Re: question about Arabic: representing foreign words with "v"

"Leonid" == Leonid Gluhovsky <leonid@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

Leonid> Hello. I live in Israel and most roadsigns here are
Leonid> written in Hebrew, Arabic and English. I noticed that in
Leonid> some cases when a name of a street or a city has a "v"
Leonid> sound in it, the corresponding Arabic inscription makes
Leonid> use of a "nonstandard" Arabic letter: it's similar to FAA,
Leonid> but has three dots instead of one.

That letter is a /v/. And it's a pretty standard way of
transliterating English "v".


Leonid> I've never seen this letter in Arabic textbooks.

It's not an Arabic letter. Just like you won't find "å", "é", "ì",
"ô", "ü" in English textbooks.


Leonid> It's not mentioned in web
Leonid> articles about Arabic alphabet either.

It's not in the Arabic alphabet. It is in the alphabet of other
languages that have adopted (and modified) the Arabic script, though.


Leonid> I would be grateful if someone could tell me something
Leonid> about this letter, is it commonly used to represent "v" in
Leonid> non-Arabic words, why is it never mentioned in textbooks,
Leonid> etc. Are there more letters like this, used to write
Leonid> foreign words?

Yes. Check the alphabets of other languages that have adopted the
Arabic script. Such as Farsi, Old Persian, Urdu, Uygur, Jawi (for
Malay), etc. You'll find more "Arabic" letters than in the alphabet
for Arabic. e.g. a "p" (a "baa" with 3 dots below) in Farsi, a "g" (a
"k" with an additional line parallel to the slanted stroke) and more.


Leonid> It's not that this letter is always used to represent "v".
Leonid> For example, when "Tel Aviv" is written in Arabic, BAA is
Leonid> used for both v's.

Do these "v"s derive from historical "b"?



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Lee Sau Dan 李守敦 ~{@nJX6X~}

E-mail: danlee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
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