Transliteration Standards

[Anshuman Pandey]

On Sat, 22 Nov 1997, Jacob Baltuch wrote:

> >am in favor of having Urdu transliterated with the Arabic scheme (ie.
> >ZDMG, EI) because it represents the complete inventory of Urdu phonemes

> What does a string such as ZDMG correspond to in Urdu? Does Urdu use
> the Arabic letter with an intrinsic short 'a' (the same way as in Indic
> scripts the unmarked letter has an intrinsic short 'a' vowel) or does
> it used it as a pure consonant? (In other works, in Urdu, does the Arabic
> letter for 'k' stand for 'k' or for 'ka'?)

Oops! ZDMG is a transliteration scheme from "Zeitschrift der
Morgenl\"andischen Gesellschaft" and EL is from "Encyclopedia of Islam."

In Urdu, as well as the other Perso-Arabic scripts, which are alphabetic
in nature, consonants do not have vowel inherency like the Indic scripts
do. So, an Arabic "k" is a pure consonant, explicitly /k/ not /ka/.

Sorry for the ambiguity, I ought to watch my examples.

Regards,
Anshuman Pandey