Friday, October 7, 2011

The dotless "i".

According to an article about the Lebanese language on nowlebanon.com,
Said Akl suggests that the letter should be complete, and that any dot or dash outside the letter, doesn't belong to it. This is why, in order to fully comply to Akl's ideals, I remove the dot from the letter "i", becoming now "ı". 

You can now see the changes in the alphabet.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Modification in the alphabet

I received many criticism about the letter G suggesting to use J instead of G for the sound /ʒ/ as in Jarime (Crime). Thus, I will replace the letter G with J. Henceforth G is now pronounced /g/ as in Manga (Mango) and J is pronounced /ʒ/ as in Jaride (Newspaper).


Letter
Sound (IPA)
Example
J j
/ʒ/
Jaras (Bell)
G g
/g/
Manga (Mango)


You can now see the modification in the complete alphabet.

Monday, February 28, 2011

Read in Lebanese!

Below are two texts of the Bible that I translated from Arabic into Lebanese. Since Saԑid Ԑaγl, many other Lebanese intellectuals have also translated parts of the Bible into Lebanese. 

If you're having problem reading the texts, refer to the alphabet posted earlier.
Note that Il means Alla (God) and that this will be discussed later.  

Read more by visiting the Weekly Passage every Sunday.

Click on the image to zoom the texts.




Thursday, January 20, 2011

The new alphabet is here!

After reading an article about how the Lebanese alphabet, according to Said Akl, should be structured, I managed to build a new alphabet.

The new alphabet is composed of Latin, Greek and Cyrillic letters. The sounds of some letters, especially the Greek and Cyrillic, have been modified for the phonetic requirements of Lebanese. The introduction of Greek letters solved the problem of diacritics as well as other issues like sounds that only occur in Lebanese.

Below is the new alphabet, with the phonetic representation of each letter according to the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) along with an example in Lebanese.


Letter
Sound (IPA)
Example in Lebanese
A a
a
balad (country)
B b
b
berrad (fridge)
Ç ç
ʃ
çanta (bag)
D d
d
dawa (medicine)
E e
ā
wled (kids)
F f
f
fil (elephant)
Φ φ
ɣ
φada (lunch)
H h
h
hawa (air)
Λ λ
ħ
λet (wall)
I i
i
id (hand)
J j
ʒ
jaras (bell)
K k
k
kahraba (electricity)
Ҁҁ
x
ҁyar (cucumber)
L l
l
lamba (light  bulb)
M m
m
markaz (center)
N n
n
nazar (vision)
O o
o
bot (shoe)
Q q
q
eqtisad (economy)
R r
r
ras (head)
S s
s
siyyara (car)
T t
t
tawle (table)
U u
u
buza (ice cream)
W w
w
wazir (minister)
Y y
j
yansun (anis)
Z z
z
zyara (visit)
Ԑ ԑ
ʕ
ԑalbe (box)
Γ γ
ʔ
baγra (cow)

Not to mention that, beside Latin letters having a Phoenician origin, the Greek and Cyrillic letters introduced in the alphabet are derived from Phoenician. The following table shows the origin of each letter.


Letter
Origin
Φ φ
Origin disputed
Λ λ
Greek, derived from the Phoenician letter  Lamedh Lamedh
Ҁҁ
Cyrillic, borrowed from Greek, derived from the Phoenician letter Qoph Qoph
Ԑ ԑ
Cyrillic, reversed Ze З
Γ γ
Greek, derived from the Phoenician letter Gimel Gimel


You can download the Lebanese Qwerty keyboard to type in Lebanese using this alphabet by clicking here.