Romanization of Arabic

Uncommon card · No. 114917

The romanization of Arabic is the systematic rendering of written and spoken Arabic in the Latin script. Romanized Arabic is used for various purposes, among them transcription of names and titles, cataloging Arabic language works, language education when used instead of or alongside the Arabic script, and representation of the language in scientific publications by linguists. These formal systems, which often make use of diacritics and non-standard Latin characters, are used in academic settings for the benefit of non-speakers, contrasting with informal means of written communication used by speakers such as the Latin-based Arabic chat alphabet. Arabic transcription methods can be divided into ad hoc and systematic types. Ad hoc transcription is common in everyday uses such as loanwords and names of people and places, as well as electronic communication in Arabic using Latin script. It does not use a fixed system, borrowing inconsistent orthographic rules from the host language (e.g. representing...

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