Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Hebrew)/Archive 3

message: The following articles discuss Hebrew phonology, transliteration and transcription:
* Wikipedia:Hebrew
* Romanization of Hebrew
* Hebrew alphabet#Name and transliteration
* Nikud
* Hebrew phonology
* Hebrew language#Romanization
* Artscroll transliteration
See also :Category:Hebrew language for related topics and varieties of Hebrew.
jnothman talk 03:05, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Important related articles 

message: 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)
thread_title: Tsadi: ts for צ

message: "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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  U for Shuruk 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Exceptions 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: Thanks for calling my religion "Medieval Judaism". You're a real Tzadik. - CrazyRussian talk/email 01:29, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: Unfortunately, I am all too used to having my religion denigrated. Anyway... - CrazyRussian talk/email 04:27, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Yiddish)]]

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title: Tsere male

message: 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)
thread_title:  Transcription (not of names) 

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

message: *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  	                                                        	
ְ        	-                                                       	
ְ        	e  1st syllable if before ע ,א                          	
ְ        	e  any syllable if  BOTH after another ְ  AND before ע ,א	
KHATAF   	                                                        	
ֱ        	e                                                       	
ֲ        	a                                                       	
ֳ        	o                                                       	
--Haldrik 21:51, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Hebrew epenthetic vowel point

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title: Clarification of the terms ''transliteration'', ''transcription'', and ''naming convention'' 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title: Need for a standard