7s and 3s in lyrics

karena

New member
Ok, who's clever enough to tell me why are there 3s and 7s in phonetically written Arabic. I guess they are instead of a certain letter or something, but why/what??
 

summerdance

New member
Arabic Letters

Hi Karena,

The 3 and 7 represent Arabic letters that do not exist in English the 3 is ع
and the 7 is ح


Summer
 

nicknack

New member
The numbers in transliteration always confused me because the Hebrew equivalents of those letters are transliterated with letters so that nice throaty phlegm filled sound is ch (as in loch, ich, chutzpah etc). So I just write Arabic in Hebrew letters (which is confusing to those people familiar with Judeo Arabic)
 

karena

New member
Thanks guys. Yes I couldn't really get it as I've never noticed the same thing in , for example in Urdu in the British Asian community. I've had friends with names with a kh in which is actually a throaty sound, but they use a kh. Not that that really indicates the pronunciation, you just know from context I suppose. Strangely an h then sounds like a k, but who knows why.:think:
 

gypsy8522

New member
Each number stands for an arabic letter that cannot be pronounced/ spelled out using roman alphabet letters.


2 = أ or ء
3 = ع
5 = خ this is pronounced as "kh", westerners (especially British, Americans and those who can't speak anything but english) usually face the most difficulty with this letter. For example, they say "Kaled" instead of "khaled" the way it's said in arabic you have to really stress on the "kh"

6 = ط online we just use the letter "T" instead, technically it's wrong because the correct equivelent of "t" in arabic would be ت
7= ح
9 = ص the letter "S" is often used as replacement, which is also wrong because in real life the arabic equivelent of "s" is س


There are others such as 3' and 9' but they're rarely used. 2, 3 and 7 are the most popular on the internet because they cannot be replaced with roman alphabets.


There's also the letters ز pronounced "zz" and ذ which is in between "z" and "th". I was trying to write "Suheir Zaki" in arabic on youtube and it took me a good ten minutes to figure it out. Many arabic speakers don't know the difference and often get mixed up between these two letters, so you don't have to worry about it too much.. that is if you're learning arabic ;

However, you have to be careful how you say things in arabic, it can lead to changing the meaning of a word by mispronouncing letters.
 

karena

New member
this is pronounced as "kh", westerners (especially British, Americans and those who can't speak anything but english) usually face the most difficulty with this letter. For example, they say "Kaled" instead of "khaled" the way it's said in arabic you have to really stress on the "kh"

Thanks Gypsy. I had a friend called Khaled Ahmed who was British Pakistani. Now my understanding was his name should be pronounced Haled Ak-med (with the H kind of from the top of the throat, we have no such thing in English, this is pretty hard to explain in writing :think: ). Is this the same in Arabic?
 

Moon

New member
I often don't know how to pronounce the Arabic words when written in Latin alphabet, because they usually choose the English way of spelling and English is one of the least phonetically written language ever :wall:. Good thing those numbers are used too, because I can only recognise very few Arabic letters so far.
 

gypsy8522

New member
Karena,

Khaled is an adjective meaning "eternal" in arabic. The female version would be Khalida. Since the Qur'aan was written in arabic language, many pakistanis will have arabic/muslim names such as Mohamed, Ahmed, Khaled etc.. The proper pronounciation is kh-aled while stressing on the "kh" sound. It doesn't really matter how names are said because we are familiar with them. But if you are trying to have a conversation in arabic and attempt to replace the "kh" for "h", it won't work. Arabs also have a similar problem because they need to balance between the formal arabic "fos7a" which is the proper form of arabic, and their own local dialects. Usually we speak slang and the words mean whatever we want it to when we use it. When I visit an arabic music or art forums I don't need to write in "proper arabic" the way I do here, which is sort of "easier" in a way. If I want to post here I need to make sure that all my sentences make sense by eliminating grammatical errors and spelling mistakes etc... I think the same rule applies when you try speaking to native english language speakers, they can get over the accent but if your grammar is "different" they can't understand what you are trying to say at all.

Moon,

It could be that english is the least phonetically written language, and maybe that's why many like to use "the english way of spelling" since it's a lot easier. I personally prefer this way, it takes me like an hour just to type a paragraph in arabic!
 
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