Talk:Romanization of Hebrew

Nomination of ISO_259-3 for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article ISO_259-3 is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/ISO_259-3 until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article.
 * Note: It's not yet clear whether the outcome will affect this article as well -- which is precisely why we hope contributors to this article will join the discussion.
 * MisterGoodTime (talk) 22:20, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Contents
Should this article include an indication that the romanization is specifically for Modern Hebrew (if that is indeed the case?) It's very different from the transliteration scheme used in the Hebrew alphabet article. rossb 15:54, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

'Agreed! In its present state the article is very confusing! I will leave a note on the author's talk page... --VivaEmilyDavies 17:49, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * As much as I understand it the official romanization of Hebrew is for Modern Hebrew pronunciations, trying to cover not only the most common Israeli accent but also the Israel's "official" Sepharadic accent (when Het and Ayin are different than unstressed-Kaf and Alef for example, or when Schwa-Na` is pronounced as short e). A nice summary of Hebrew romanizations can be found in http://www.geocities.com/raz_h_h which also includes some reference to older pronunciations of consonants. -- 203.144.160.246 01:38, October 11, 2005

How does the UN scheme differ from what the Hebrew alphabet page calls the "Israeli" scheme, and which one is used on expressway signs in Israel? We're trying to decide on a standard for Hebrew over at Wikitravel... Jpatokal 13:51, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * If you're interested, see my comments at Talk:Hebrew alphabet. Tomer TALK  02:06, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)


 * The UN's romanization scheme for Hebrew is a copy of the official "simple" Israeli scheme (by the Academy for the Hebrew Language). This one is also used for official documents and intercity road signs. The problem is that this romanization is not part of school studies and many people in Israel are not so familiar with it, so many use non-standard versions (even on street signs). -- 203.144.160.246 05:25, October 12, 2005


 * Welcome and thank you for your comments. I think your observation applies to all standard romanizations of Hebrew. I'm incorporating a note to that effect into the article. You are also welcome to incorporate your ideas directly into the article.


 * You can help us follow this discussion by signing your comments with " --~ " (which will be automatically converted to "-- 203.144.160.246 05:25, October 12, 2005"). You may also wish to create an account. I hope you'll stay. Please note that the comments that you found here are months older than any of the text in the article.


 * --Hoziron 12:53, 12 October 2005 (UTC)


 * A summary of the official Romanizations of Hebrew for Hebrew readers with some suggestions and examples can be found in "Romanization of Hebrew" --61.90.95.254 23:23, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Hebrew naming conventions
Urgent: see Naming conventions (Hebrew) to add your opinions about this important matter. Thank you. IZAK 17:59, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Explain don't complain
Please let's not present the subject as if it's so confused and complex that only mavens like us can understand it. That's not fair to the reader, who has come here willing to learn. It's like Shammai when he drove the seeker away with his building rod. If there's a point too complex to cover in this one article, at least provide a link to a fuller treatment somewhere else. I don't have time right now to clear this up myself. --Hoziron 14:46, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree this needs a cleanup template. Also, get down to business in the intro. We need a scientific standard that we endorse for use on Wikipedia. For Arabic, this is DIN 31635 (see ArabDIN). What about ISO 259? I can't seem to find a clean specification of it. What is the transliteration scheme used on e.g. Shekhem (Šəḫem? I am familiar with seeing these transliterations with superscript vowels etc. in academic publications, but I don't know what the transliteration scheme is called, and how it is officially specified. See also Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Writing systems. dab (&#5839;) 16:20, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

This is an encyclopedia article. If you're looking for a policy proposal and discussion, please see Naming conventions (Hebrew). The transliteration scheme that you have noticed is a product of User:Gilgamesh who has described it on his user page. I'll put policy comments at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Hebrew). &mdash;Hoziron 04:06, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
 * thank you, I realize this is an encyclopedia article; I was going to inform myself by this encyclopedia article for the purpose of deciding what convention to use myself, by WP:NOR we shouldn't just pull conventions out of our hats. Naming conventions (Hebrew) is interesting but it doesn't answer my question, since it has "Latin Transcription" instead of specifying a standard. I am no closer to knowing ISO 259 now, and I don't know how close Gilgamesh's proposal is to ISO because he does not compare it to ISO. dab (&#5839;) 17:14, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I think I struck a firmer tone than I intended. I generally agree with what you just wrote. ISO 259 has a-ring for kamatz, non-joining ring for shva, e-cedilla for segol, w-circumflex for vav-holem, w-overdot for shuruk, and the awesomely weird e-cedilla-breve for hatef segol. Gilgamesh is not following ISO 259 for vowels. Gilgamesh does have the same values as ISO 259 for consonants. --Hoziron 04:40, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Online web transliteration service for Hebrew
Adding a new external link to Hebrew transliteration service at http://www.latkey.com/translit (it stayed here for ages, but was recently erroneously removed). It matches wiki guidelines as it's free and doesn't contain advertising content on its pages. I suggest reviewing other links as some have changed or contain Google adwords. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by DanIssa (talk • contribs).


 * Sure there are other inappropriate links, people just keep adding them, you know. It does not matter if it's "free" or "useful". Linking to download sites for Microsoft Office plugins to use the online service of a company is not appropriate. There is no encyclopedic content on the site, and it does promote other products of that comany. If you reference and the corresponding user contributions, you'll see that there were repeated attempts to place links in several articles, despite all warnings not to re-add them (including the ignored warning on your own talk page). Not only to the transliteration service but also to the company main page, with link descriptions promoting the keyboard stickers. You will not add any more links to latkey.com, i-keyboard.com, or related domains. Femto 13:19, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

dhalet -- dhet
Is there really an official Academia transliteration of dhet, namely d with line below (the same as for dhalet)? I only know the transliteration z with dot below. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.178.92.246 (talk) 18:16, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Mutations
Please don't take the following personally, someone obviously invested a lot of time and effort in the comparative table, however it includes some absurd mutations which can only be the result of a feverishly imaginative mind and bare no resemblance to reality. Two of the more extreme monstrosities are " " and "  ". But seriously: mainly these mistakes seem to be the result of a superficial generalization of rules not fully understood, e.g. the difference between dagesh kal and dagesh chazak. Or could anyone state some source? Dan Pelleg (talk) 00:11, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Couldn't see those any more, tool them out. Dan ☺ 23:15, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

ch?
What about "ch" for, as in "Halacha"? Is that just from the German transliteration or is it part of a standard that is not included here?--87.162.37.108 (talk) 23:33, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
 * "ch" for is very common, though not standard. I think this information should be included in the article. Dan ☺  14:26, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Dhalet
I've lived in Israel all my life and I've never seen this letter. I don't think any Israeli can pronounce it anyway. TFighterPilot (talk) 18:10, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
 * You're right, "dhalet" and "thav" were invented for the transliteration into Hebrew of sounds that are not part of Hebrew phonology – however they are standard, and the rare occasion of needing to romanize a Hebrew text which contains transliterations of these sounds into Hebrew justifies including them in this table (e.g. he:סאות' פארק or he:מד'הב). Dan ☺  17:00, 7 February 2010 (UTC)


 * There are no variants of Alef and Ayin except for pronounced vs. silent, therefore usage of various slightly different symbols for their transliteration has no significance except for consistency and aesthetics. Personally I prefer the half circles ( ʾ, ʿ ): most unambiguous in my opinion. Dan ☺ 16:31, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Wrong direction
Angr, your edit is a move in the wrong direction. IPA for Hebrew is the page we should update: recently articles such as Mid front unrounded vowel, Mid back rounded vowel and Open central unrounded vowel were added to Wikipedia, which provide clarity and conteract the misleading absence of distinct IPA characters for these vowels. In phonemic transcriptions, the diacritics are left out for simplicity, however, in tables such as in this article, a precise phonetic definition is better. The simplified phonemic convention can be added to it but shouldn't replace it: it simply denotes the wrong vowels. Dan ☺ 20:05, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Someone please add an example.
In many of the pages on a language, there is sample text in a table with variations. For example, see this article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_German_language

Maybe someone can have a table with English, Transliteration 1, Transliteration 2, Hebrew

Maybe something from here? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_prayers_and_blessings — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.64.108.61 (talk) 03:12, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Citation in "How to transliterate"
The quoted sentence in Section "How to transliterate" does not require a citation as it is an invented statement for the purpose of demonstrating a technical point. Eaglebrowne (talk) 14:37, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Source for transliteration
The column "ISO 259" in Romanization of Hebrew is not a version of ISO 259; with its macron for some long vowels it looks a little like the "academic style" of the but it does not use the circumflex for matres lectionis. The transliteration in Niqqud is based on the same principle but also demonstrates the use of the circumflex, even more extensively than the SBL transliteration. Both of these variants are a more accurate transliteration than the ISO or the SBL transliteration, they would only need a source. Oliv0 (talk) 12:25, 23 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, it is Standard of Poland «Polska Norma "Transliteracja alfabetu hebrajskiego PN-74 / N-01211"». This standard is in active use by Roman-Catholic Church of Poland, Public and non-Public Libraries of Poland. Also it is in some use in Educational System of Poland. Yes, this system is similar to SBL, but in opposite to SBL it really is "A State of The Art", and allows precise and accurate transliteration in both directions
 * Proof: «Protokół 74. posiedzenia Komisji Standaryzacji Nazw Geograficznych poza Granicami Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej» — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vitaly.v.ch (talk • contribs) 00:24, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Unicode modifier letters
The main text has, "The two letters that represent a stop may be written using the forward and backward quote marks, or similar marks."

The two "similar marks" that are sometimes used to represent a glottal stop are:
 * U+02BB MODIFIER LETTER TURNED COMMA which is used for the letter ʻáyin
 * U+02BC MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE which is used for the letter aleph

These characters are used by ICU when transliterating Hebrew.

DFH (talk) 15:21, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * The page for the letter ʻáyin includes this statement, which rather complicates matters:
 * ʿAyin is usually transliterated into the Latin alphabet with ʿ, (U+02BF) "modifier letter left half ring".
 * DFH (talk) 15:38, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * ISO-259-2 defines the following characters to represent the stops:
 * U+02BF Modifier letter left half ring for the letter ʻáyin
 * U+02BE Modifier letter right half ring for the letter aleph
 * DFH (talk) 13:42, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Regarding the romanization of Gimel Grusha, Zayin Grusha and Tsadi Grusha
Saying the Hebrew Language Academy standard does not offer the romanization of those letters is a bit of an error. See http://hebrew-academy.org.il/wp-content/uploads/Transcription2_1.pdf, page three. Itsused (talk) 12:06, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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2017 merge
I note that User:Dbachmann created a page with a merge template on it (DIN 31636), but I can't find the matching discussion. It does look like the table might be helpful on the Romanization page, but I'm far from an expert so it would be nice to have some comment in support or opposition. Klbrain (talk) 22:01, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Given no support, I've closed the proposal, but have improved the links between the articles and given some context to the German article. Klbrain (talk) 11:54, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

ISO letter names
Some of them don't seem phonologically possible, e.g. ḥăṭep̄ - what is this even supposed to represent? 82.208.108.68 (talk) 23:16, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Made-up information
Looking further into it, the article describes something completely different from the standard in question. An online preview of this standard can be found here, of which ISO 259 seems to be an accurate description. As can be seen, it has next to nothing in common with the system this article calls 'ISO 259'. 82.208.108.68 (talk) 23:53, 25 January 2023 (UTC)