THE NEW HEBREW-ROMAN BILLATERAL SYSTEM

[Guest]

After tons of thinking I managed to devise a system to write hebrew in roman alphabet, the only difference between the new system and the normal one is that it is "billateral" thus allowing hebrew to be rewritten perfectly from the latinized script.

= The preface is long, if you want to get directly to the system acroll down directly to it, I've marked it.

The problem of rewriting hebrew from latin script does not exist for, naturally, for hebrew speakers as they already know how the words are spelled in hebrew, it doesn't exist for european language speakers that do not wish to know how hebrew is actually written - both of those groups may use the regular-not-billateral form of transcript, which I will represnt at the end of this better-called-article-than-message message.

If both of those large groups do not require the new system, the billateral one, who does!?

Well, the small community of hebrew learners and hebrew teachers over the internet DO! Why?

Well, and try to understand this: Hebrew, in it's written form uses a complex system of dots and lines, over, below and inside letters to symbolyze about as half of it's vowels, the other half is symbolized by a not so regular usage of letters as vowels (as in indo-european languages). This dots & lines system of symbolizing vowels is quite a slower to hebrew writing, and after learning to read, children are encouraged to drop it and not use it anymore. The system is only used once again in places where foreign or scientific names are of concern and/or when a sentence will otherwise remain having ambiguity.

Because the dots & lines system isn't used, it is most impossible to use it on the computer, where even totally-hebrew computers have no means of displaying or creating those icons (not that they're complicated to draw, they're simple lines and dots, but becuase they are not necessary).

This represents a problem to begginers, they cannot see vowels in the words! Imagine seeing this sentence without vowels ("mgn sng ths sntnc wtht vwls" - That's why indo-european languages NEED vowels).
Hebrew does not require all of the vowels, but some, to be written, but the begginer is never sure how to read a word!

So (and here finaly comes my system thingie), I devised this system to be able to show which vowels are actually written and which are not written, but still, show them all, and phonetically!

Furthermore, hebrew, as many other languages do, has some consonants that have the same exact sound! And some that have a couple of sounds! even a letter that can be a consonant or a couple of vowels! What about silent letters that can be also vowels?
This system leaves nothing to have ambiguity.

Okey okey, to the system...

==============The System itself======================
* My system uses a form of phonetic script that is a mixture of spanish and german:

1) Vowels, all pure, as in german or spanish:
a,e,i,o,u
The capital letter "Y" is concidered as the vowel "i" and is used when we must use a capital "i" letter but can't because it looks exactly the same as the lowercase "L".

2) Consonants:
b = "hard" b, as in "ball"
bh = "soft" b, as the letter "v" in video
c = not used alone.
ch = sounds like the the german "ch" as in "doch"
d = as in "door"
f = not used, use "ph" instead
g = always as in "go" or "get" never as in "judge" or "gem"
h = only used in combination with b,p,k,c
j = never used
k = sounds as in the word "kill" never ommited as in "know" or "knife"
kh = sounds exactly like "ch", only used to represent another letter
l = as in "loop"
m = as in "mother"
n = as in "no"
p = as in "pirate"
ph = "soft" p as the letter "f"
q = as k exactly... it never causes ommition of a following "u"
r = the r sounds as in german, not as in english or spanish!
s = as in "spike"
ss = sounds exactly like s, only represents another letter.
sh = as in "shoot" or "shalom"
t = as in "tea" never as in "thanks" "thin" or "through"
tt = sounds exactly like t, only represents another letter.
v = as in "valentine" never as in the german "volk" or spanish "vida"
w = not used
x = not used
z = as in "zoo"

Hebrew is consisted of 22 square shaped letters and is written from right to left.

The alphabet, or in hebrew the "alephbet", from right to left:

א ב ג ד ה ו ז ח ט י כ ל מ נ ס ע פ צ ק ר ש ת

I will describe each letter, its sound, its various usages and its romanized form in my sytem:

א
Alef
symbol: 1
sound: This letter is sometimes silent and somtimes may symbolize the vowels "a", "e" or even "o".

ב
Bet
sounds: b -or- bh
(depending of it having a dot in the middle or not, the dot in the middle is part of the dots & lines system and it is thus ommited form the written language).

ג
Gimel
sound: g

ד
Daled
sound: d

ה
Ey (or hey)
symbol: 2
sound: This letter is sometimes silent and somtimes may symbolize the vowels "a" or "e".

ן
Vav
sounds: u, o or v
(This letter can be used both as a consonant (v) or as a vowel (u or o)).

ז
zain
sound: z

ח
Chet
sound: ch

ט
Tet
sound: tt

י
Yud
sound: i

כ
Khaf
sound: kh or k
(depending of it having a dot in the middle or not, the dot in the middle is part of the dots & lines system and it is thus ommited form the written language).

ל
Lamed
sound: l

מ
Mem
Sound: m

נ
Nun
Sound: n

ס
Samech
Sound: s

ע
Ain
Symbol: 3
Sound: This letter is sometimes silent and somtimes may symbolize the vowel "a".

פ
Pey
Sounds: p or ph (f)
(depending of it having a dot in the middle or not, the dot in the middle is part of the dots & lines system and it is thus ommited form the written language)

צ
Tsadik
Sound: ts

ק
Quf
Sound: q

ר
Resh
Sound: r

ש
Shin
Sounds: sh or ss
(depending of it having a dot in the upper left corner or not, the dot is part of the dots & lines system and it is thus ommited form the written language)

ת
Taf
Sound: t





Rules of the system:
* Transcript is written and read from left to right.
1. There will be no capitalization of letters whatsoever on begginings of phrases or names.
2. Vowels are written uppercase when that vowel is written in hebrew as a letter, when the vowel is read but not written in non-dost-&-lines-everyday hebrew it remains lowercase.
3. The uppercase i is actually Y.
4. When the letters marked as 1, 2 or 3 occur in hebrew the corresponding number must be written where it belongs. If the letter represents a vowel sound, that sound's symbol will follow, and since it is written, the symbol will be thus uppercase.
5. When a silent 1, 2 or 3 occurs and is followed by i, o or u that is representd in hebrew by the letters "yud" or "vav" (and thus, are written) the uppercase vowel sound following the number will be separated from it by a separation line. (Like this: 1|E).
6. In places where in hebrew a "shva" occurs (the gutural stop of a consonant before a vowel, as if the word finishes after that consonant) the separating symbol ' will come into play.
7. No diphtongs, the combination "yud+yud" is written: "aYY"

Examples:
שלום
hello
shalOm
sound: shalom

אני
I (am)
1AnY
sound: ani

אנציקלופדיה
Encyclopedia
1EntsYklOpedY2A
sound: entsiklopedia

צפרדע
Frog
tspharde3A
sound: tsfardea

=============END OF SYSTEM========================

Now to the regular, not billateral system:
Vowels: a,e,i,o,u
* For the sake of beauty: i in the end of a word will become y.

Consonants: b,ch,d,f,g,k,l,m,n,p,r,s,sh,t,ts,v,z (same as above).

1. Written and read from left to right.
2. In places where in hebrew a "shva" occurs (the gutural stop of a consonant before a vowel, as if the word finishes after that consonant) the separating symbol ' will come into play.
3. No diphtongs.
4. This system is phonetic direct form of what you hear.

Examples:

שלום
hello
Shalom

אני
I (am)
Ani

אנציקלופדיה
Encyclopedia
Entsiklopedia

צפרדע
Frog
Tsfardea

===================END==========================

[Lynch]

The guest up there is me of course, Lynch.
Who else writes so much to say so little?
Sorry for that, it seems that after a while the forum logs you out automatically, and it took me over a hour to write that.

I hope you don't consider that flooding.

[ekalin]

Oh, romanization systems... why does everybody has to invent their own?

I'm not saying your work is useless; it certainly does have its advantages. However, remember that the United Nations have a recommendation for the romanization of several non-latin scripts, Hebrew included. Find it here.

[Lynch]

Hey hey hey... Your recomendation of that site is exactly what made me create this system.
I went there a few days ago and discovered that their system is not reversable back to hebrew!!!

That's why I invented it... the UN sucks hard, I'm sorry.

[Saaropean]

The question, I think, is the following: Do we want such a complicated bilateral system?

What you created is very logical and can be used in either direction. It looks terrible, though.
Don't take it personal, but I don't like reading texts with uppercase letters in the middle of a word (like in Klingon) or numbers carrying some orthographic or phonetic meaning (like in the kind of Pinyin where you write the tone numbers).

Developping a logical and more or less phonetic transliteration system is very difficult. That's because the Latin alphabet has its 26 letters (of which only 5 or 6 are usually vowels) with some widely understood conventions like "N" must sound like /n/ or "I" should sound like /i/.

Many languages have more vowels than just AEIOU; English, French and German are well-known examples.
That's why they use lots of diacritics and/or a complicated spelling system.

Greek is an example for the difficulty of developping a bilateral system: When reading a word written in Greek letters, there is (almost) no doubt about its pronunciation. But if you here someone pronouncing the imaginary word /elis/ and you have no idea what it's supposed to mean, you have several possible ways of spelling it:
- The /e/ sound could be either an epsilon or alpha-iota.
- The /l/ sound is definitely one or two lambdas.
- The /s/ sound must be a sigma. You use another kind of lowercase sigma at the end of a word, but that's not a problem here.
- The most difficult case is the /i/: it can be written iota (as in the geographia), eta (as the E in Homer), ypsilon (as in Cyprus), epsilon-iota (as in seismic) or omicron-iota (as in oikonomia = economy).

In my opinion, bilateral systems such as the one you proposed or the "traditional" Greek transliteration (with O for omicron, O-macron for omega, EI for epsilon-iota, OU for omicron-ypsilon etc.) are too complicated (because of the limitations the Latin alphabet represents), and thus an unnecessary step for learners.

When learning a foreign language, one of the first things you have to cope with is the writing system.
By the way: I believe most languages are not suited for the Latin alphabet. The structure of the Hebrew language allows us to ommit vowels (which is done in the Hebrew alphabet), while the structure of English does not allow this (and it's not done there). /ç/ and /x/ are two very different phonemes, but it is justified to write both the same way in German (e.g. the plural of Loch /lox/ is Löcher /løça/, which also shows how /o/ and /ø/ are related in this language). It is also justified to write Chinese in Chinese characters rather than Pinyin (which I do consider justified to learn mere pronunciation), because a syllable with the same phonemes (incl. tones) can have many different meanings.

If I were radical ("anti-traditional") enough, I would want to abolish the Latin alphabets.
Maybe we should create a new alphabet that is quite phonetic and has enough letters to prevent a high number of diacritics (like in Czech) or 2/3-letter combinations pronounced as one (like in French). Of course that doesn't work perfectly, since the full IPA range is just too big, and we would still have ambiguities, such as the difference between vowel pronunciations due to "accents".

[Lynch]

That's all true and logic.
But try to learn how to read hebrew through the internet.
Impossible.

[Poliglot]

First of all, congratulations for your extraordinary work and sorry for my ignorance about the Hebrew language/script, though this article of yours has made me curious about it and incited me to learn it.

I totally agree with Saaropean. What is needed for making things easier in learning the language, would be a phonetic transcription as in Chinese (Pinyin). Again, for being able to type it with the computer, the Chinese language is also an example, that is, using phonetics to get to the icons/ideograms. Finally, Lynch, explain a bit what you mean saying

But try to learn how to read hebrew through the internet.
Impossible.

Haven't you got the corresponding fonts in Hebrew for working with the computer?

Thanks. Poliglot.

[Poliglot]

Sorry, Lynch, but I forgot one last question.

Did you get inspired by the romanization system for the Klingon language (invented by Marc Okrand, for use in some of the Star Trek movies) when divising your system? They also combine uppercase and lowercase letters in one word. For example, HolQeD, the Klingon Language Institute's scholarly journal (http://www.kli.org/study/HolQeD.html).

Thanks again. Poliglot.

[ekalin]

Well, I basically agree with what Saaropean said. And I also agree that the UN conventions suck for most (or all) of the languages. However, the problem is when each person uses his personal transliterating scheme, as happens in greek mailing lists, for example. It surely can be understood, but it is a mess. I believe it is better if everybody uses the same scheme (even if it sucks), than if everybody uses his own...

[Lynch]

Hey Poliglot.
I don't know if you read all of my "article" but I explained that over computers the hebrew fonts are not capable of containing of all the small dots & lines that are used in hebrew to describe most of the vowels.
Thus, anybody trying to learn/teach hebrew over the internet is met with a problem: How to teach reading/writing of a language with carries logic only by parts of it that you cannot demonstrate. Without these points and dots in the writing, people cannot understand where are vowels situated in a word.

Thus, if you are not able to show people on paper how to read and write hebrew (a prob that exists over the net) you cannot teach them to do it, UNLESS you have a system, that is roman-based and able to show you through it, which letters are actualy written and which vowel letters are ommited as part of the omition taking place in the absence of points and dots. Then AND ONLY THEN you are able to show other hebrew learners over the internet both how a word sounds, how it is pronounced, and how it written, and you have done that in a rational way that the student can easily learn in a day or two and then, work out which letters to write in hebrew, making him more aptly and fastly familiar with the writing of the language.

And NO I wasn't influenced by Klingon at all, I've heard about it, but only after saaropean mentioned it, I went to the site and cheked it out.
Klingon is funny

[Poliglot]

If the problem resides in the way you represent it on the Web, I would not devise a different system that the learner should learn, but a mark-up language compliant with W3C standards, a plug-in or a propietary browser in order to show the dots and lines above, just as, for example, MathML, a mark-up language to represent mathematical expressions, where little numbers or exponents appear above characters.

Poliglot.

[Saaropean]

A new markup language? There's not even HTML markup like ó for Central European languages!

Why can we see texts written in Czech or Russian if there's no explicit HTML markup? Well, it's all about character sets. "Normal" western texts in the Internet are often written in ISO-8859-1, also known as Latin-1. http://czyborra.com/charsets/iso8859.html shows you some of the ISO-8859 character sets, including ISO-8859-8 for Hebrew.

Now comes the problem: This Hebrew character set doesn't have the diacritics (points and lines) Lynch described.
Why? Let me try to explain this technical issue. Some keyboard settings (e.g. Spanish, German and French Canadian) allow you to enter some letters with diacritics (for example à) by pressing the key for the grave accent followed by the A key. So you might think à is an A with a grave accent. Linguistically and in handwriting this is okay, but not for a computer. The computer treats à as an ordinary character like S or $, but with another number.

In a computer, every character has a number. Normally, one character (one byte) is 8 bits long, which allows us to have up to 256 characters in one character set. Number 255 in Latin-1 is ÿ, Number 255.
Reality is a little more complicated: The characters from 0 (yes, computer science people like me start counting at 0 :wink:) to 128 are reserved for what is called ASCII, which includes all 26 letters of the Latin alphabet and the usual punctuation marks, but no diacritics. So the ISO-8859 things only use characters 129 through 256.

This is one of the major problems today: If we only have 128 characters available, how can we combine Latin, Cyrillic and Hebrew letters, how can we include all the diacritics for French, Icelandic, Turkish, Czech and Vietnamese, how can we write Chinese? We can't, at least not with this system.

There is something else called Unicode (which has nothing to do with UniLang). Unicode uses two bytes to encode one character, which gives us access to a total of 65,536 characters. Every alphabet has its own range(s) of numbers in this system. à (which is number 224 in ISO-8859-1, -5, -14 and -15) is the Unicode character number 224. The Hebrew letter aleph (number 224 in ISO-8859-8) has the Unicode number 1488.
You can see the code charts (in PDF form) for all alphabets currently included in Unicode at http://www.unicode.org/charts/.

The Hebrew code range (numbers 1424 through 1535, though not all of them are used), does not only include the ISO-8859-8 characters. No, it includes "cantillation marks" (carrying names such as etnahta, segol, shalshelet, zaqef qatan and geresh muqdam), "punctuation marks" (points called hataf qamats, patah or qubuts among others), three Yiddish digraphs and two additional punctuation symbols (geresh and gershayim).

Writing such a character in HTML is very easy: If you have the number, just write א or (if the number is hexadecimal) א. Both should produce an aleph.

[Guest]

אֱ ,אֲ ,אֳ ,אִ , אֵ , אֶ , אַ , אָ , , אׁ , וׁ , וְֹ , וּ ,אֹ , , אּּ


to write the Hebrew "vowels" on an Hebrew Kboard ,
you pres the CapsLock ,and then you press (togueder with shift) ,
the Hebrew letter you want and then ,yuo press (togueder with the Shift)
the Numbers 1- 0 and allso the " - " and "= " simbols (without the "" )

you dont have all the puntualitation in here ,but thats anough I think ,
only the bible use the rest .

[Lynch]

Wow guest man!!! WOW!!!
You've tought me something new! THANK YOU!
And Saaropean, thank you for that explanation... but I'm afraid you haven't renewd me anything, as I gratuated from a technological highschool where I spent 15 hours a week studying computers scences

[Saaropean]

Lynch: This technical explanation was not meant for you, but for Poliglot.

[Lynch]

Oh, sorry Saaropean

[Yitzik]

שלום

Shalom, Lynch!
Just curious. What is the language in your signature? I can't recognize it...
You can answer me to my e-mail, if you prefer.

Yitzik from Kiev, Ukraine

[Lynch]

*gggggg*
Yitzik, thanx for the interest! I'ts a language I've invented for fantasy world roleplaying purposes, it is called "Orkan" or "Orkish" and is in the use of the Orks in my world.

It means: Don't worry, my father, your blood (is) avenged.

[kelevgadol]

Glad to see I'm not the only one

7th Day – Shabbat – Holy Sabbath ~92~
A Psalm [or] Song for the sabbath day.
1. mīz:mōr $īyr liyōm ha.$abāt[.
{92:1} [It is a] good [thing] to give thanks unto the LORD, and to sing praises unto thy name, O most High:
2. 9ōv lihod[ōt[ laYHWH ūliza.mēr li$īm:^ā “el:yōn.
{92:2} To shew forth thy lovingkindness in the morning, and thy faithfulness every night,
3. lihagīyd[ baboqer cax:de^ā we'#mūnāt[:^ā ba.lēylōt[.
{92:3} Upon an instrument of ten strings, and upon the psaltery; upon the harp with a solemn sound.
4. “@lēy-”āsōr wa”@lēy-nāvel “@lēy hīgāyōn bi^ī.nōr.
{92:4} For thou, LORD, hast made me glad through thy work: I will triumph in the works of thy hands.
5. kīy sī.mac:tanīy YHWH bifā”@le^ā bima”@sēy yād[ey^ā '@ra.nēn.
{92:5} O LORD, how great are thy works! [and] thy thoughts are very deep.
6. mah-gād[:lū ma”@sey^ā YHWH mi'od[ “ām:qū mac:$ivot[ey^ā.
{92:6} A brutish man knoweth not; neither doth a fool understand this.
7. 'īy$-ba”ar lo' yēd[ā” ū^:xīyl lo'-yāvīyn 'et[-zo't[.
{92:7} When the wicked spring as the grass, and when all the workers of iniquity do flourish; [it is] that they shall be destroyed for ever:
8. bīf:roac ri$ā”īym kimō “ēsev wa.yā3īy3ū kāl-po”@lēy 'āwen lihī.$ām:d[ām “@d[ēy-”ad[.
{92:8} But thou, LORD, [art most] high for evermore.
9. wi'atāh mārōm li”olām YHWH
{92:9} For, lo, thine enemies, O LORD, for, lo, thine enemies shall perish; all the workers of iniquity shall be scattered.
10. kīy hī.nēh 'oy:vey^ā YHWH kīy-hī.nēh 'oy:vey^ā yo'vēd[ū yīt[:pār:d[ū kāl-po”@lēy 'āwen.
{92:10} But my horn shalt thou exalt like [the horn of] an unicorn: I shall be anointed with fresh oil.
11. watārem kīr:'ēym qar:nīy ba.lot[īy bi$emen ra”anān.
{92:11} Mine eye also shall see [my desire] on mine enemies, [and] mine ears shall hear [my desire] of the wicked that rise up against me.
12. wat[abē9 “ēynīy bi$ūrāy ba.qāmīym “ālay mirē”īym tī$:ma”:nāh 'āz:nā'.
{92:12} The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
13. 3adīyq katāmār yif:rāc ki'erez ba.l:vānōn yīs:gen.
{92:13} Those that be planted in the house of the LORD shall flourish in the courts of our God.
14. $:t[ūlīym bivēyt[ YHWH bica3:rōt[ '#lohēynū yaf:rīycū.
{92:14} They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing;
15. “ōd[ yinūvūn bisēyvāh di$ēnīym wira”@na.nīym yīh:yū.
{92:15} To shew that the LORD [is] upright: [he is] my rock, and [there is] no unrighteousness in him.
16. lihagīyd[ kīy-yā$ār YHWH 3ūrīy wilo'-”@lāt[āh bō.

VOCAB
1:
m. MīZMōR-song, psalm
m. $īYR-song; poem
2:
v. HōD[āH-admit, confess; thank
HōD[ōT[ L...thanks to
pr v. ZāMaR-striking with the fingers thus: to play music; trim, prune
m. $ēM-name
adj. 7ELYōN-sypreme
3:
v. NāJaD[-oppose; shew forth
m. CeXeD[-benevolence; charity
f. 1#MūNāH-faith, religion, belief
m. LaYLāH-night
4:
prep. 7@LēY-on
7āSōR-ten strings(decachord)
m. NeVeL-lyre; harp(modern)
m. HīGāYōN-solemn sound md.-logic, reason
v. HāJāH-imagine, meditate, study, utter
m. KīY.NōR-violin(modern); harp
5:
v. SāMaC-rejoice, be glad
m. Pō7aL-action; verb
m. Ma7@SeH-deed, action
pr v. RāNaN-to shout; triumph
6:
v. GāD[aL-grow; expand
v. 7āMaQ-be deep, be profound
f. MaC@$āVāH-thought, thinking
7:
m. 1īY$-man
m. Ba7aR-boor, oaf
v. YāD[a7-know
m. K:XīYL-fool, dunce
pr v. BīYN-to separate mentally
8:
v. PāRaC-blossom, flower
adv. K:Mō-like, as
m. 7ēSeV-grass
v. 3ā3-bloom; spring forth
m. Pō7ēL-worker, laborer
m .1āWeN-wickedness, evil
pr v. $āMaD[-to destroy
prep. 7aD[-until, till; up to
m. 7aD[-eternity
9:
m. MāRōM-height, heaven
10:
m. 1ōYēV-enemy, foe
v. 1āVaD[-be lost, perish
v. PāRaD[-scatter
11:
pr v. RūM-to raise
m. R:1ēM-wild ox
f. QeReN-horn
v. QāRaN-radiate, shine
v. BāLaL-mix, mingle
adj. Ra7@NāN-fresh
12:
pr v. NāVa9-look intently *thus md: germinate, sprout
m. $ūR-watcher, enemy
pr v. $ūR-lie in wait
pr v. QūM-rise
prep 7al-on, over, against
pr v. Rā7a7-afflict
v. $āMa7-hear; obey
f. 1ōZeN-ear
13:
adj. 3aDīYQ-just
m. TāMāR-date-palm (tree)
The root-verb does not occur in Scriptures, but the Arabic cognate means to be erect, stiff.
m. 1eReZ-cedar
LiVāNōN-white thing
v. SāJāH-prosper, rise]
14:
v. $āT[aL-plant, transplant
v. Cā3ēR-yard, courtyard
15:
adv. 7ōD[-still
pr v. NūV-to germinate
f. SēYVāH-grey hair; old age
v. Dā$aN-grow fat, be fat(lush)
adj. Ra7@NāN-fresh, refreshed
16:
v. NāJaD[-oppose; shew forth
adj. Yā$āR-straight, level; honest, upright
m. 3ūR-rock, fortress
m. 7āWeL-wrong, injustice