From: medawar@prism.poly.edu (Bassem Medawar)
Subject: CAT v.1 (Classical Arabic Transliteration)
Organization: Polytechnic University, New York
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 93 08:50:47 GMT

                  Classical Arabic Transliteration (CAT)

                       vesrion 1.0 (Dec 11, 1993)

by Bassem Medawar


Purpose of CAT:
The purpose of CAT is to allow the representation of classical
Arabic characters in ASCII form for computer textual exchange.  
Most of CAT rules are borrowed from Alephleb [see credits at the end].
It may later be modified by consensus of the users.

Why not use Alephleb?  Since Alephleb was announced, few people have
chosen to ignore its usefulness and argue instead the professed political
views of two of its authors.  CAT is therefore intended to divorce the
politically oriented elements of Alephleb from its classical Arabic
proposed transliteration subset of rules.

CAT is intended as a stop gap measure until graphic display technology of
Arabic characters becomes widespread enough on the majority of computer screens
around the world.  No political statement what so ever is intended with CAT.
Please read none.

If you are interested in helping in the development of Arabic character
display and editing software for public use, you may want to subscribe to 
the reader list.  To subscribe, send email to alex@dt.uh.edu.


The proposed mapping for the classical Arabic alphabet follows:

name      represented by      e.g.
~~~~      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~      ~~~
hamzah        '               'amal (hope)
aleph         aa              baasim (smily)
maddah        aaa             aaamaal (expectations)
ba            b               bayt (house)
ta            t               torbah (soil)
tha           c^ or th        thawra (revolution)
jim           j               jamal (camal)
Ha            h, or H         Himaar (donkey)
kha           k, or K or kh   khaymah (tent)
dal           d               daliil (guide)
zhaal         z^ or zh        zhi'b (wolf)
rah           r               ra's (head)
zayn          z               zahrah (rose)
sin           s               sama' (sky)
shiin         s^ or sh        shams (sun)
Saad          s, or S         Sibaa (youth)
Daad          d, or D         Damiir (conscience)
Tah           t, or T         Tayr (bird)
Zah           z, or Z         Zolm (oppression)
@ayn          @               @ayn (eye)
ghayn         g^ or gh        ghaym (clouds)
fa            f               fard (individual)
qaaf          q               qamar (moon)
kaaf          k               kalb (dog)
laam          l               laylah (night)
miim          m               marj (field)
nuun          n               nahr (river)
ha            h               hawa' (air)
waw           w               wazir (minister)
ye            y or ii         yasmiin (jasmin)


Few rules supplement the mapping:

- Accents are placed after the characters they modify,

	fattHah		a
	kassrah		i
	Dammah		o

- Shaddah is represented by repeating the character it modifies.

- Using the uppercase, letter/carret, letter/comma, form of a character is 
  preferred over the letter/letter alternate form to prevent ambiguity.  In 
  most cases however, the context could help disambiguate.  Be aware though 
  that you can remove the ambiguity completely.  For example using k, or K is 
  preferred over using kh but all are valid representations of the same letter.

- Capitalizing a letter at the begining of a sentence is discouraged as it
  may create ambiguity.

- Proper names are exceptions to these rules. They may be written in whatever 
  spelling people are already used to.

- When reading CAT transliterated text, you may find it easier to read
  the text aloud.  This involves the auditory memory in addition to the visual
  memory in the word recognition process.


Following are some anticipated frequently asked questions:

- What does the carret and the comma form of a character come from?

  See Alephleb for details.


- Where can I get the most recent version of this proposal?
- Where can I get Alephleb v.1?

  By anonymous ftp from borg.poly.edu (128.238.10.106) in the directory:
  /pub/reader/text/translit



Credits:

Alephleb v.1 is a standard proposed by Bassem Medawar, Naji Mouawad, and
Elie Wardini.

Newsgroups: soc.culture.lebanon