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30 Lights: The MESSA Journal Spring 2013 Vol. 2 No. 3<br />
1.2. Notations<br />
The symbols used in writing the Arabic data are mainly the basic Latin,<br />
which are available in the regular keyboard. In addition, there are symbols<br />
representing the sounds that exist in Arabic and do not exist in English as<br />
well as some English sounds that are represented by two characters. The following<br />
two figures show the Arabic symbols and their Latin as well as Greek<br />
counterparts that are used in this paper. Using these symbols instead <strong>of</strong> those<br />
commonly used in the transliteration is motivated by the fact that in order to<br />
show the exact components <strong>of</strong> the syllable, it is better to use one symbol for<br />
each letter. 2<br />
Figure 1: The Vowel System <strong>of</strong> Arabic<br />
a- Phonemic symbols b- Orthographic symbols<br />
ī i ū u ِ ي ُ و<br />
ā a َ ا<br />
Figure 2: Vowel Distinctive Features<br />
+high<br />
-low<br />
-high<br />
+low<br />
-back +back<br />
-round +round<br />
short Long short long<br />
i ī u ū<br />
a ā<br />
2) In the transliteration convention there are some Arabic letters represented by two Latin<br />
symbols such as /kh/ for/ خ/, /th/ for ث and /dh/ for /ذ/. The three figures are copied from Gadoua<br />
(2011).
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