What would be the most accurate character to use to transliterate the 'e' sound in 'bet' to the Arabic alphabet?

Question

I'm trying to transliterate toki pona words containing an 'eh' sound like 'esun', 'en', 'kule', 'ken' & 'seme'. I found an online Kurdish transliteration tool that displays 'esun' ‌as ئه‌سون & 'kule' as کوله‌. Is that accurate? I've also seen ێ used.

the tool gives the initial vowels as: ئا for a, ئه‌/ئە for e, ی/ئی for i, ئۆ/ۆ for o, & ئو for u. is there a difference sound-wise between ه‌ and ة (as in سه‌مه/سةمة-'seme')?

I like the idea of using only harakat for vowels when possible & leaving them out if not neccesary for comprehension like کَلاَ/کلا instead of کالا for 'kala',(except for finals to make 'sin'/'sina' & 'pan'/'pana' clear) because it fits the minimalist nature of toki pona, but e (as in bet) & o (as in open) are a problem since they don't really exist in Arabic. I would probably use 'ۆ/ئۆ' for o, but is ه‌/ة or ێ better for 'e'? Could I use ِسِمه for 'seme' or is سةمة/سه‌مه‌ better?

is 'میِ کن سِتِلِن إِ تۆکیِ یۆکیِ پۆناَ کِپِکِن سِتِلِن أَلَپیِ' a reasonable transliteration for 'mi ken sitelen e toki toki pona kepeken sitelen Alapi' or should 'kepeken' be کەپەکەن?

Answer 1

I don't know any language written using the Arabic script, but as far as I can tell the most common approach across languages for representing /e/ is using some variant of ي.
Somali uses ئ, Pashto and Uyghur use ې, and Kurdish, as you mentioned, uses ێ. The Jawi script used to write Malay even uses ي for both /i/, /e/ and /ɛ/. Urdu uses two different symbols, ے (which is based on ي) and ہ (which isn't).

I can't really speak in terms of how recognizable any of this would be to Arabic-speakers of course, but since multiple languages that needed an /e/-like letter reached for ي, it seems reasonable to suggest that approach.

But things are never simple - ە is also quite common. For example, you mentioned Kurdish which uses it to represent /ɛ/ (which is not /e/, but pretty similar), and Persian also uses it for /e/. And as I said earlier, Urdu does use ہ (based on ه), though I believe ے is more common (except word-intially, where it can't appear).

It seems to me like some twist on ي is the most common across languages, but which one to pick is not obvious (though I expect they'd all be about equally clear to someone who isn't already familiar with one of them). ە is more uniform, but might be a bit less common, and in languages that use both (like Uyghur and Kurdish) it seems that the ي variant usually represents /e/, while ە is something like /ɛ/.

So, I'd probably suggest ێ, but either option seems reasonable.

Source: Arabic script § Additional letters used in other languages (Wikipedia) (and various language and script articles mostly linked to from there)