I'm thinking of a system where all fricatives look similar to each other, all plosives look similar, etc; the same base shape could be used for similar sounds using the dots placed above/below letters (see I'jām) to distinguish between voiced/unvoiced. For example ز and ژ could both be fricatives but one voiced & one unvoiced with the number of i'jām dots indicating voiced & unvoiced. As an example 1 dot (خ) could be unvoiced, & 2 dots (ت) could be voiced , 3 dots (ش/چ) could be digraphs(?) like sh/ch/th etc;. Their placement above or below could even mean something (پ/ث)? vowels could be diacritics like how Arabic harakat are used. I'm not really talking about adapting Arabic itself to write english. Plenty of those have been done, some good, some bad. I'm talking about a script inspired by Arabic, but that is really suited to write English because it is designed for English. Dots & vowels could even be omitted to further speed up writing if the dots/vowels could easily be inferred from context as in (Rasm). To use an example that can be typed: 'تُن' could be 'dot', but without diacritics could be 'date' depending on context & with i'jām reversed it could be represent 't-d'. 'O' wouldn't have to be ُ (damma), I'm just using that as an example. I like the look of connected letters but disconnected could be used too. It could be designed to be written in either direction by rotating certain letters to face in the direction of writing as was done with Egyptian hieroglyphs. It would be easier to learn because similar sounds would look similar which is rarely the case in Arabic. Has anybody created something like this or could it be created? The table is here
2 Answers
Do these count?
Anglo-Arabic, created by Pangus Ho, is a fully phonetic writing system that can be used to write English. It borrows the shape of Arabic letters so that it looks like Arabic at a glance, however few of the letters have the same sound as they do in Arabic. For example the letter "nūn", which is used to symbolize the sound /n/ in Arabic, is pronounced /t/ in Anglo-Arabic. The main objective is to make similar consonants have similar letter shapes. Consonants, long vowels, and diphthongs are represented by letters, while short vowels are represented by diacritics.
Angrezi is a method of writing English using the Arabic script devised by Adnaan Mahmood. It is designed so that each sound of English is represented by one letter, and to be a standardised way for transcribing English in the Arabic script. Adnaan also thought that if the large population of English speaking Muslims want to write English in the Arabic script they could do so by using this version of the alphabet which includes vowels for easy reading and comprehension.
The name of the alphabet comes from the Urdu name for English, انگریزی (angrezi).
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I have seen them but what I was meaning was something on the order of gregg shorthand, but deliberately designed to resemble Arabic, taking advantage of how similar sounds often look similar & only have slight differences, like پ for 'p', & ب for 'b'. The idea is to do like rasm, allowing you to leave out the dots for brevity. Gregg is too messy in my opinion, & lacks the beauty of Arabic, for lack of a better way to explain it. There are several systems for merely adapting Arabic to English. For example: alternatescriptbureau.wordpress.com/2020/03/27/…– jastakoJan 2, 2021 at 22:30
I created a script, سۛٗط࣫ٮ࣭هَں࣪ٮ࣮ shorthand:
Arabic | English |
---|---|
ط࣪ / ط࣫ | r / l |
ک࣮ / ک࣭ | k / g |
ح࣪ / ج | v / f |
ٮ࣮ / ٮ࣭ | t / d |
ٮ࣫ / ٮ࣪ | p / b |
س࣪ | z |
ی | y |
و | w |
ں࣪ | n |
ں࣫ | m |
ز | j |
ه | h |
س࣫ / س࣪ | z / s |
عُ | u |
عٗ | o |
عِ | i |
عؘ | e |
عَ | a |
ٮِۛس࣫ عِس࣫ سۛٗط࣫ٮ࣭هَں࣪ٮ࣮/ٮس عس سطٮهںٮ
Unvoiced have one dot above/below, voiced have two. Letters don't match their sounds in Arabic in most cases.
Edit: Here's a spreadsheet. The keyboard is linked there also. I have a chromebook, so it installs as a chrome extension, then can be used as an input method.
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this can be written with or without diacritics/vowels to speed up writing. عؘںۛطِ࣪سۛ/عںطس would both be "English".– jastakoAug 5, 2020 at 6:21
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Please add a table showing the mapping between the letters and their English phonemes. Is your proposal to write English in rasm but with the phonemes of English distributed onto the letters in a way that doesn't totally match the values of the letters in Arabic? Sep 5, 2020 at 21:47
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I changed some of the letters. Here's a spreadsheet with the mappings. Most of the sounds aren't the same as Arabic. I just tried to make similar sounds use the same shapes & use the i'jām to distinguish them. س࣪ is 's' سۛ is 'sh', ح࣪ is 'f' ج is 'v'.– jastakoSep 16, 2020 at 8:18
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It doesn't have to be like Rasm, it can be as minimalist as you want it to be. عࣦںۛطِ࣪سۛ or عںطس for "english".– jastakoSep 16, 2020 at 17:24
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