get un-used to this spelling habit, which is weird from the English point of view. In the frum community everybody knows those Hebrew words anyway, so it doesn't matter how they're written in English letters.

Still under discussion

Just noticed that Wikipedians have yet to agree on Zurich or Zürich. Until that happy (?) day we have our informed common sense, plus the guidelines in Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles (thanks for that tip, IZAK). Also, if we learn any relevant facts that aren't in the relevant articles such as romanization of Hebrew, let's add them. Doron, thanks for creating a home for the perennial Hebrew transliteration question. If I even remember now, I was interested in forming a standard because it's a perennial question and because some articles immediately lose my trust due to obtrusive and poorly explained transliterations. --Hoziron 12:49, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

I'd fix more articles in Category:Cities in Israel, but Wikipedia is UNBEARABLY SLOW right now. ^^; - Gilgamesh 22:07, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

  • Should the Mapik, an emphasized Heh with a dagesh suffix denoting "her", be denoted? If so, how?
  • I'm not a hebrew scholar, but read, write, and study in hebrew; the Tiberian Pronounciation is a new idea to me. Could Gilgamesh or someone perhaps write a short article on this?
  • Place Names: I'd suggest that it be adopted as "standard" that all Hebrew place names always appear in two forms, a common spelling (eg., Petach Tikvah) and the Gazetteer's ("Dry" Standard, National Geographic) version (Petah Tiqwah), with approprite interlinks. I'm adding a column to the List of Cities in Israel page that shows some Gazateer names that I'm aware of.

-- D'n 02:57, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Mappiq should be denoted as being unmistakably an "h" phoneme. If quiescent "h" is never written, then mappiq "h" is always written. If quiescent "h" is sometimes written (as has long been popular in Tiberian transliteration), mappiq "hh" can be written. As for Tiberian transliteration and vocalization, it is more or less the same as the earliest finalized standard for niqqud, as both Tiberian and nequddoth were standardized at the same time, by the Masoretes in medieval Tiberias, so that every subsequent Hebrew tradition in the world that uses Tiberian nequddoth can be traced back to it, which is why we use it. As for place names, I think think this is already a scholarly ideal—familiar international English names take precedence, followed by familiar local names, followed by modern academic local names, followed by (if applicable) ancient academic local names, and names inbetween (such as Arabic forms pre-1948). That said, each of the different forms has greatest precedence for certain topics of study, such as Tiberian for religious use (historical Jewish, Christian, etc.), and Standard for secular or modern Israeli use, and pre-1948 Arabic for Palestinian refugees who mention the now-obscure name of a city, etc. - Gilgamesh 12:20, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

While my esteemed Judaic neighbors have their Shabbath Shalom, I'm going to try to write a proposal draft of the manual article and link to it when it's ready. ^_^ - Gilgamesh 12:01, 19 November 2005 (UTC) Okay, I have finished my first draft. It is at User:Gilgamesh/Naming conventions (Hebrew). Please review and give it your academic critique. ^_^ - Gilgamesh 18:05, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

  • The use of /ḫ/ for kh (כ) seems strange to me (even in Standard Hebrew). I would much rather the use of some derivative of the letter 'k'.
  • I think the transcription table is too long and rules for dagesh can be handled separately (although I do sort of see why you did this, Gilgamesh: it does make it impossible to miss)
  • Dagesh hazaq is generally ignored in Modern/Standard Hebrew pronunciation and I think should generally be ignored in transcription.
  • The page is generally too verbose and I think the top material can be moved below. I think a tabular or clear bullet-point list of instructions like that proposed by Hoziron at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Hebrew)/Archive 1#Proposal to romanize any item of Hebrew-language text. It is a fair bit easier to examine.
  • The information on entering Hebrew characters should be put on a separate page, eg Wikipedia:Typing Hebrew characters.
jnothman talk 00:42, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
The use of /ḫ/ is common Semitic transliteration. However, /ḵ/ can just as easily be used instead. Though dagesh hazaq is not typically articulated in Israeli Hebrew, it is still often found in conservative transliteration—for example, in some common transliterations of Akko, Nahariyya, Rishon LeZiyyon and Ma'ale Adummim (in fact I have never seen "Ako"—and "Akko" is not English because the traditional English names were "Accho" from the Bible, and "Acre" from the time of the Crusades onward). As for the other details...that's why I want feedback. XD Though I can manage so many details, I have trouble speaking in layman's English. It's an autism thing. But as (I hope) you understand the things I am talking about, I hope I can get some help combining expertise with an ability to speak to editors. - Gilgamesh 04:17, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
Well do we need a "Modern Israeli Hebrew" transcription to separate from "Standard Heb"? Yom Hazzikkaron just seems a little silly to me (in the context of MIH). jnothman talk 15:08, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
We need Standard Hebrew because it's standard. (If "Hazikaron" is the common popular transliteration for casual use in English, then so be it in that context.) Too many people disagree over common transliterations, but a rigid standard is something people can reference. It makes sense when you consider that Standard Hebrew was drafted in what is now Lithuania, and was later adopted by the State of Israel, and Israeli Hebrew is now a dialect of the standard. Standard Hebrew is also used internationally in tutorials, gazetteers, world maps, and for official capacities in certain international organizations. Whether in Tel Aviv, New York or Buenos Aires, Standard Hebrew is the widely-adopted secular standard for Hebrew communication. - Gilgamesh 18:01, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
What in the world are you talking about? What is this "Standard Hebrew" that was "drafted in Lithuania"? Who drafted it? The immigrants to Palestine who began to speak Hebrew were from many parts of Eastern Europe, not mainly Lithuania. Eliezer Ben Yehuda was not particularly influential as regards pronunciation (aside from the fact that he was not as influential as folklore has it about other aspects of the language either). Hebrew pronunciation in pre-1948 Palestine varied a fair amount, but gradually settled into a fairly uniform pattern, in Palestine/Israel, not in Europe. And as for the present, what kinds of Hebrew are there? There is Israeli Hebrew (in its relatively minor variations), and more or less successful imitation of it by non-Israelis (I think that's what you mean by "in Tel Aviv, New York or Buenos Aires, . . . Hebrew communication"); there are various Jewish traditional pronunciations used mainly in prayer and study (and words and phrases borrowed into English and other languages), but rarely in Hebrew conversation; there are various artificial styles that academic scholars use for pronouncing Hebrew texts out loud (but, again, not for conversation); and there are several different widely-used conventions for representing Hebrew in Roman letters. Which of these is the "standard" you're referring to, and that Israeli Hebrew is supposedly a dialect of?
Who spells Nachariya as Nahariyya, or Rishon L'tzion as Rishon LeZiyyon??? I've never seen it and really think that it should be changed. --Shaul avrom 00:41, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
For starters, the Nahariya municipal website uses "Nahariya". For another thing, you're overcorrecting—Nahariya is spelled נהריה with no ח. Additionally, the Rishon LeZion municipal website uses "Rishon LeZion". The Central Bureau of Statistics uses "Nahariyya" and "Rishon LeZiyyon". - Gilgamesh 20:53, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Acronyms

The consensus seems to be that abbreviations should be written in lowercase (or, when it's a proper name, with the first letter as capital), for example, Mash'az, Ramatkal, etc. However, there are still quite a few articles spelling it in all-uppercase (such as ZAKA). Which should be official in Wikipedia? -- Ynhockey (Talk) 22:11, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

The consensus seems to be that acronyms should be written in lowercase and that they should not be article titles. Please see: Army acronym.
I just came across 'Ramatkal'. I think that this is a ridiculous and disrespectful title of an article. Look at the naming convention of Chief of Staff of the United States Army or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I suggest moving this article to Chief of the General Staff (Israel Defense Forces) or Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces. Crossposted to Talk:Ramatkal --Shuki 17:09, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
More:
Yamam, Shabak --Shuki 18:16, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
I raised this issue in acronyms discussion, but will post here also. It is wrong to use transilerated Hebrew acronyms in English while spelling them using English proper name spelling. The example in question is Tanakh vs TaNaKh. An acronym in Hebrew would be TNK and a Hebrew speaker would not require the addition of any other Hebrew letters to anable them to pronounce the acronym correctly (within the context).
The added letters in English are only added for the benefit of non-Hebrew speaking English speakers to enable correct pronunciation of TNK. In fact the spelling Tanakh conforms to spelling of proper names, and there is a practice to use this as a male proper name, which has a meaning in Hebrew distinct from TNK. Similarly with Rambam. Rambam is not a proper name (in case any English speaker is not aware of this) like Kevin, but an acronym that in Hebrew would be spelled RMBM. This is a core difference between Hebrew and English.
These acronyms are used throughout the rabbinic literature, and a very good example is of the ARI z"l. Ari is a common proper male name in Israel, and also a name for a type of animal. The only way to therefore spell Adoneinu Rabbeinu Itzhak is ARI, or Ha-Ari (The Lion; not The Adoneinu Rabbeinu Itzhak), or the lesser used but more conventional RYBShA (Rabbi Yitzhak Ben Shlomo Ashkenazi). --Mrg3105 10:26, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
I see where you're coming from, but that's simply not standard practice. Googling "tanakh" together with "torah" pulls up a few hundred thousand hits; similarly with "tanach" together with "torah". Googling "tnk" together with "torah" pulls up barely a thousand hits. —RuakhTALK 21:31, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
So this only means everyone using Tanach are wrong.--Mrg3105 02:38, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Your open-mindedness is an inspiration to us all. —RuakhTALK 04:09, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Sh'va na

This will teach me to do my research. The sh'va na issue was debated shortly after this page was created, here on the archive page: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Hebrew)/Archive 1#shva always no vowel?? However, I don't see a consensus. The possibilities discussed were ', e, or nothing at all. The Nothing At All option would lead to confusion in pronunciation in at least a few cases. For example, the second sh'va in lvav()kha, a sh'va na, would be read as a sh'va nah if it is not indicated. --Eliyak T·C 03:23, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

The problem is, the sh'va na/sh'va nakh distinction is really more of a formal grammatical thing than a universal fact of pronunciation; you say glida (not g'lida) and dvash (not d'vash), much as you say lidfok (not lidpok), v'm'shulash (not um'shulash), b'y'rushalayim (not birushalayim), and so on. So what's our goal? If it's to give accurate transcriptions, many sh'va nas should be omitted completely. Ruakh 13:53, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
I think it should always be no sound. Nothing really wrong with lvavkha IMO. An exception can be made for certain reoccurring things like be/ke/le, etc. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 11:26, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
and...a lot of us do say "umshulash" and "birushalayim", etc... Tomertalk 22:13, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, me too, though I speak Tiberian anyway. XD - Gilgamesh 12:37, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
I lived in Jerusalem at number 32 on a certain street. If I phoned for a taxi and said "shloshim ushtaim" the dispatcher always failed to understand and asked me to repeat it. If I said "veshtaim" there was never a doubt or hesitation. So I believe "ushtaim" is dead, except in quite formal situations. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.184.101.96 (talk • contribs) .

Het/Het

I was under the impression that, under the new transcription rules which are being implimented by the Academy of the Hebrew language, ח will be transcribed as "H". Wouldn't that make sense here? Mo-Al 19:04, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I believe the consensus is to avoid anything that cannot be typed on a standard keyboard. This is more convenient for both editors and readers, and does not necessary detract from clarity. There are not many examples I can think of where a reader could easily confuse H (hey) with H (het). -- Ynhockey (Talk) 19:19, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Khet: Abandon the hope of using the English alphabet for transliteration

It's silly to transcribe Khet as Het because it sounds like "kh" not "h": Khet sounds the same as Khaf.

English requires two very different methods for representing Hebrew. A transcription system that records the Hebrew sounds (like the sound "kh"), and a transliteration system that records the Hebrew letters.

The English alphabet is useless for transliterating the Hebrew letters, and the effort to do so should be abandoned. English simply doesnt have three letters for "t" to cope with Tav, Thav, and Tet. Or two kinds of "g" for Gimel and Ghimel. Or four kinds of "e" for Tsere, Segol, Khataf Segol, and Shva Na. And so on and so on. It is impossible for the English alphabet to transliterate Hebrew, except by using diacritics, which is a field of complications all its own and unusable for most contexts. Abandon the hope of using the English alphabet to transliterate Hebrew.

On the other hand, the English alphabet is excellent for transcribing Hebrew sounds. Particularly Israeli Hebrew sounds because it has reduced the number of them. Except for the "kh" sound whose spelling in English is widely accepted as the digraph "kh", all other Hebrew sounds can be represented by the English alphabet. There are only five vowels, corresponding to five english letters: i, e, a, o, u. Truly serendipidous.

Hebrew itself doesnt mark the schwa!!! It only has a silent marker, the Shva Nakh (ְ). If an audible epenthetic schwa happens to appear, then so what, it happens to appear. The Nikud doesnt care. Until a new Nikud is invented to represent the Shva Na, English doesnt have to represent it either. Trying to represent a Shva Na just creates more complications and inconsistency because Hebrew doesnt represent it.

Therefore we are back to the fact that the English alphabet is excellent for transcribing the sounds of Hebrew. --Haldrik 12:20, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Khet is good. Het is bad. --Haldrik 12:24, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Not true. "In oriental Modern Hebrew, and "many traditional varieties of Hebrew (as well as probably in Biblical Hebrew), het (or chet, or khet) was a voiceless pharyngeal fricative." Besides, the new trascription system that the Academy of the Hebrew Language is going to adopt will contain "het". Mo-Al 14:27, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
"In oriental Modern Hebrew, and many traditional varieties of Hebrew"
  • Of course, but the above are not Standard Israeli Hebrew.
"Het (or Chet, or Khet) was a voiceless pharyngeal fricative."
  • Of course, but the English letter "H" in no way represents a voiceless pharyngeal fricative, either. The argument that "H" is needed because of a pharyngeal is untenable.
  • A transcription must be user-friendly for English speakers, thus diacritics cant be used. Thus a "H" for "Het" is wrong.
  • Besides, even if a diacritic was used, it would be just as easy to put the diacritic under the digraph "kh", as it would be to put it under a single letter "h". At least the digraph calls an English speaker's attention to the fact that "kh" is NOT an english sound (whether pharyngeal, uvular, or velar), allowing the English speaker to be more cautious about its pronunciation. It is highly likely an English speaker would pronounce Khet wrong, if it were spelled with "h".
  • Besides, whether we like it or not, the Israeli public at large hates distinguishing between Kaf and Kuf, and Khaf and Khet, and generally refuse to do so. Israel's Academy of the Hebrew Language has been forced to revamp its transliteration system, and is currently in the process of researching the best way to do so. Who knows, perhaps our results here, which require both convenience and technicality, will be taken into consideration by the Academy itself? --Haldrik 16:11, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi, please keep in mind that naming conventions exist for the purpose of creating a standard on transliteration, not trascription. Please consider that before suggesting, for example, that Het should be kh, which is wrong according to every previous transliteration method (academic and otherwise). Thanks, Ynhockey (Talk) 18:26, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Every previous transcription? What about Chet? Chaim, Chanukkah, etc. "Kh" which is non-English for a non-English sound is preferable to "ch" which already represents an English sound. --Haldrik 19:38, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Regarding transcription versus transliteration. We need both: We need one system for transcription which is easy to use in any English context. And we need another system for transliteration, which is far more complex, but which is necessary for technical needs, such as linguistics. We need two separate systems. --Haldrik 19:38, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Regarding the first paragraph, I didn't say H was definitely right, I said that KH was definitely wrong (according to every previously established transliteration system). It is still considered correct in Israel to pronounce Het differently from Khaf, even though no one cares about it that much. By contract, the letter ת without a dot is always t in modern Israeli Hebrew, and this is considered correct.
In addition, while I also think that modern Israeli Hebrew should be dominant in determining Hebrew transliteration, it should never be at the expense of the correction of earlier transliterations (H for Het is a fair middle ground, as is CH, but just like you, I don't support CH because it already has a sound in English, and looks awkward in many situations, especially for place names like Holon, Haifa, etc).
Regarding the second paragraph, maybe 'we' need both, but naming conventions (on Wikipedia) have always dealt with translieration and not transcription. Should we really be trying to change policies already well-accepted on Wikipedia in order to show English-speakers how to pronounce certain Hebrew words? Moreover, as I said before, in the case of transcription, the vav vowel (as u) should probably be oo in English (transcription); either that or some IPA symbol.
-- Ynhockey (Talk) 19:52, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Besides, how can distinguishing a transcription between Khet and Khaf be justified, when at the same time there is NO distinction between Kuf and Kaf in the very same system. Such a half-asked system can do nothing except cause more confusion. (And to distinguish between Kuf and Kaf is truly despised.) --Haldrik 20:04, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
You're missing the point. There is a clear distinction between Het and Khaf, many just choose to ignore it (but many do not). Why should be ignore that? The Academy of the Hebrew Language clearly states that this difference should be observed (see Condensed Even Shoshan Dictionary, page 1142). The academy makes no such distinction between Kaf and Kuf, Tav and Thav, Gimel and Gimel without a dot, etc. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 20:21, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
"There is a clear distinction between Het and Khaf, many just choose to ignore it. Why should we ignore that?" Well, there's a clear distinction between Khet and He, nobody ignores that. Why should we ignore that? Likewise, there's a clear distinction between Kaf and uvular Kuf. We totally choose to ignore this. There is a clear distinction between Tav and pharyngealized Tet. We totally choose to ignore this. We ignore it. Now, the English letter "ch" does not sound like "kh". Why should we ignore that? The English letter "h" does not sound like "kh". Why should we ignore that? The English letter "h" doesnt sound like a pharyngeal fricative. How can we ignore that? --Haldrik 21:13, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Moreover, the dialects that benefit from a pharyngeal marker for Khet, are the same dialects that require a pharyngeal marker of Tet and Tsadi, and a uvular Kuf. So giving them Khet but not giving them Tet, Tsadi, or Kuf, does not make anyone happy. It just creates confusion and makes everyone miserable. --Haldrik 21:20, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Not to mention there's already NO DISTINCTION between Alef and Ayin. Plus no distinction between Tav and Thav, nor Gimel and Jimel, nor Waw and Vet, which some pharyngeal-Khet dialects also require. How can it make sense to ignore every other letter in the Hebrew alphabet, and yet fixate on Khet. It makes no sense. It accomplishes nothing. At least a "kh" for Khet produces an authentic dialect. An "h" just produces gobbledygook. --Haldrik 21:25, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Moving to left
You didn't reply to the important part - do you discount the decision by the Academy of the Hebrew Language that there is a difference, in modern Hebrew, between Het and Khaf, but none between Kaf and Kuf, etc.? -- Ynhockey (Talk) 21:27, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

"Do you discount the decision by the Academy of the Hebrew Language that there is a difference, in modern Hebrew, between Het and Khaf, but none between Kaf and Kuf?" I think you misunderstand what the Academy is saying. Any dialect that distinguishes between Khaf and Khet ALSO distinguishes between Alef and Ayin. (And Tet and Tav, and so on.) So if the Wikipedia transcription decides to distinguish between Kaf-Khet, it must also distinguish between Alef-Ayin.--Haldrik 23:20, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Besides, the Academy doesnt use an H to represent Khet, it uses a DIACRITIC, H-with-line-below! Wikipedia does not have that luxury. The H with the underline cant be inputted conveniently on most keyboards, and even if it could, Wikipedia cant easily display the Unicode which the character requires, and even if it could Unicode itself doesnt have a Capital letter H with line below, anyway, which is extremely frustrating! In sum, just like the Academy doesnt use an H to represent Khet, neither should we. --Haldrik 23:15, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Just like the Wikipedia system cant use C-with-caron-diacritic but must use "ch", and cant use S-with-caron-diacritic but must use "sh", it likewise cant use H-with-line-below-diacritic but must use "kh". --Haldrik 23:20, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
And just like the Wikipedia system cant use Z-with-line-below but must use "tz" or "ts", neither does it use the H-with-line-below but must use "kh". --Haldrik 23:28, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Please check the facts before replying. The academy doesn't talk about dialetcs, it puts forth the correct version of Hebrew today. In other words, what the academy says in Hebrew is correct. And here is what is says: There is a difference between Het and Khaf (as well as Vav and Vet by the way, according to their website), however, there is no difference between Kuf and Kaf, or Gimel and Tav with or without dots. This is all clearly outlined in the 2004 edition of Even Shoshan (and likely all other editions as well). I do hope you have a copy of Even Shoshan. Alef and Ayin are more complicated, there is basically an inherent grammatical difference between them, so they are different when Alef is em kri'a, but usually the same when they are with nikud.
I agree with you that the academy's transliteration is impractical on Wikipdia. However, this has absolutely nothing to do with the argument above. You can create standards (muskamot - from the word muskam - agreed on), but you cannot create new incorrect sounds just for Wikipedia. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 23:40, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Representing Khet as if it was He, is even more an incorrect sound just for Wikipedia! --Haldrik 00:16, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
I don't see why we can't just adopt the academy's system, instead of creating out own. Let them deal with consistency, and so forth. Mo-Al 23:31, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
We still cant use the Acadamy's "H-with-line-below" and must substitute it. --Haldrik 23:41, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
The reason is simple - it's not practical. Not only do they use esoteric unicode characters, but also it will be disastrous to use these standards for most names (for people and places). There is after all a policy on Wikipedia to use a common form if one exists and the academy's transliterations are never the common form. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 23:40, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

"It will be disastrous to use these standards for most names (for people and places)". Exactly, we cant use diacritics.

  • The Academy recommends: G-with-charon. We cant, but we must NOT use G: "j" is the appropriate sound.
  • The Academy recommends: Z-with-charon. We cant, but we must NOT use Z: "zh" is the appropriate sound.
  • The Academy recommends: C-with-charon. We cant, but we must NOT use C: "ch" is the appropriate sound.
  • The Academy recommends: H-with-line. We cant, but we must NOT use H: "kh" is the appropriate sound.

--Haldrik 23:56, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

You still didn't reply to my comment on the fact that it distinguishes Het with Khaf but not the other ones. Also you haven't replied to the comment about how it's not practical to use Kh for names like Holon, Chaim, Nachshon, Hadera, etc. There's really no logic in using Kh for Het. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 00:12, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
The Academy still "distinguishes Het with Khaf". How meaningful is this distinction? How real is it? Is one uvular and the other velar? What's the difference?
I did reply, saying, "Representing Khet as if it was He is even more 'an incorrect sound just for Wikipedia!'" --Haldrik 00:16, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
"It's not practical to use Kh for names like Holon, Chaim, Nachshon, Hadera, etc.".
  • Any new transliteration system takes some getting used to. There's always some sacred cow that gets slaughtered. The reason there isnt a standard is because there are so many sacred cows. Believe me, it hurts to look at the word "Tora" without the "h" at the end. I endure for the sake of the bigger picture.
  • I've seen the word Nakhshon spelled like that. Likewise sameakh. Khaim. It's fine. Khadera, fine. Kholon It's ok. Khirik I like, Khet I like. etc. If that's the consistent rule. It's certainly predictable, and easily recognizable. And when you hear their sound virtually while reading it, it's immediately meaningful. --Haldrik 00:38, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
"Any new transliteration system takes some getting used to" - this is exactly the reason why we can't use your way - it's 'new', and not widely accepted. Please read and familiarize yourself with Wikipedia:No original research. This is an official policy very much relevant to this case. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 07:37, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Heth is a voiceless pharyngeal fricative (e.g. also how the Mizrahi Jews and Arabs pronounce it), and khaph is a voiceless uvular fricative or voiceless velar fricative. Also, as I have said before, so many of these names have been written down for centuries in the English King James Version of the Bible, and most of the names are written the same way in the newer Jewish Publication Society's English translation of the Tanakh. If a cite in modern Israel is in any way prominently featured in the Tanakh, just use the already-common English form—Holon, Beersheba, Jericho, Hebron, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Shiloh, Bethel, Shechem, Beneberak, Kirjatharba, Othniel, Jezreel, Chinnereth, Lebanon, Ekron, Gath, Lod, Ramlah, etc. - Gilgamesh 05:46, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
But a transcription would still be necessary to note the Hebrew names of these cities. --Haldrik 13:39, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Actually I meant the Academy's forthcoming system. Mo-Al 00:20, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Last I heard, they are merging Vav into Vet, and Kuf into Kaf, but they're still going to use the unusable diacritic H-with-line-below. Is that still the latest? --Haldrik 00:30, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
There are several system proposals, I'm not sure which one you're talking about. There's an interesting proposal developed especially for the roads authority, that one can probably fit very well in Wikipedia - it won't have any special symbols. However, I'm not sure of its status. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 00:34, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
I don't think it was a proposal. See [1] Mo-Al 00:37, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
I had posted that Newspaper column in the Romanization article. :) Good piece! Halkin wrote, "A new law, passed in the Knesset in December of last year, authorized the Minister of Transportation to determine new rules for transcribing Hebrew place names, and decreed that these rules must be submitted for approval to the Knesset's Finance Committee by September 2006. After the law was passed, the Israel National Roads Company and the Knesset Names Committee turned to the Academy of the Hebrew Language and requested it to come up with a new set of transcription rules for place names, which will oblige both the National Roads Company and the Mapping Authority. " So, I guess the Finance Committee hasnt received the proposal yet? And it hasnt been approved yet? But it's ambiguous, also saying, "As a result, a new and simplified transcription method has been prepared by a special committee and reviewed by the Academy's Grammar Committee. The National Roads may start applying the new transcription rules to new road signs as early as this coming September." But yeah, they're going to keep the diacritic H-with-line-below! "While the letter [khet] will continue to be represented by an underlined-h, the q and w in the original "Tiqwa" will soon become obsolete." Becoming Tikva. --Haldrik 00:53, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
By the way, when the Z-with-line-below is unavailable the Acadamy recommends "ts" for Tsasi. Barring objection, we should switch the current transcription from "tz" to "ts". --Haldrik 12:57, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
But so why don't we just use H (H with a line under it) for ח? It's unambiguous, and only requires one character, plus it'll soon become a standard in Israel! Mo-Al 20:09, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, H (underlined H) is not an option here, because it's not a character, and therefore can't appear in article titles. Since we're discussing a naming convention — that is, a system for determining the proper title for a given article — I can unequivocally state that H is not an option and that it's fruitless to discuss it. That said, ẖ (Unicode's "LATIN SMALL LETTER H WITH LINE BELOW") exists, and is even glossed as "Semitic transliteration". Note that it has no uppercase counterpart, at least so far as I can find, which makes sense: historically speaking, Semitic transliteration schemes that have made use of characters like ẖ have also been case-sensitive (using uppercase letters for the emphatic consonants and lowercase letters for everything else). I really don't think we should use ẖ in article titles, linking, etc., because it's not a common character, and for many people will display as a box, or as �, or the like. Also, because I think we'll want to be able to capitalize such words when they're the first word in a title or sentence. And to be honest, I don't think "it's soon become a standard" is very convincing; if the subject were fully settled, I have to think it would already be a standard, no? (Personally, I strongly think we should go for h, ch, or kh, as I've never seen ḥ or ẖ used in the middle of English sentences, which is really what we're going for here.) Ruakh 21:03, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Personally, whenever I transcribe the sound in any less than formal settings, I always found it easy and convenient to use the readily-available letter Ħ/ħ, which is used in Maltese and the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent the conservative pronunciation of ח. I would never mind using it in a crunch, as I have many times before. For example, I've frequently written "Ħaïm" (as for the diaeresis, I'm probably just stuffy enough to use it at least half the time I write words like "naïve"). For the sake of article title constraints, I would say just either use "h" or "ħ", and at least then the context should be crystal clear. - Gilgamesh 05:46, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
The difficulty is, Wikipedia English is for English speakers who dont have keyboards that can input the h-with-crossbar on the fly. If I was Googling for info, it would be highly unlikely for me to go thru all the trouble to cut-and-paste the h-with-crossbar. Thus I would not come across the information because of the nonstandard English characters despite that the article about it was in English. The consensus seems to be: any transcription for Wikipedia English must use the standard English (EN) keyboard. --Haldrik 13:39, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
The character U+1E96 LATIN SMALL LETTER H WITH LINE BELOW decomposes to U+0068 LATIN SMALL LETTER H + U+0331 COMBINING MACRON BELOW. This has the obvious uppercase form "H̱" U+0048 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER H + U+0331 COMBINING MACRON BELOW. (Not taking a position on the substantive issue, just pointing out a Unicode detail.) --futhark 21:33, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
That's true in theory — and I appreciate the correction — but it doesn't necessarily work in practice. For one thing, my version of Mozilla Firefox displays what you typed — "H̱" — as something between "H" and "H", and my version of Internet Explorer displays a box instead of the combining macron below. (Both of these might be issues particular to the fonts being used; I don't know.) For another, MediaWiki (the software that Wikipedia runs on) doesn't know how to auto-capitalize ẖ in links, meaning that we'd have to create a manual redirect from ẖ__ to H̱__ for every single article whose title begins with H̱ that's not a proper noun, in addition to the redirects from H__ and so on that we'd have to create even if MediaWiki were more knowledgeable. Ruakh 00:42, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
A Chinese Wikipedia exists, even though the text will show up as boxes for people without East Asian language support. Mo-Al 04:30, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
It's not the same thing because Chinese Wikipedia uses a Chinese keyboard that can manage the special characters. By contrast, English Wikipedia uses an English keyboard that cant manage nonstadard English characters. The transcription needs to use the normal English keyboard. --Haldrik 13:39, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Why is having a keyboard layout a prequisite? Mo-Al 01:00, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Maybe we should wait for the Academy's standard, and use that. Mo-Al 22:48, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Or perhaps not...perhaps, instead, we should completely ignore the Academy... They can make their standards all they like, but what the Hebrew Academy decides to use as a transliteration scheme for Israeli roadmaps and what an encyclopedia uses for a transliteration scheme for a language that is spoken by many [and for much longer in most of its forms] outside Israel, need not have any weight. The Academy's decisions are not made on the basis of accuracy, but rather expediency, and are, at any given time, subject to the whims of its variable makeup--which, given its recent recommendations, seems to be overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, Ashkenazi. Back to the original subject here, there's no way ח sounds anything like ך, and equally, no way כ sounds like ק. (In the same way, גּ דּ תּ don't sound like ג ד ת (nor ת like ס!)) cheth should be "ch" or ḥ...even "ç", khaf should be "kh", even "x", kaf should be "k" and qof should be "q". By the same token, thav should be th (or þ) dhaleth should be dh (or ð) and ghimel should be gh (or j or ɤ --boy IZAK'll love THAT one! ). Now...all of that ranting aside, I'm still stuck with what to do for teth and sin, since for me they're the same as tav and samekh... As for ts vs. tz, we could resolve the situation by using "c" instead :-) Plenty of other languages use it for [ts] (in many of which, it is a distinct phoneme from [t][s]. In keeping with my scheme to use a single letter for each phoneme, we can even go with š for שׁ... :-) Cheers, Tomertalk 22:53, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
כ(khet) and ח are generally pronounced the same in modern Hebrew. Mo-Al 01:01, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Heh, provoking IZAK? Be sure to keep your WikiStress in check. XD Anyway, /c/ for צ is not entirely unreasonable in Israeli context. Once, when I was working on a linguistics chart project (with separate columns for Tiberian phonemes and common Israeli pronunciation), I tried a an ultra-concise transcription for Israeli—the consonants were /· v b g ǧ d h v z ž x t y x k l m n s · f p c č k r š s t/. I omitted /·/ everywhere except immediately after consonants. As for the vowels, I used /i ė e a o u/, where /ė/ is for the common Israeli /ei/ (à la Lithuanian, appropriately Eliezer Ben-Yehuda's homeland). I also dropped /y/ after /i/ or after a vowel and before /i/, and if a distinct /i/ syllable came after another vowel and didn't form a diphthong, I transcribed it /ï/ (e.g. /Xaïm/). I completely omitted šva in all situations except where it is pronounced (and that's not lots of places). For accented vowels, I used /í ḯ è é á ó ú/ (for /i ï ė e a o u/). Now, I wouldn't recommend using this system in Wikipedia, but I thought it an interesting backstory, and it certainly was fun. :3 As for Israeli Hebrew and Wikipedia, I'd transcribe it with different spellings (for the most part) if and where otherwise similar sounds are inflected differently in grammar—e.g. the way they are transcribed on National Geographic maps (next to the English forms) and the like. As such, in academic transcription of Israeli in articles, I already use consonants /ʼ v b g ǧ d h v z ž ḥ t y ḵ k l m n s ʻ f p ẓ q r š s t/, and the vowels are /ə i e a o u/—those were Ben-Yehuda's distinctions—for Israeli /ei/, academic /ey/ fits smoothly into that convention as an alternate, e.g. /ḥefa/ and /ḥeyfa/. Full Tiberian phonology (which is the one I speak in practice) is different yet again, where the consonants are /ʼ ḇ b ġ g (ǧ) ḏ d h w z (ž) ḥ ṭ y ḵ k l m n s ʻ ṗ p ṣ (č) q r š ś ṯ t/, the schwa-quality vowels are /ə ĕ ă ŏ/, the short vowels are /i e a o u/, and the long/stressed vowels are /ī ē ẹ ạ ā ō ū/, also sometimes written stressed /í ḗ é á ā́ ṓ ú/, or written /î ê ệ ậ â ô û/ when they swallow a Hebrew letter (especially useful if that makes them grammatically "unbreakable" vowels that don't as easily collapse into schwa during inflection), and for the final unstressed vowels where they occur, /i e a å u/. Anyway, I started to ramble, so I'll stop here. :3 - Gilgamesh 03:53, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Oh...and alef and `ayn are very different sounds...easily representable by the use of ' for א [[when non-initial] and ` for `ayin in all positions. `Almoj, Yërušalayim, Çevron, Cfaþ, Gaþ, `Aza, Šiloaç, piguà, etc. Tomertalk 23:01, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I moved the following for easier access for discussion: --Haldrik 13:19, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

"Do you discount the decision by the Academy of the Hebrew Language that there is a difference, in modern Hebrew, between Het and Khaf, but none between Kaf and Kuf?" I think you misunderstand what the Academy is saying. Any dialect that distinguishes between Khaf and Khet ALSO distinguishes between Alef and Ayin. (And Tet and Tav, and so on.) So if the Wikipedia transcription decides to distinguish between Kaf-Khet, it must also distinguish between Alef-Ayin.--Haldrik 23:20, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Not true at all. Lots of Israelis (of Middle Eastern family background) distinguish fairly consistently between Het and Khaf but only sporadically between alef and ayin. This is well documented, for example in a dissertation and several articles by Monica Devens, and by others. Virtually no native speaker of Hebrew distinguishes between tet and tav, except in prayer and chanting the Torah in the synagogue. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.184.101.96 (talk • contribs) .
Not just those of Middle Eastern family background: much of my father's family (from Bukhara, made aliyah in the 30s and 40s) is the same way. I don't think they distinguish tav from tet even in shul; my father certainly doesn't. Ruakh 02:56, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

User:24.184.101.96 affirms: "Lots of Israelis (of Middle Eastern family background) distinguish fairly consistently between Het and Khaf but only sporadically between alef and ayin [and rarely] between tet and tav, except in prayer and chanting the Torah in the synagogue." I appreciate the important point. Several responses come to mind.

  • The standard dialect of Israeli Hebrew is the language of the "ingathering of the exiles". For the most part, whatever the Sfardim found difficult to pronounce (like certain vowels) fell off the standard dialect, and whatever the Ashknazim found difficult to pronounce (like pharyngeals) fell off. Because the Israelis of European background didnt acquire the distinction between the sounds of Khet and Khaf, this distinction isnt standard.
  • The Mizrakhi (and Uzbek) dialect is important, and those communities that speak it should be encouraged. Israel seems less like Israel without it. Even so, it isnt the standard dialect. Perhaps the Southern dialect of American English is an important dialect, and America might feel less like America without it, but the Southern dialect isnt the standard American dialect.
  • The Mizrakhi dialect should probably have its own transcription system, separate from the standard Israeli dialect.
  • If a Hebrew-to-English transcription system were to represent a distinction between a pharyngeal Khet versus a uvular (velar?) Khaf, the letter "h" is still unacceptable to transcribe a non-English sound because it already transcribes the English sound [h]. The letter "h" doesnt represent a [{{IPA|ħ]) sound, and it would cause English-speakers, who need the transcription system, to mispronounce the Hebrew words. Consider the official transcription system of Conservative/Masorti Judaism, which uses "kh" for Khaf but "ch" for Khet, but here too the English "ch" already stands for the sound [tʃ], and seems best used to transcribe the Hebrew letter Chadi. If a distinction were necessary to make, it should probably be something like "kh" for Khaf and "hh" for Khet. For example: Ruahh, Hhesed, and so on. At least the non-English digraph would signify the non-English sound.
  • Yet, if the standard Israeli Hebrew dialect doesnt distinguish the sounds of Khet and Khaf, how can an English transcription representing standard Israeli Hebrew be expected to distinguish them?
  • If most Israeli Hebrew speakers find it unfeasable to distinguish between Khet and Khaf, how much more unfeasable it would be for English speakers to distinguish between them. Many English speakers already find the non-English uvular [χ] to be formidable. What's the point of making them cope with a pharyngeal too?
  • The nonstandard Mizrakhi dialect should be preserved - in all its complexity - not just between Khet and Khaf, but the Ayin and Alef too, and even Tet and Tav. But a normal English alphabet cant do this. The Mizrakhi dialect may be preserved best by using the International Phonetic Alphabet to transcribe it, as if Mizrakhi Hebrew maintained all the distinctions of traditional Tiberian Hebrew.
  • The English alphabet is excellent for transcribing the sounds of the standard dialect of Israeli Hebrew. As such, the English alphabet is best when using "kh" to represent both Khaf and the same-sounding Khet.

--Haldrik 13:19, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

FWIW, I agree with you that khet and khaf should be transcribed identically, preferably as "kh", except in names like "Noah" and "Jericho" where standard English spellings already exist. Ruakh 17:55, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
It's actually worth a lot. "Khet and khaf as 'kh', except standard English spellings". Sounds good to me. --Haldrik 10:32, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

U for Shuruk

"In the case of transcription, the vav vowel (as u) should probably be oo in English." - Yikes! Absolutely not! The "u" in "flu", or "Peru", or "Tunis", or "stupid", or "feud" or so on, is plenty good English enough! --Haldrik 20:08, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually in many English dialects, the u in stupid and flu are pronounced like the word you, or at least similar to the German ü. Feud is actually a combination of 2 vowels (eu), which is always you, and the other 2 are country names, transliterated into English back in the day. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 20:16, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
I've never heard "flu" pronounced "flyu". Also "gnu". English speakers have zero difficulty understanding that the letter "u" sounds sometimes rhymes with "flu" or "mu" or "nu". There's "g.u.i." or "kabuki" or "sepuku", or "Truman" or "duo", or "dualism" or "ludicrous", or "super", or "stupify", or "Lukan", or "tucan", or "diluvian", or "truly", or "Trudy", or "Judy", or "Sunni", etc. It's perfectly clear. And simple. --Haldrik 21:04, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
For the record, in most dialects of English, "feud" is [fju:d] or [fi:wd], not a combination, it's either of two diphthongs...I, for example, say "feewd", not "fyood", but "you" is "yoo", never "eew" (which is an expression of disgust). I also have never heard of [flyu:] as a pronunciation for "flu", although I can conceive of it as a pronunciation for "flue" (and "flew", for that matter)...I have, however, heard people palatilize the /l/ in "influenza"...and the thing about stupid vs stchupid (or stcheewpid) is an American English vs. British (esp.) English thing...and so are most of the non-foreign-language examples (specifically, those borrowings that have occurred in the past 200 years, like kabuki or sepuku or Sunni) you cite. Words of neolatin or italian origin, especially in England, get the palatalized version today even if they are later borrowings, including "duo" and "dualism". The number of times I've heard lyüdicrous is, as it happens, stchewpefyingly ludicrous. The palatalization in Truman and Trudy are less pronounced even in most of England, but that's a common feature of [u] or [ju] after all [r]s... and Judy is just plain wrong... In the US people say ['dʒu: di] and elsewhere so do many others (at least appear to)...but that's only because it's really difficult to hear the difference between ['dʒu: di] and ['dʒju: di] or it comes out ['dʒy: di]. I assume "tucan" is "toucan", and have no idea what "Lukan" is...but I see only a very leaky bucket in all your arguments... THAT SAID, "oo" is a very very bad idea on so many levels... As I've said many times before, this is en:, not simple:. When the target audience of Encyclopedia Brittanica becomes 2nd graders, then perhaps we can talk about transliterating [i] as "ee" and [u] as "oo". Tomertalk 22:46, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Exceptions

Wanted to bring up the issue of using Ashkenzic pronunciation to identify proper nouns, names of peopls, places, etc., which are or were exclusively refered to in Ashkenazic Hebrew, either as an original or an alternative pronunication. --Shirahadasha 16:50, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Official policy

Since there have not been any major objections to this proposed policy for a while, and following the last edit to the article, I was left wondering why the page is still not official policy. Is there a special process we didn't follow to make it policy, or is it just that everyone is too lazy to stick the policy/guideline tag on top? -- Ynhockey (Talk) 10:22, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I was vaguely aware of this page's existence in the past but did not realize people are actually intending to turn this into a policy to bind all of us. For the past couple of months a dozen of us have been working hard on orthodox rabbis at WP:ORBCW, and we were using plenty of ashkenazi and artscroll transliteration.
I strongly object to a unified standard of rendering this stuff. To give you an example, the Russian name Vladimir is rendered Vladimir in Russian bios, Volodymyr in Ukrainian bios, and Vladimirs in Lithuanian bios, to name just a few. I think an article dealing with an Israeli subject should use standard modern Hebrew transliateration à la Reuters, but that should not preclude an article about a Teimani rabbi from listing his name as "Dawith" and an article about a Hasidic rebbe from listing his name as "Duvid". As for articles that pertain to all sorts of Jews (e.g. Kapparos), there should be a British / American English rule in effect, viz. either is fine and nobody may change it back. I think that makes a lot more sense than the sum total of the proposals above. I ask that no action is taken for at least a couple of weeks to allow this stuff to be debated and for the ORBCW chevra to get a chance to weigh in. Thanks. - CrazyRussian talk/email 02:32, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
There isn't a problem to include more transliteration systems for different contexts and add a note that it is not always binding and there can be exceptions, like it has been done in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Arabic), but we definitely need an official policy or guideline for Hebrew transliteration. I'm not sure you are aware of the numerous edit wars that were conducted over the names of Israeli locality articles such as Nazareth Illit, Beersheba, etc., not by vandals or those seeking to harm Wikipedia, but by honest users who simply could not agree on a standard.
Yes, it is possible to come up with a standard only for modern place names, and leave other things like people's names alone, but that does not help a new user understand whether Chanukkah or Hanuka (or variations) is the accepted convention on Wikipedia, considering many transliterations have been used by different people.
Finally, this discussion has stood idle for several months so there's no problem to leave the article unchanged for another few weeks, but if you can, please attract as many relevant editors as you can so that we may formulate a more comprehensive standard.
-- Ynhockey (Talk) 02:56, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
I was unaware of the edit wars. I think they're silly. I have posted a note on WT:ORBCW to that end. Thanks. - CrazyRussian talk/email 03:19, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I totally oppose any policy on this. Yated-mode on: I absolutely in the strongest possible terms condemn any such attempt. Those who are pushing for this are under the influence of the yetzer hora. They are not worthy of any support for their activities, their articles are not worthy of being read and their opinions are poisonous. Yated-mode off. I see no reason to name Ashkenazi rabbonim after Sefardi pronunciation rules. There is no such reason. --Daniel575 | (talk) 14:09, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree a special system can be worked out for the Ashkenazi rabbis. Is there an article that lists all the Ashkenazi rabbis, with links into individual articles on their bios? If so, the list article can include all the forms of their name, including spellings in the Hebrew alphabet, the Yiddish alphabet, the Ashkenazi transcription, and the Israeli transcription. As long as all the bios link to this central list article, everything can be found even with an Israeli search. What this means is, the entirety of the bio article can be written in Askenazi without any mention of Israeli at all. --Haldrik 20:20, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I have no problem with naming conventions for articles on community-specific topics [along with appropriate redirects, to be sure!], such as for Ashkenazi rabanim...especially those who lived prior to the foundation of the state of Israel, or those whose sphere of influence does not extend far beyond their communities. Specifically, R' Moshe Feinstein is fine, but I'd rather see Iggerot Moshe than Iggeres Moishe or Igros Moshe or whatever. (Actually, those of you who are more familiar with my position know I'd rather see it at Igroth Moshe, or better, אגרות משה...but that's really neither here nor there...) That said, using Ashkenazi Hebrew's reduced phonology as a basis for transliterating Hebrew really grates on me...I cringe, for example, every time I see Shulkhan Arukh and Posek (especially when I hear in my head the pronunciations "SHULL kh'n AW rekh" and "PUSS ik")... Tomertalk 21:47, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Yiddish)

Why is there no Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Yiddish)? It seems clear to me that we need separate conventions for Hebrew as for Yiddish; and once we have both, we can then discuss which articles fall into which category. I think Hassidic rabbis generally fall into the Yiddish-transliteration category. Does someone more knowledgeable than I care to undertake starting Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Yiddish)? Ruakh 15:08, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

LOL :) What to do with Kapparos? The problem is that the "Yiddish" contingent is also going to want to take all of Judaism with them, and leave the "Hebrew" contingent with litte more than Tzahal and Herzl. I doubt you would accede to that. - CrazyRussian talk/email 21:32, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
To be honest, I don't really mind if medieval and modern Orthodox terms, aside from those specific to Sephardic Judaism, use Yiddish transliterations (as long as there are redirects from Hebrew transliterations). Even in Israel, many Orthodox Jews use Yiddish pronunciations for a lot of religious terms; when my sister (who lives in Jerusalem) khazra bitshuva, suddenly I had to learn that tsnee-iss meant tzni'ut, uh-sr meant asur, and so on. Further, Biblical names have their own English forms; Jesse and Nazareth don't bear that much resemblance to Yishai and Natzeret (especially in speech), but it really wouldn't make sense to name the articles by transliterating their modern Hebrew forms. (Similarly Hanukkah, Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah — these are much more reminiscent of the Hebrew, at least in spelling, but still don't accord perfectly with this draft policy.) After all those concessions, I definitely think the remaining terms — terms that don't have universal English spellings and that aren't specific to medieval and modern Orthodoxy — should use Israeli pronunciations, as that's what the majority of the world's Jews use; but I freely admit that I've conceded most of the terms in question. So what? Obviously I prefer the Israeli pronunciations myself, but I'm not going to pretend they're always what's best for Wikipedia. Ruakh 00:53, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for calling my religion "Medieval Judaism". You're a real Tzadik. - CrazyRussian talk/email 01:29, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
What the heck? No, you misunderstood; when I said "medieval and modern Orthodoxy", I meant "Orthodoxy in medieval and modern times". By "modern Orthodox" I didn't mean "Modern Orthodox" (note that "m" is not the same as "M"), and by "medieval [...] Orthodox" I certainly didn't mean "ultra-Orthodox/Haredi". (For that matter, I wasn't thinking of Modern Orthodox Judaism at all; I don't know any Modern Orthodox Jews, so don't know whether they use Yiddish-style or Israeli-Hebrew-style pronunciations.) I'm sorry if you were offended. (You should consider learning to assume good faith, though; I really don't think you would have misunderstood me if you had considered for a moment that it might not be my goal to denigrate your religion, which for that matter is my sister's as well.) Ruakh 03:58, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
Right. That's a hell of a misunderstanding. There was no Orthodoxy of any kind in Mediaeval times - we only had one Judaism then, to there was nothing to juxtapose it with. - CrazyRussian talk/email 04:25, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
Unfortunately, I am all too used to having my religion denigrated. Anyway... - CrazyRussian talk/email 04:27, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

1) An issue with the silent e & 2) transliterating he

I've noticed a problem with the transliteration of tzeirei. This has to do with the way the letter e is used in English: Under the current rule, מלא becomes "male," עשה becomes "ase," etc, which most English readers would read as having a silent "e". There are two possible solutions: doubling the consonant: "malle" and "asse;" or adding an apostrophe: "ma'le" and "a'se."

Also, interestingly, transliterating the letter he in the latter case would help pronounciation – "aseh" or "asseh," which is its function as an em hakri'a(h). My opinion is that we should be transliterating those he's in any case, since they are usually there in the long-accepted transliterations (i.e. Torah, Rosh Hashanah). --Eliyak T·C 16:56, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I oppose this, as the aim of the transliterations are to give the reader an idea of what the article's title sounds like, assuming a target audience of people at least vaguely familiar with the rules of the language in question, not to give a transcription. We should differentiate between the two. A transcription of חופה could be Hoopáh, but a transliteration would be Hup(p)a. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 12:01, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
OK. I guess I'm just used to certain transliteratons (like "Torah") which this system will alter.
The silent e problem is still there, though. --Eliyak T·C 14:11, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Tsere male

Since comments were requested, ... adding a diacritic ['] to the word ma'le isnt helpful in the long run. One of the most important requirements that a Hebrew transcription must meet is predictability. When someone searches for a Hebrew topic, they must predict exactly how the term will be spelled. If they guess wrong, the information will not be located. It is impossible that the word ma'le would occur consistently with this diacritic in all places, particularly because the diacritic marks no sound. And if male required the diacritic, why not other transcribed Hebrew words? Ultimately the rules for when to use the diacritic or when not to becomes too complicated compared to the actual benefit gained. Just male by itself is better.

If the transcription system isnt brain-dead simple - like traffic signs - it cant do serve its necessary purpose, which is to represent Hebrew easily and consistently for casual use in English.

Besides, as far as English spelling goes there isnt much difference between the male and the English word "cafe" (which I have never spelled with an accent mark). English words use many different spellings to represent the same sound, and even pronounce the same spelling differently, as in, "To record a record".

The most important purpose of a Hebrew transcription system is for its spelling to be obvious, consistent, and user-friendly. --Haldrik 11:24, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

The rule could be summed up simply: add a ' in cases when the transliteration would otherwise imply a silent e. This ' does not conflict with any other rule, as far a I can see, and should not lead to a suspected alef or ayin. In my opinion, user-friendliness would require that the user should naturally read the word with some approximation of its true pronunciation.--Eliyak T·C 04:29, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Any transcriptions system is complex enough. Requiring the use of an extra diacritic (') seems counter productive. The pronunciation of tsere male is obvious enough without adding complications. Simple = good. --Haldrik 12:53, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Transcription (not of names)

I've noticed that in articles like Hebrew language there is a preference for using transliterations as opposed to Hebrew characters, and the needs for transcription in language articles are different than those for transcribing names. Is there a policy on transcribing Hebrew which is not in place or people's names? Mo-Al 19:30, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Hebrew

In the interest of merging the pages, I'm posting the Simple Transcription system here for comparison. It's for Standard Israeli Hebrew. (Some of the same principles can also be applied for Ashkenazi Hebrew.) The most important point is that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the way it's spelled and the way it actually sounds. --Haldrik 21:50, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I added the Ashkenazi dialect so that it can be included in the same tables below. --Haldrik 13:02, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Simple Transcription

  • Example: Shabat
  1. The utility of the Simple Transcription is to be as simple as possible, but no simpler.
  2. The Simple Transcription uses the English alphabet only (properly, the English sounds of the Latin alphabet). It does not use any diacritics and is intended for easy use in English contexts.
  3. For the sake of consistency and predictability for computer searches and links, always use the modern Standard Israeli Hebrew pronunciation for the Simple Transcription. Always.
  4. Vowels are always transcribed.
  5. Whenever two consecutive vowels appear together, they are never a diphthong, and are always distinct syllables interrupted by the sound of a glottal stop (like in the English negative exclamation "uh-uh"). Therefore, Boi sounds like bo-i (not as diphthong oy in "boy"). Yaakov sounds like Ya-akov. The diphthong ay in Khay rhymes with "why".
  6. An epenthetic vowel is a brief extra vowel added to help pronunciation. The epenthetic schwa, Shva Na (ְ), is not transcribed. Other epenthetic vowels are transcribed: Khataf Segol (ֱ) as e, Khataf Patakh (ֲ) as a, and Khataf Kamats (ֳ) as o.
  7. Although Shva Na is not transcribed, an exception is made. It is transcribed as e if it is before the sound of a glottal stop. Examples: the B-er in Beer Sheva (בְּאֵר שֶׁבַע), and the Sh-arim in Mea Shearim (מֵאָה שְׁעָרִים). To avoid the use of a diacritic, the e is added so the two consecutive vowels can signify the glottal stop. It is as if the e stands for the glottal stop itself (א or ע).
  8. The letters Khet (ח) and Khaf (כ) have the same non-English sound of the voiceless uvular fricative, and are spelled with the same non-English letter combination of kh. The Hebrew letter Chadi (צ׳) is spelled with the English letter combination, ch (as in "chips").
  9. In Israeli Hebrew, a strong dagesh is not pronounced and not represented in the Simple Transcription. Thus, Shabat (not Shabbat), Tsiyon (not Tsiyyon), Kabala (not Qabbala), and so on.
  10. Hebrew one-letter prefixes are separated from the word box by a hyphen. Example: L-Khayim, Ha-Kol. If the hypen is before a glottal stop, the Shva Na of the prefix is not transcribed as e. Example: L-Olam stands for the single word LeOlam.
  11. Modern Israeli Hebrew has simplified the historical Hebrew sounds. (Pharyngeal sounds seem to be falling out of use, and is not noted in the Simple Transcription.) With the addition of the non-English digraph "kh" for the non-English voiceless uvular fricative [χ)], English can approximate all Israeli Hebrew sounds.
  12. Thus, the English alphabet works well to transcribe all modern Israeli Hebrew sounds.
  13. Note: The English alphabet does not work well to transliterate Hebrew letters. Certain English letters represent too many Hebrew letters: d (ד,דּ), g (ג,גּ), k (כּ,ק), kh (ח,כ), s (ס,שׂ), t (ט,ת,תּ), ts (צ,טס,טשׂ,תּס,תּשׂ), v (ב,ו). Therefore, in technical use where it is necessary to distinguish Hebrew letters, always use Precise Transcription that employs the IPA alphabet.
  14. The modern State of Israel has three official languages: Hebrew, Arabic and English. Therefore, a person who reads an Israeli street sign with the Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin alphabets expects the English pronunciation of the Latin alphabet.
  15. The Simple Transcription is intended primarily for English use. Hebrew words in the Simple Transcription are to be treated as if English words for any English context.

Hebrew consonant letter

HEBREW CONSONANT SIMPLE TRANSCRIPTION
Israeli Hebrew		 IPA
Tiberian Hebrew
א - ʔ
אּ - ʔ
ב v v
בּ b b
ג g ɣ
גּ g g
[ג׳] j dʒ
ד d ð
דּ d d
ה h h
הּ h h
ו v w
ז z z
[ז׳] zh ʒ
ח kh ħ
ט t tˁ
י y j
ך כ kh x
ךּ כּ k k
ל l l
ם מ m m
ן נ n n
ס s s
ע - ʕ
ף פ f f
ףּ פּ p p
ץ צ ts sˁ
[ץ׳ צ׳] ch tʃ
ק k q
ר r ɾ
שׁ sh ʃ
שׂ s ş
ת t (Ashkenazi: s) θ
תּ t t

Hebrew vowel letter

HEBREW VOWEL SIMPLE TRANSCRIPTION
Israeli Hebrew		 IPA
Tiberian Hebrew
א - ʔ (not pronounced)
ה - h (not pronounced)
ו - ˑ
י - ˑ

Hebrew vowel point

HEBREW VOWEL SIMPLE TRANSCRIPTION
Israeli Hebrew		 IPA
Tiberian Hebrew
ִ i i
ֵ e e
ֶ e ɛ
ַ a a
ָ a (Ashkenazi o) ɔ
ָ o ɔ
ֹ o o
ֻ u u

Hebrew epenthetic vowel point

  • The Hebrew epenthetic vowel is a very short vowel being added to ease pronunciation.
SIMPLE TRANSCRIPTION
Israeli Hebrew		 IPA
Tiberian Hebrew
SHVA NAKH
ְ - -
SHVA NA
ְ -
ə
ְ e
1st syllable if before ע ,א		 ə
ְ e
any syllable if
BOTH after another ְ
AND before ע ,א		 ə
KHATAF
ֱ e ɛ̆
ֲ a ă
ֳ o ɔ̆

--Haldrik 21:51, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

B''aretz??

By this system [that is currently in the "article" page] the word בארץ would be spelled "b''aretz" Mo-Al 14:45, 31 August 2006 (UTC) [ed. Haldrik]

However, the Wikipedia:Hebrew system has no diacritics. It would be spelled with a hyphen, or alternatively if people prefer a single word :
  • Ba-Arets בָּאָרֶץ (including definite article)
  • BaArets
See Item 7 of Simple Transcription above, for rule to represent glottal (or pharyngeal) stop. Compare:
  • L-Olam לְעוֹלָם
  • LeOlam
--Haldrik 16:55, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, I think I did the heading of this wrong. I meant to say that by the Naming conventions (Hebrew) convention, it would be b''aretz. Mo-Al 20:02, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Just kidding around a bit, but why not baárec and leòlam?  :-) Tomertalk 21:34, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
... I'm glad you're kidding. :D --Haldrik 22:28, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
I love a good joke. ^_^ Afula. Ako. Arad. Ariel. Ašdod. Ašklon. Aza. Baka Ǧat. Bat Yam. Beër Šéva. Bėt Ǧala. Bėt Lahía. Bėt Léxem. Bėt Šean. Bėt Šémeš. Bėt Xanun. Bėtar Ilit. Bnė Brak. Cfat. Dėr AlBalax. Dimona. Ėlat. Ǧabalia. Ǧenin. Giv·atáïm. Herclia. Hod HaŠaron. Ir HaKarmel. Kalansáve. Kalkílya. Karmiel. Kfar Saba. Kiryat Ata. Kiryat Byalik. Kiryat Gat. Kiryat Mal·axi. Kiryat Móckin. Kiryat Ono. Kiryat Šmona. Kiryat Xaïm. Kiryat Yam. Lod. Maäle Adumim. Maälot-Taršixa. Migdal HaÉmek. Modiïn-Makabim-Reut. Naharia. Nacrat. Nacrat Ilit. Nes Ciona. Nešer. Ntanya. Ntivot. Ofakim. Or Akiva. Or Yhuda. Pétax Tikva. Raänana. Rafíax. Rahat. Ramat Gan. Ramat HaŠaron. Ram Allah. Ramla. Rišon LCion. Rosh HaÁïn. Rxovot. Šagor. Salfit. Saxnin. Sderot. Šfar·am. Šxem. Taḯbe. Tamra. Tel Aviv-Yafo. Tira. Tirat Karmel. Tulkarm. Tverya. Um AlFaxm. Xadera. Xan Yunis. Xėfa. Xevron. Xolon. Yavne. Yhud-Monoson. Yrixo. Yrušaláïm. - Gilgamesh 12:37, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Transliteration people

Fellow Wikipedians, please don't forget that [language] naming conventions in Wikipedia are always about transliterations, and only optionally take transcription into account. For example, the correct way to transliterate the Japanese word 斬魄刀 is zanpakutō, even though it's actually pronounced zampaktó.

As I said before, transliterations are for people remotely familiar with a language. For those who are not, transcriptions can theoretically be introduced, but it will probably be a disaster because it's very hard to agree on vowel transcription from any language to English (because in English vowels can be pronounced differently in different situations).

Finally, please don't change the main page without discussing first. Thank you.

-- Ynhockey (Talk) 18:21, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

We need two entirely different systems, for two entirely different needs.
  • We need a system for transcription which is easy to use, and easy for links, searches, and casual English context, which uses no diacritics.
  • We need another system which is for transliteration, which is far more complex for technical needs, such as linguistics, which uses special characters, such as diacritics or IPA symbols, which arent suitable for user-friendliness. --Haldrik 19:42, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
The MOST IMPORTANT function of a transcription is predictability. A person must be able to predict exactly how a Hebrew word will be spelled, enter it in a search, and be able to find it. The complexities involved in transliterations, including special Unicode characters make this near impossible. A transcription must be as obvious and as simple as possible. --Haldrik 19:51, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Simple = Good --Haldrik 19:57, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
You are incorrect, transliterations don't have to use special unicode characters. The system we have right now on the page is a perfectly viable system of transliteration, and does not use any unicode characters. And you're right, a person must be able to predict exactly how a Hebrew word will be spelled. By that logic, why do you still support KH for Het? Kholon? Khaim Ramon? Tfilat Shakharit? Who is going to predict that? It's completely non-standard. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 20:06, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
But it isnt even a "transliteration". It doesnt distinguish between the letters "He" and "Khet", nor "Kuf" and "Kaf", nor "Samekh" and "Sin", nor "Tav" and "Tet", nor "Vav" and "Vet". It isnt by any stretch of the imagination a "transliteration". It's just a transcription with an irrational fixation on the letter Khet. Nothing more. --Haldrik 20:28, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
You must also remember that the English Wikipedia is made for English speakers and not Hebrew speakers. That means that the person searching is not expected to speak Hebrew (but they are expected to have a basic understanding of the Hebrew alphabet, if they're looking for esoteric Hebrew-language topics which won't interest most, such as Herzliya), therefore they will not be expected to understand Israeli Hebrew pronunciation anyway. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 20:10, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
"English Wikipedia is made for English speakers and not Hebrew speakers." Which is why it MUST be Khet (and not Het). At least by pronouncing the "kh" of Khet, the English speaker isnt wrong. By contrast Het causes error. --Haldrik 20:30, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
To sum up the earlier discussion about the letter, ehm, ח – The conclusion, I believe, was that h is unfortunately the best option, for the reason that ch represents an entirely different English sound, and that kh is pretty ugly and that (maybe for that reason) it is really never used for ח elsewhere ("ch" usually is...). "H" does have some precedent. For example - "Haim," "Noah," "Hebron," "Hallah bread," etc. --Eliyak T·C 04:47, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Nothing is uglier than Chanukkah. Nothing. --Haldrik 12:31, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
By the way, I see no reason for a user to be capable of reconstructing the original spelling, since the actual Hebrew word is always provided in the introduction to the relevant article. This policy, as I understand it, has three uses:
  1. When a Hebrew word must be mentioned in the context of an article (certainly, a plain English character set is desired)
  2. In the introduction of various articles where the title comes from a Hebrew word or name, to show even the casual English user what the original word is/was (an exact tranliteration might also be provided, for the liguistic expert).
  3. When transliterating Hebrew passages for the casual and more advanced user.
--Eliyak T·C 04:59, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
If I understand you correctly I agree with your points. The Hebrew-to-English transcription doesnt need to allow "reversability" to reconstruct the Hebrew letters (it simply needs to give a sense of what the Hebrew sounds like). 1. Yes, an article must mention the Hebrew word in a plain character set. 2. The intro must also include the word's spelling in the Hebrew alphabet (usually parenthetically). A "reversable" transliteration for linguistic use can also be provided at that time. 3. A transcription for the casual reader and a transliteration for the advanced. --Haldrik 12:40, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Let us also not forget that there are all sorts of English-speaking interests in Hebrew transliterations that have zero to do with how Ashkenazi Israelis or Chabad New Yorkers talk. There are several things that should be considered in Hebrew naming.

  1. How does the name already traditionally exist in English? Many of the most common transcriptions come straight from the Christian King James Version of the Bible—e.g. Jerusalem, Beersheba, Tiberias, Nazareth, Hebron, Shechem, Bethlehem, Jericho, Shiloh, Bethel—and are common in English from that source rather than modern Israeli or Jewish settlement sources. Additionally, the name Acre is common in English and French since the Crusades.
  2. What do the English publications of the State of Israel and the local municipalities use (websites, etc.) use? On the websites alone, I see Haifa (not Khefa), Petah Tikva (not Petakh Tikva), Nazareth Illit (not Natsrat Illit), Holon (not Kholon), Qalansawe (not Kalansave), Safed (not Tsfat or Tsfas), Rehovot (not Rkhovot), Rishon LeZion (not Rishon LTsiyon), etc.
  3. For more obscure places, the central government of Israel has a list of official spellings for names.
  4. There are still many in Israel who live in Arabic-language-majority places like Tarshiha and Umm al-Fahm, and they do not pronounce their cities Tarshikha or Um al-Fakhm. Not to mention many other local traditions, such as those of Yemenite Jewish immigrants and indigenous Mizrahi Jewish and Samaritan populations.
  5. Using conservative transliterations is less likely to spark arguments that the names aren't inclusive to all the major interests for which people would want to read about it. To bottleneck to a single know-nothing transliteration is exclusivist, anti-intellectual and represents a narrow POV that disregards many other valid interests of study. Encyclopedias are meant to make people smarter, not dumber.

All transcriptions for linguistic, official, local and traditional English purposes should be included. This region of the world is not simple, and cannot be simple, so we shouldn't stoop to pretend that encyclopedic information about it should be simple, because then it would be fictitious. - Gilgamesh 11:54, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

To imply that having no transliteration standard is better than having one, would of course be facetious.
1. Articles can supply traditional English names like "Jerusalem" alongside Israel's official names like "Yerushalayim" (or preferrably Yrushalayim!) with the formula of "also known as".
2. The current anarchy of spellings on the Israeli map is a problem that causes Israelis much frustration, which they are currently trying to solve. Israelis find it unacceptable that "Petaẖ Tiqwa" is spelled one place but "Petach Tikva" an other. Or that "Yerushalayim" reflects the Hebrew pronunciation, but "Rishon LeZion" reflects a non-Hebrew pronunciation. Etc. The absence of an authorative transliteration system is a serious problem. (And unfortunately, the authoritative Academy of the Hebrew Language has previously recommended typographically unusuable (and phonetically prescriptive rather than descriptive) systems, which has exacerbated the problem.
3. The "official spellings" for "obscure places" is likewise unusuable because of the diacritics.
4. Placenames that are relevant to Arabic history and culture can be included with "also known as".
5. There is no one conservative transliteration system: there are many. These are complicated by many sacred-cow words that belong to conflicting systems.
Of course an article can mention all relevant and notable forms of a name, but Wikipedia requires a typographically usuable, consistent, phonetic transcription standard. --Haldrik 12:31, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
"The current anarchy of spellings on the Israeli map is a problem that causes Israelis much frustration, which they are currently trying to solve" - Haldrik, this is exactly the problem with your argument. We are not here to solve this problem. It is not our goal, and this is well-outlined in WP:NOR, which is an official policy on Wikipedia so you can't do anything here that contradicts it. Our goal is to provide a solution based on existing and accepted transliteration.
Also, funny you should mention Qalansawe somewhere on this page - it's not even a Hebrew name. And, not sure if you know this, but the Arabic language doesn't have a V sound, so the letter WAW is always a W in Arabic.
-- Ynhockey (Talk) 11:13, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Using an "h" for Khet is not phonetic. A diacritic "h-with-line-below" is unusable and an "h" is wrong. And "kh" looks cool! --Haldrik 13:06, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

The purpose of the easy-to-use transcription in plain English characters is to give a general idea of what the Hebrew word sounds like. --Haldrik 13:18, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Fine, provide one. Just keep the other transliterations intact. - Gilgamesh 14:58, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Back to 2. It really is pleasant to see the forms - Khefa, Petakh Tikva, Natsrat Ilit, Kholon, Kalansave, Tsfat, Rkhovot, Rishon LTsiyon, etc - whose transliterations actually resemble the way they sound. --Haldrik 13:51, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't dispute that "kh" may look cool. But this isn't about what's cool. It's about what's real in English and also what's genuinely academic. FYI, in linguistic circles it is more common to use h-with-dot-below for ḥêṯ. Besides that, /χ/ is only the most common articulation for the sound in Israel. The pharyngeal articulation /ħ/ is rare, but as far as I understand it is still considered conservatively correct, and is still used in certain Standard Hebrew audio tutorials I have encountered in American bookstores. This may sound pedantic, but it's accurate—it's better to stick to ḥ until everyone abandons it. - Gilgamesh 14:58, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
"H-with-dot-below": Yes but "h-with-line-below" is the Academy's recommendation (perhaps because a line is clearer on a trafic sign than a splash of mud?). --Haldrik 15:48, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes, for Modern Israeli Hebrew. For any name that's older than 100 years, semiticist usage dictates ḥ. It should be also noted that /h/ is used consistently for its references in both the King James Version of the Old Testament and in the Jewish Publication Society's English translation of the Tanakh, except occasionally when the phoneme was Second Temple Period kheth (which coexisted with ḥeth) and transcribed as such in the Septuagint, and is thus written /ch/, e.g. Jericho, in English. Not everyone accepts secular Israeli conventions. - Gilgamesh 03:56, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
"Not everyone accepts secular Israeli conventions." But "kh" should be used when referring to Israeli Hebrew. --Haldrik 20:10, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, when /kh/ becomes the common convention, let us know. Until then, I still typically see "Petah Tikva", "Holon", "Haifa", "Hebron", "Yitzhak", etc. - Gilgamesh 05:54, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
The non-English /kh/ is common enough. The English /ch/ and /h/ already have English sounds. The Academy of Hebrew Language explicitly requires the unusable h-with-line-below making it clear that the standard English h is not suitable for transcription. Unfortunately, mapmakers freely disregard the sometimes unusuable recommendations of the Academy, and the anarchy of spellings on a typical Israeli map reflects the absence of any transcription system. (Or rather too many transcription systems). The situation of Israeli maps, is not the situation we want for English Wikipedia. --Haldrik 13:53, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Who's "we"? - Gilgamesh 15:35, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
? *smirk*. So, by your objection, you're saying you want Wikipedia to have no transcription standard, just like Israeli maps have no transcription standard? --Haldrik 19:13, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm saying we should use established precedent rather than be ideosyncratic. I used to be a lot more ideosyncratic, and it kept getting me in trouble. Besides, it's not simply a matter of phonetics, or even of phonemes, but also of morphemes. א does not inflect the same way ע does. ח does not inflect the same way כ does. ק does not inflect the same way כּ does. ב does not inflect the same way ו does. The fact that Israeli ט and ת (as well as ס and שׂ) are inflected the same way today is the only reason why I would spell them the same way. And do not forget that the Arab naming conventions and Israeli Arab realizations of Hebrew are not a historical distinction—there is still a very large bilingual Arab and Druze population in Israel. Hell, even Qalqilyah is bilingual. The standards of transliteration should be conservative for the very reason that Ashkenazi Israelis aren't the only people in the world (or even in Israel) who use Hebrew in some way—and don't forget the code switching of religious Jews of Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Babylonian, Yemenite, etc. extraction. Do not forget that a slight majority of Israel's population today are Mizrahi Jews whose intercommunal speech was forcibly standardized to what the Ashkenazi Israelis desired, and their own dialects are by no means forgotten or completely fallen out of use. - Gilgamesh 03:26, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
"We should use established precedent". Rather, kh for Khet is an established precedent: one of three precedents. (An example of something that really is ideosyncratic would be hh for Khet.) "ק does not inflect the same way כּ does. ... The fact that Israeli ט and ת (as well as ס and שׂ) are inflected the same way today is the only reason why I would spell them the same way". The official Easy Transcription of the Academy of the Hebrew Language does spell these letters the same way. And, it ignores Alef and Ayin, inflected or not. "Israeli Arab realizations of Hebrew". The English alphabet simply cant handle all the sounds in Arabized or Temani Hebrew without resorting to diacritics. It's a fool's errand. With half-asked and confusing results. Wherever it is appropriate to transcribe the many phonemes closely, the IPA works best. The English alphabet doesnt. "Ashkenazi Israelis aren't the only people in the world, or even in Israel". Again. It isnt possible for the English alphabet to represent all of the traditional Tiberian sounds without resorting to the IPA or diacritics. English cant represent Tiberian (or Temani, Mizrakhi, or Arabized) Hebrew. English can represent Standard Hebrew.
אמן. תומראמור לי 03:05, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
Moving to left
No, KH for Het is not an established precedent. If it is, please show at least one academic or other reputable source that uses it consistently. The only place I know of so far has been the Mapa mapping company, but its spelling of Israeli place names is inconsistent at best and does not gain widespread attention. There is also nothing to prove that the people at Mapa are well-familiar with academic transliteration. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 11:01, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
"Please show at least one academic or other reputable source that uses it consistently." To be fair, no transcription system is used consistently. Institutions that attempt to be consistent default to the Academy of the Hebrew Language, but whose diacritic h-with-line-below is a problem. English "academic" transcriptions tend to use the Americanist phonetic diacritics (such as s-with-caron for sh) instead of the International Phonetic Alphabet, but again, diacritics arent acceptable for common use in English Wikipedia. When academia doesnt use diacritics it tends to be inconsistent. Transcription tables often list Khet as transcribed in any of three ways: ch, kh, or h. Most traditional religious contexts use "ch" for both Khaf and Khet, explicitly equating the two letters with the same transcription (hence Chaim and Chanukkah, Lech Lecha, Chanoch, and so on) following the German spelling. However this German spelling "ch" is problematic in English, where these letters represent the affricative in "chips". Where kh for Khet does occur, it is usually the English equivalent of Germanized ch, for a traditional context: for example, to represent European Hebrew names in a consistent manner Jewishgen.org (note the name Khanokh). I wish we could just use the recommendation of the Academy of the Hebrew Language, plain and simple, but its insistence on the diacritic h-with-line-below is a painful thorn that makes its recommendation difficult to implement. --Haldrik 15:36, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
Note, when Arabic transcribes Hebrew, it uses its non-pharyngeal letter Kha (خ) for both Khet and Khaf. (Compare Arabic Wikipedia.) Just like Sin and Samekh sound the same and are transcribed with the same letter, Khet and Khaf sound the same and are spelled with the same letter. --Haldrik 16:56, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

What's real: "kh" is genuinely academic to describe the Khaf sound. Khet has the same sound, in the by-far most-common accent in Israel. The "kh" is also more suitable to represent the pharyngeal sound /ħ/ than "h" is. The English letter "h" is absolutely not pharyngeal, whereas "kh" is absolutely not English, and so can just as easily represent a uvular or a pharyngeal. There is nothing stopping Hebrew speakers from pronouncing "kh" as a pharyngeal. Oppositely, there is everything stopping non-Hebrew speakers from pronouncing "h" as a pharyngeal. Non-speakers will say a normal English glottal "h". At least with "kh" a non-Hebrew speaker will generalize the "kh" as a uvular, which is authentic, AND be aware that pharyngeal may be possilbe too. The digraph "kh" does exist among the widely accepted transliterations for Khet, as the editor Ruakh, here on this project page, demonstrates. And "kh" is cool. --Haldrik 15:48, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, since you're dragging my (user)name into this — I also prefer kh for both khaf and khet, except that it wouldn't bother me if word-initial khet (and word-initial khaf, in theory, though that doesn't occur in isolated words) were h in article names, by analogy with Hanukkah, Haim, Ham, Haifa, Haroset, and myriad other loanwords with standard English spellings. (Though for what it's worth, the OED gives Chanukah, Chanukkah as the principal spellings.) Ruakh 00:02, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Clarification of the terms transliteration, transcription, and naming convention

To avoid confusion, I'd ask that people use something resembling the following terminology:

  • A transliteration mindlessly maps Hebrew writing to English. For example, a transliteration scheme would (presumably) always put h for hei, y for yud, etc., even when those letters are silent — except that it might treat hei with mapik and yud with dagesh as separate letters and write them distinctly somehow.
  • A transcription represents Hebrew pronunciations in phonetic symbols. This can mean an IPA transcription, or simply a standard way of representing Hebrew pronunciations using English letters and punctuation. For example, a transcription of the most common form of Israeli Hebrew would not distinguish between khaf and khet, or between taf with and without a dagesh, but a transcription of a different dialect might.
  • A naming convention determines how articles on Hebrew topics should be titled, and by extension, how articles should link to one another. A naming convention might be based primarily on transliteration of Hebrew words (using either ktiv male or ktiv khaser), or on transcription of Hebrew words (using some chosen form of spoken Hebrew, or a mixture of chosen forms), or on some mixture of the two, or (I suppose) on something else entirely.

Thanks in advance!

Ruakh 15:54, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

If the purpose of this discussion is to focus on precise terminology, it should be noted that the term "Hebrew" designates both a language and a script, but the term "English" does not. The English language is written using the "Latin" script (often called "Roman" to avoid confusion between the script and the Latin language). Transliteration is the use of a sequence of characters in one script to represent a sequence of characters in another. The conversion needs to be reversible, and the price normally paid for that is the loss of phonemic precision. Transcription represents the way something is pronounced, and the script normally used for writing the source language is largely irrelevant to that process. If the script used for writing the target language doesn't have native characters that directly correspond to all of the phonetic elements of the source language, some form of diacritical embellishment may be unavoidable. The International Phonetic Alphabet was devised to provide a broadly applicable repertoire of characters extending the Latin alphabet for precisely that purpose, although due to the presumed lack of the present audience's familiarity with it, it may not suit their immediate need. --futhark 17:36, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes, thanks for those clarifications; I think you explained things much better than I did. (Personally, I really don't mind if people use the terms somewhat loosely, as long as we're all on the same general page.) Regarding your statement that "[...] the term 'Hebrew' designates both a language and a script, but the term 'English' does not": that's technically true, but I don't think any confusion can result here from speaking of "the English alphabet", "English letters", "English characters", etc. We would do well to keep in mind that the Hebrew alphabet is not just used for Hebrew. (Incidentally, I'm not sure if "Hebrew script" includes vowel signs, the geresh and gershayim, Biblical punctuation, modern punctuation, the strong/geminating dagesh, the weak dagesh, the mapik, the vertical-bar-thing that indicates stress, and/or other cantillation marks.) Ruakh 18:39, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Vowels and consonants are the primary constrastive elements of a spoken language. The set of graphic elements used to represent them forms the corresponding script. (A script that is shared by several languages may, however, not bear the name of any of them.) Even if the Hebrew vowel signs only appear in a limited number of orthographic contexts, they still belong to the Hebrew script. Punctuation marks indicate the structure of words and sentences, but have no independent phonetic properties. They are therefore adjunct, rather than primary elements of a script. They can be discounted, almost by definition, in any discussion of transliteration. The status of other marks can be argued in either direction, and particular care may be needed to recognize marks that have multiple functions. (The geresh, for example, can both be a true punctuation mark and interact phonetically with an adjacent letter.) An element in a script may also have differing functions in the various languages written with that script. --futhark 20:15, 1 September 2006 (UTC)


Need for a standard

The need for a standard transcription system for Hebrew is being complicated by competing dialects, mainly Israeli Hebrew versus Askhenazi Hebrew. I propose the article page offers two separate transcription systems: one for each dialect. That way we can discuss which transcription system most usefully describes a particular dialect. Then we can discuss whether to use Israeli or Ashkenazi for a particular article, as a separate problem. --Haldrik 21:29, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree. We should keep in mind, though, that some articles shouldn't use either; for example, Joseph (Hebrew Bible) is probably already well-named, even though it reflects neither Israeli nor Ashkenazi pronunciations of יוֹסֵף. Ruakh 21:53, 13 September 2006 (UTC)


I've updated the article page with two separate tables, one for the Israeli and one for the Ashkenazi. If anyone has difficulty with regard to the tables please comment. We might have to add another column for those who want Americanist phonetic diacritics on the letters (like š and ḥ) for consideration - I feel diacritics arent a good idea for naming conventions, but can be added as fyi for articles since we're discussing standards anyway. --Haldrik 23:35, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Template for Hebrew names/words

Here's something different to argue about for a change:

I've just created {{Hebrew Name}}, and two adjusted versions, {{Hebrew Name 1}} and {{Hebrew Name 2}} so that Hebrew names and their transliterations can be entered easily, neatly, and in a way which won't draw attention away from the article. I've been making these types of edits without the template in the past.

For examples, see Amalek (HN) and Potiphar (HN2). (Hebrew Name 1 would be used when no distinction between Modern Hebrew and Tiberian is necessary).

For an example of what I'm trying to fix, see Josiah. --Eliyak T·C 17:19, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Very nice. :-)
I think it might be helpful if the templates accepted named parameters, though, as {{cite}} does, rather than ordered parameters.
Ruakh 07:05, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
K, I'm on it. --Eliyak T·C 02:55, 1 October 2006 (UTC)


HMMMM.... I wonder... Does this template explain why my name is spelled WRONG on the page (Yonasson Gershom) that somebody created about me in Oct 2005 -- and which I only just today became aware of because of that mispelling? My first name is spelled Yonassan -- ending in AN, not ON. Or was this maybe an error on the part of the page's creator? Either way, exceptions will have to be made for cases like this. If you search for the correct spelling Yonassan Gershom as on my books, then I do not exist here... Rooster613 15:50, 3 December 2006 (UTC)Rooster613

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