Arabic Transcription Conventions

Conventions for Broad Phonemic Transcription of Arabic

The transcription conventions for Arabic were set by the following people:
Hanan Asaad - Haifa University, Abbassia Bouhaous - University of Heidelberg, Amal Kadry – Bar-Ilan University, Lior Laks – Tel Aviv University, Bracha Nir-Sagiv – Tel Aviv University, Fatena Omar - Haifa University, Sigal Uziel-Karl – Haifa University

The following charts list the Arabic transcription symbols. To use the special symbols, the latest CHILDES Unicode version has to be installed. Once this is done, the symbols with the diacritics can be inserted as follows:

To insert the diacritic representing pharyngeals, type any of the requested letter(s), and then press the F1 and comma keys to get the diacritic
To insert the superscript ‘h’ (to represent interdental fricative, the voiced velar fricative, or the interdental emphatic), hold down shift+F1 and type h.
When transcribing geminates, e.g. shaddah – use double consonants.

Consonants

Symbol	Letter	Letter Name
`	إ	hamza
b	ب	ba
t	ت	ta
t^h	ث	tha
j	ج	jim
ḥ	ح	ḥa
x	خ	xa
d	د	dal
d^h	ذ	dhal
r	ر	ra
z	ز	zen
sh	ش	shin
s	س	sin
ṣ	ص	sad
ḍ	ض	dad
ṭ̣̣̣	ط	ṭ̣̣̣a
ḍ^h	ظ	ẓa
'	ع	'en
g^h	غ	gen
f	ف	fa
q	ق	qaf
k	ك	kaf
l	ل	lam
m	م	mim
n	ن	nun
h	ه	ha
w	و	waw
y	ي	ya

Vowels

a	َ	fatHa
u	ُ	dame
i	ِ	kasra
a:	ا	alef
u:	و	waw
i:	ي	ya
e	ي	ya (ba'den)
o	و	waw (bantalon)