Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Hebrew)/Archive 5

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Transliteration issues

It seems that Tanakh is in violation of this guidline solely because there are more Google hits for it over Tanach, which currently redirects. DRosenbach (Talk | Contribs) 15:56, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand, how is that a violation? -- Ynhockey (Talk) 16:46, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
It should be Tanach with the CH, it only makes sense. And BTW, I got more google hits with CH than with kh.--Shuliavrumi (talk) 23:03, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Ches

I HAVE A BIG PROBLEM WITH THIS!!!!!!! A ches is not a hey, A hey makes the same sound an H makes, a ches makes a gutteral CH, not h!I demand a vote, not as the guideline is set, because that is not an option. I propose that we use the artscroll transliteration, that seems to be a solid transliteration, the "academy of Hebrew"'s romanazation scheme makes no sense whatsoever, ayin sham, and has no place in a encyclopedic site that aims to allow people understanding, there is no havonoh whenwords are mistransliterated. --Shuliavrumi (talk) 23:03, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

WP:Naming conventions (Hebrew) and Mechitza v. Mehitza

Earlier today, an editor renamed the Mechitza article Mehitza on grounds that the change is required by this naming conventions guideline. Some questions:

  • Is this really a guideline? Did it ever get consensus in the relevant part of a community, or was it labeled a guideline on agreement of a small number of users? I'm not going to change the status without discussion but I'd like to know what the community thinks.
  • Should it be clarified that it doesn't apply to this type of case? The general WP:Naming conventions guideline says to use the term most commonly used in English based on general rather than specialized use. A guideline that imposes a specific standardized transliteration scheme based on specialist opinion resulting in commonly-used words being spelled in unused and possibly unrecognizable ways would seem to go against the spirit of the guideline. The main guideline reflects a philosophy that because article names are the way users look up subjects, they need to reflect the search terms (and spellings) actual users are most likely to employ in their searches. Given this situation, I personally don't think an approach that bases article names on any standardized spelling method not reflecting actual English use is consistent with the overall guideline. Such an approach may be permissable for words that have almost never been spelled in English, but I don't think Wikipedia's overall WP:Naming conventions guideline makes it a permissable option for words that have tens of thousands of ghits, regularly appear in English-language newspaper articles, and show other evidence of common use in English. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 02:34, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Note: This page was upgraded from a proposed guideline to a guideline in this edit: [1] The edit summary noted that there had been no discussion for some time. However, lack of discussion is not necessarily evidence of consensus. The prior discussion, appeared to involve a handful of editors, and there doesn't seem to have been any WP:RFC (See {{RFC error}}) or similar action bringing the proposal to the attention of the general community for discussion/approval. Would recommend placing this before the community to make it a guideline. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 02:54, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Hi Shirahadasha! About your question regarding Mehitza, the guideline does not say it should be Mehitza. It is actually ambiguous, because the topic does not pertain to modern Israel. The relevant sections are When a topic originates before the Diaspora and When unsure of the Jewish subset/time period the subject pertains to.
Regarding the status as an official guideline: there is no policy mandating an RFCpolicy for every proposed guideline I'm aware of. RFCpolicy should be used as much as possible for guidelines where outside input would be useful. In this case, because most Wikipedia do not speak or read/write Hebrew, their input would generally not be useful, except in relation to other Wikipedia policies, which isn't really the dispute about this guideline. To that end, WikiProjects with likely Hebrew speakers were notified numerous times of this discussion when it took place (WP Israel, WP Judaism and WP Jewish History), especially the first which I personally notified at least 3 times, at various stages.
The guideline is not a result of a consensus by a 'handful of editors', but basically the entire Hebrew-speaking community on the English Wikipedia at any given time (the discussion was ongoing for 3 years). The fact that most of these editors did not insert their opinions does not mean that they were not aware of this discussion. This has been exactly the problem with this guideline - each time consensus was reached, some new editor who miraculously was not aware of the discussion joined in and dispute a certain minor point and the entire discussion started over. It went on for over 3 years, and sometimes it has to end, don't you think? New opinions and comments are always welcome, but they should not disrupt this page's status as a guideline.
Currently, it does not seem like you have made suggestions to change anything in the guideline (see my reply to your single suggestion below), so I don't understand why you insist on moving the discussion back several years. All the issues have been touched upon, trust me.
Cheers, Ynhockey (Talk) 22:33, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Common or regular use in English

Propose the following addition to this guideline for conformity with WP:Naming conventions

Common or regular use in English

Even if a subject does not have an accepted standard Anglicized name, if it is in common or regular use in English, the most common English spelling of the term should be used. Evidence of common or regular use in English includes, but is not necessarily limited to, appearance in English-language dictionaries, large-scale use on the Internet (e.g. thousands of ghits), or use in regular-publication English-language newspapers, journals, and periodicals directed at an audience which is not expected to know Hebrew.

Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 02:45, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

(Margin Note: I am said editor referenced above as making the move) Thanks for reopening discussion. Firstly I would note that the guidelines (specifically the consonant chart) as they stand now in my opinion represent, for the most part, the most effective way to transliterate each letter distinctly without introducing too much confusion with sounds that do not exist in English. Ideally, ח כ צ ע ט etc. would have appropriate replacements, but practically, using ḥ in article titles is cumbersome. I do contend though that within articles it should be encouraged, perhaps even more so than the guidelines currently do.
Secondly, to deal specifically with the matter at hand, as to whether "mechitza" is more common in english than "mehitza," in fact google does find many more results with the "ch" spelling however, the internet does not have a standardized way of transliterating hebrew. Wikipedia should. A person attempting to find an article should be able to correctly guess what the title of said article is based on a set of rules. And while common spellings for common words that do not fit the rules should stand as exeptions to the rule, the list of words that fit that category is, and should remain, quite small. "Mechitza" has not penetrated the english language. Within the world of Jewry, the mehitza is known like many other Jewish concepts. Outside the Jewish world, not so much. It belongs as "Mehitza" for clarity purposes, with of course a redirect at "Mechitza."
Also, without being too blunt, be careful with what you call a "specialist's" opinion. The proposed changes represent a desire to maintain clarity without causing confusion. Unfortunately, pronunciation of the language has diverged a bit over the years, but without being too rigid, the rules proposed here are the most effective way of transliterating.
I disagree that 'mechitza' hasn't penetrated the language, When a New York Times article uses the term without italics, that's pretty good evidence. See e.g. [2], a search shows 13 articles in the NYT alone, see[3]). But that isn't the inquiry. The inquiry is what a person who wants to look the term up in the English-language Wikipedia is most likely to use as a search term. If there is an established English use among people who would likely look the subject up, it doesn't matter if those people aren't a majority of the population. By way of analogy, if a majority of English-speaking scientists use a spelling of a Russian or Chinese technical term that represents a really poor transliteration, it's no concern of Wikipedia if a Russian or Chinese-speaking editor interested in proper use of the language complains that their transliteration is lousy, and it simply doesn't matter whether the term has penetrated the general population. I think the analogy to this situation is very close. Maintaining language purity or teaching correct pronunciation of the original language term simply is not Wikipedia policy's concern when it comes to article names. The concern is using a term, including its spelling, that an English-speaking user interested in looking up the underlying subject is likely to enter into a search engine. I believe this requires using the common English term if it has substantial use, whether or not that use is enough to have "penetrated the language." I think this is particularly so if use in 13 New York Times articles isn't considered enough "penetration" to qualify. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 05:17, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
A person wanting to use the convention would need to know (1) the term's original Hebrew spelling (which requires knowing Hebrew), and (2) the requirements of the convention. Whether or not that's "specialist" knowledge, I do think it's more than can reasonably be expected of a general English speaker who's seen the word "mechitza" in the New York Times and is simply interested in knowing what one is. The word "mehitza" never appears in the New York Times. See [4]. Quite a difference, isn't it? How could an ordinary English speaker be expected to know that the way the major media outlets spell the word is "wrong", and the "correct" transliteration is one that almost never appears in print? Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 05:24, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Not necessarily. A redirect page from mechitza to mehitza would solve that problem just fine, allowing the uninformed who encountered it in an article to still find the page just as easily. Making the main article title uniform just adds an additional level of uniformity across wikipedia seemingly without detriment at all. RShnike (talk) 18:11, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Oppose adding that section: we already have Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Hebrew)#Standard Anglicized name, and I don't see the problem with it. If there is a problem with it, then the solution is to fix the problem within that section, rather than adding another one with an unclear relationship to it. —RuakhTALK 13:50, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
I take a bit of fault here because this isn't really organized the right way as is, but not quite sure which section you're opposing to. Please clarify if possible. RShnike (talk) 18:11, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm opposing Shirahadasha's proposal, for the simple reason that the existing guideline already says the same thing. I'm pretty confident that Shirahadasha hasn't read this guideline, or else (s)he wouldn't have made this proposal. —RuakhTALK 01:30, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
Generally, article naming should prefer what the greatest number of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature.
This is justified by the following principle:
The names of Wikipedia articles should be optimized for readers over editors, and for a general audience over specialists.
Wikipedia determines the recognizability of a name by seeing what verifiable reliable sources in English call the subject.
Also, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English): "Names not originally in a Latin alphabet, as with Greek, Chinese or Russian, must be transliterated into characters generally intelligible to literate speakers of English. ... Do not use a systematically transliterated name if there is a common English form of the name." — Malik Shabazz (talk · contribs) 23:52, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm assuming you haven't actually read the existing guideline? Please do so before advocating changes to it. —RuakhTALK 01:30, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Very Strong Support I have read the existing guideline, and wikipedia's article naming guidelines, the article should be Mechitza, not mehitza, there are around 16,100 more hits for mechitza than mehitza on google. --Shuliavrumi (talk) 21:15, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment - Shirahadasha, you aren't proposing anything new, the guideline already clearly states what you have said (you're talking about an Anglicized name or a name commonly used in English). Another related guideline for this is WP:COMMONNAME. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 22:17, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposed by RShnike, arguing with above

  • Require the use of inline ḥ to represent ח
  • Promote more stringent following of the guidelines: As the guidelines state, if a topic is related to a specific part of Jewry, may it use that part's specific rules of transliteration. Otherwise, follow the rules. Hebrew, as it stands now, is a mess, with each article and editor choosing what letters to use on the fly.
  • Unless any significant opposition is raised, effect the guidelines as they stand now as policy. Thanks. RShnike (talk) 03:32, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Very strong oppose for the first one. It doesn't show up on a lot of computers, so users are just left with a box. Nothing wrong with just using h. пﮟოьεԻ 57 07:55, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose Wikipedia's general naming conventions guideline imposes limits on what individual WikiProjects can have as guidelines. That guideline says that the primary consideration is making it easy for users to look subjects up using search engines, and to do this articles should use the most common name in English. Given that English users are notorious for transliterating foreign words willy-nilly, this guideline would seem to cast some doubt on the whole concept of requiring foreign-script words to be transliterated in a specific way. The whole endeavor of trying to get English speakers to transliterate Hebrew in a consistent way, whatever its underlying merits, may not be a good fit with Wikipedia's mission of an English-language encyclopedia that tries to be accessible to English-speaking users as they currently are. It's especially problematic if project memebers make proposals, like requiring use of a non-English character many keyboards can't easily accommodate, that not only fail to make accessibility and ease of use their top priority, but don't even seem to be taking them into account. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 23:29, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Very strong oppose As Number 57 wrote, it doesn't show on all systems. This proposal seems contrary to Wikipedia:Naming conventions. Please see my comments above. — Malik Shabazz (talk · contribs) 23:54, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Speedy oppose, I think Shirahadasha explained it well, regarding special characters. Even if consensus is reached on this page, the special character cannot be used per other well-established Wikipedia policies and guidelines. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 22:15, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose A key that all cannot see is not a good idea. Epson291 (talk) 15:30, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose If it matters so much to distinguish how the name is spelt out in Hebrew, then spell the name out in Hebrew. Perhaps the guideline should be clearer that we do not use ISO 259 - ie we don't write Shin as šīn, Tet as ṭēṯ, etc. Transliterations like this are sometimes found when people have sourced material from very academic papers. Jheald (talk) 11:03, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Status as guideline

Tomorrow is one week since Shirahadasha asked to remove this guideline's official status. In this week, (s)he has not commented on any of the issues raised after July 30, or proposed any concrete additions to the guideline. Are there any other reservations about this page? Any open disputes? If so, I'd like to address them quickly, gain concensus, and move on. If not, I don't see why we shouldn't restore the page's status as a guideline. Thoughts? -- Ynhockey (Talk) 15:51, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm justing putting in my two cents, l'moshol with the table for the tzioni transliteration, if you were to ask any Ashkenazi Israeli with a strong background in the english language and the ability to transliterate Hebrew, they will say that, common usage is a ch for a ches and a chof, not the kh/h (The markings only show half the time on my computer), but L'maaseh, everything needs to be looked over, the "Particular subset of Diaspora Jewry" section is in need of tweaking, and b'chlal, u'chlal, we need to set up an editing group for Judaism articles. --Shuliavrumi (talk) 02:47, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
A policy RFC gets general community input. The RFC lasts 30 days unless consensus is reached earlier. I'll start the process below.--Shirahadasha (talk) 05:20, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
Can't see any reason why this shouldn't be a guideline. Has anyone identified themselves as unhappy with it? Jheald (talk) 11:08, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Community RFC on proposed guideline

  • I see nothing wrong with the present text. The section on abbreviations may want to say something about CamelCase abbreviations, like RaMbaM. (Maimonides mentions only Rambam, which may be good enough.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:42, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I believe the exception should be somewhat broader, including not just words with standard anglicized spellings but other words commonly used in English, given WP:Naming conventions' preference for using terms likely to be used in searches over consistent transliterations. See my proposed addition, as well as discussion on the controversy over spelling "Mechitza" vs. "Mehitza", above. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 17:45, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
As I said in the previous section, the 'standard Anglicized name' already covers that. I'm really not sure how to make it easier for a reader to understand; I personally understand it pretty well, but if you could draft an easier explanation, and everyone agrees it's better, we'll use it. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 17:50, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
I think the Mechitza/Mehitza controversy is some evidence of confusion. "Standard" can sometimes imply something normative or officially recognized by authorities. Such a connotation may perhaps be a bit more likely in a guideline that is itself using a normative approach and attempting to establish a normatively standardized method of spelling. "Common" conveys that the prevalence of the spelling may be a matter of empirical, descriptive observation rather than authority. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 03:53, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
To pmanderson, Camelcase abbreviations are an eyesore, I don't think it deserves recognition, but we can't establish a guideline until all opinions are heard and recognized. --Shuliavrumi (talk) 00:28, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
I also think the abbreviations should be treated as a normal word, it is quite ugly and confusing to write RaMbaM, and writing in that manner is not even a part of the English lang. Epson291 (talk) 23:41, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
Any proposals, there has not been anything here in over 10 days? Epson291 (talk) 00:52, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Let's give it the full month (until September 6). I am just as eager as you to do something about this guideline, but Shirahadasha is entitled to the procedure (s)he initiated. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 02:36, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

I've changed the tag from {{Guideline}} to the proper subcat, but perhaps you'd like to consider {{Proposed}} instead, as being more accurate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:16, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. It appears that 30 days expire the day after tomorrow, so hopefully we will also be removing the proposed tag soon. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 18:57, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Formatting

Hi. Would someone who is familiar with formatting please drop me a line regarding how hebrew text can be right aligned, thanx. DRosenbach (Talk | Contribs) 13:50, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Try <span dir=rtl>Hebrew here</span> for inline text and <div dir=rtl>Hebrew here</div> for a Hebrew paragraph. Dan Pelleg (talk) 20:39, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Hebrew Academy 2006 rules

Is anyone aware of the Hebrew Academy 2006 rules?[5] - Gilgamesh (talk) 19:22, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes. I believe this page was already presented in this discussion, and in any case the Academy rules came up many times. As the guideline says, it is loosely based on these rules, but they are certainly not binding. A good essay on the issue can be found at WP:OFFICIAL. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 19:46, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Phonemic conversion at least in grammar related representations

Hello, I suggest; at least when grammar itself is discussed and not general Hebrew names and terms; using a conversion system that would represent better the morphophonemic structure of modern or any private-case dialect of Hebrew, and the common structures of all dialects of Hebrew, and would deliver in Latin script (at least) the same information available to the Hebrew-script reader. It can be legitimate to claim that when discussing modern Hebrew it is a separate thing than other dialects or eras of Hebrew, but I am thinking about the bigger picture. It would be beneficial to show a common system for the readers that might surf between the different articles about Hebrew, and not confuse them with different transcribing systems in each (especially bad ones). Who knows, maybe one day someone would want to merge many of these articles since they are too closely related and the differences can be shortly noted. It would also be good for understanding the structure and the logic of any specific dialect of Hebrew including the modern one, since it is still all very easily based on the same structures. /ta'puz/ and /ta'puʔax/ are on the same stem, and there are usually automatic rules for those phonetic phenomenas. It is a shame to not show the different Hebrew consonants when writing modern Hebrew words in Latin letters, since they are clearly connected to the words in other dialects of Hebrew, and are still represented in the Hebrew script. But in fact, I think the main reason to do it is because there is no reason not to.Ly362 (talk) 02:53, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

If I understand the above comment correctly, you're asking to have each transliteration (not to be confused with a trancription) traceable to the original Hebrew? The answer is, it already is, except the specific case of he vs. het, which are transliterated the same here. What exactly do you suggest? —Ynhockey (Talk) 10:27, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
Transcription is usually phonetic transcription, representing the sounds of a language. Transliteration is copying each letter in the source writing system to a different writing system, letter by letter. Phonemic or morphophonemic conversion is delivering the underlying structure of a language, that from it, the reading rules of any dialect of the same language can be automatically retrieved. If we use ISO259-3 or something based on it, we will be able to enjoy a uniform way of representing the Hebrew words without worrying which dialect or era are we talking about, and without confusing the readers with different methods in each article. Many articles within themselves discuss Hebrew as one language throughout the generations. At least the article called "Hebrew language". This way is also better for explaining the Hebrew grammar no matter which dialect, including modern, it shows the logical structures of Hebrew, and all the private cases of phonetic phenomenas can be drawn from it by defined rules. It makes since to use it even if for the simple reason that in all those articles there are the words given in Hebrew script, giving the Hebrew-script reader a certain amount of information, but the same information is lost for the Latin-script readers, English speakers in this case. It is of course essential if it's true that we do not convert ח and ה to their own Latin letters, this is literally the ABC. Ha-śapa ha-ʕibrit /ha sa'fa ha iv'rit/ [a sa'fa a iv'rit] . Ly362 (talk) 12:03, 29
As long as this proposal is indeed only "when grammar itself is discussed and not general Hebrew names and terms". Debresser (talk) 21:13, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
Great. So who else here agrees? Or can I just start working on the instructions? Where is everybody.Ly362 (talk) 00:52, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
I read your suggestion again and can't really understand what the proposal is. Are you saying we should include transcriptions in addition to the current transliterations? If so, I must disagree. However, maybe I misunderstand. Can you please clarify? —Ynhockey (Talk) 00:11, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
Just the opposite if anything. I mean we should give the common structure of the word. For example מדבר which is pronounced today in Israel usually as /meda'ber/ should be written "mdabber". It gives in one shot all the possible reading styles. Some might say even today /mda'ber/, some might have said in the past /mda'bber/ etc... If you use The most exact version of this standard you can theoretically represent the most ancient pronunciations and the newest ones in one time, "tappuḥ" just like "kaddur", and by predefined reading rules you know that in newer dialects of Hebrew it's already pronounced with a furtive /a/ before the ḥ, although you can also write "tappuaḥ" and it wouldn't contradict the other dialects, but, when comparing words on the same stem it's better to show the first. You also have one Latin letter for each Hebrew letter, so you can easily show the connection between "laban" /la'van/ and "hilbin" /hilbin/ although in today's language the ב sounds different after a vowel. I have to bring somehow a digital version of the ISO259-3 document without the errors. However I agree that in some cases of modern Israeli Hebrew there need to be some additions to it.Ly362 (talk) 00:52, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
Where do you propose putting these strange texts? Keep in mind that this guideline is a result of over 3 years of discussions and deliberations, and direct Academy transliterations, using a double letter on dagesh, etc. were flat-out rejected many times. If you propose to add your version to the existing version, please state in which circumstances and in what place you wish it to be added. —Ynhockey (Talk) 01:00, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
Wherever a Hebrew grammar example word is given. Verb conjugations, nouns, suffixes, prefixes, anything that has to do with the very words that are the grammar explained. Not even terms like "patakh", just the words themselves that are explained, where it makes no sense to not give the reader the whole information s/he would get even from learning it in Hebrew with niqqud. And it would be at least basically uniform in any hypothetical article no matter which dialect of Hebrew is discussed, since those articles might even be theoretically merged, or tightly linked.Ly362 (talk) 01:10, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
Your system might prove inadequate for Modern Hebrew, which displays a partial phonemic distinction between "dageshed" and "non-dageshed" bet, kaf and pe, i.e. הִתְחַבֵּר /hitxaber/ and הִתְחַבֵר /hitxaver/ or between אִפֵּר /iper/ and אִפֵר /ifer/. Dan ☺ 22:21, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
The things you are all saying are true, but then, let me focus us on what is actually going on here. What we are actually talking about here, what I in fact suggested, is a uniform orthography for all Hebrew in Latin letters representations. In some of the articles discussing grammar right now there is only the Hebrew script, and IPA for the phonetic representation, in others there are some systems that are meant to transliterate the niqqud or to transcribe the sounds of that particular pronunciation of Hebrew. That is perfectly fine, naturally, every article or section has its purpose and different tools are used to deliver the important matter in that case, be it Ashkenazi pronunciation, Biblical Hebrew, etc. In some places the pronunciation in fact is not at all the issue, and the important thing is simply the words themselves. In articles about English grammar, what is given is simply the English words as they are, in the well known orthography, this orthography isn't trying to give any information about the exact pronunciation of the particular dialect discussed, or other additional information, if those are needed, the appropriate tools are used. So, I am in fact not talking here necessarily about using some all mighty omni purpose orthography, the point really is just using a uniform one for delivering the Hebrew words in Latin letters, and if we are already doing this then picking a method or at least basing it on an international standard that was made exactly for this purpose and does have the advantages of delivering most of the information anyway, and is in fact basically yes all mighty. If we do want to already use it to the fullest and deliver every information possible and there need to be additions for that, then let's discuss them too. I believe it would be good for any Romanization of Hebrew, but to divide the matter to smaller parts that we can agree on, I say that it should at least be where grammar itself is discussed. That way the same words that are known to be the same in all dialects when reading the Hebrew script will continue to be the same words in Latin script, plus, almost all of the dialectal differences are automatically derived from it with simple rules, and it can spare us the use of other tools, but that is not even the case in many other orthographies, especially English, so we're talking about luxury here, when the point is really using a good uniform ISO orthography for all places. The last examples by the way are very simple, hitḥabber hitḥaber ˀipper ˀiper (according to the ISO the ˀ may be omitted for simplification, but maybe in grammar explaining it's actually good to keep it). Ly362 (talk) 01:11, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
See the next section for my objections. Mo-Al (talk) 04:05, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Problems with ISO transliteration

I have been debating with Yaron Livne as to whether ISO 259 should be used to transliterate Hebrew on Wikipedia. My arguments against are as follows:

  1. How does one notate Modern Hebrew words like הופ /hop/, מבסוט /mabsut/, חנון /χnun/ and make it clear they aren't pronounced */hof/, */mavsut/ (or */mabesut/), */χenun/?
  2. How does one distinguish between Biblical Hebrew /ʕ, ɣ/ (like in the words עזרה /ʕezraː/ and עזה /ɣazaː/), and /χ, ħ/?
  3. ISO 259 doesn't notate vowel length, which is contrastive in some (e.g. Biblical, Sephardi) varieties of Hebrew, and isn't predictable without knowing morphological information about words. Also, in a pronunciation like Ashkenazi Hebrew it would be extremely cumbersome to figure out which of your <a>s were pronounced /a/ and which /ɔ/
  4. The ISO system is opaque to those without a background in the morphophonology of Hebrew and isn't a linguistic standard in the way that IPA is.
  5. As far as I can tell, it has not been widely used.
  6. Is mappiq indicated?
  7. Schwa, which ISO completely ignores, isn't totally regular in Modern Hebrew.

Do others agree? Mo-Al (talk) 04:03, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

I hope that you understood what I said above, and why it isn't really important if the standard itself is perfect. However I can answer some of the points here:
  1. As I answered you on my page, I can suggest my preference which is to use some symbols like ṗ and ḅ for such cases where bb and pp would not work. If what is important to us is the ability to represent any possibility of modern Hebrew then we need to discuss it, however if we just have a problem representing some words then those words could be considered irregular and appear in a theoretical list. And by the way, if the known phonetic rules were applied on חנון, I believe it would be /χanun/. But in anyway the Hebrew script doesn't give you the correct pronunciation either, including with niqqud.
  2. You don't, just like the Hebrew script doesn't. If the article discusses the pronunciation of those words then the appropriate tools should be used to give this information, as it would have been done anyway. In any other case since these words are known to be the same words throughout the course of Hebrew it's better to write them as they are known.
  3. As you implied, by knowing the morphological information about those words you know how they are pronounced. If the word appears by itself then it makes even more sense to give the neutral common structure and that's it. The fact that it can be cumbersome is eventually not really important, since it is basically not intended to give this information. Besides, I think it's not as cumbersome as you think.
  4. What do you mean the ISO259-3 isn't a linguistic standard? The person responsible for it is Prof. Uzzi Ornan (check the article about him) an important Hebrew linguist and member of the Hebrew language academy.
  5. I think it should be started being used, or at least based on. Wikipedia would be a good place to start, and besides, at least as far as simply the table of consonants is concerned and some other basic aspects of it, it is not so different than the systems being used also here to transcribe semitic texts. It really looks like a missing link in all that already exists and is used.
  6. Mappiq is a sign to denote that the ה is the consonant H. It is indicated by "h".
  7. I believe šwaˀ is mostly predictable in modern Hebrew.
Anyhow, the point is, as I said, this system doesn't have to be our all in one solution to all the articles about Hebrew, but a good choice for a uniform orthography to deliver the Hebrew words in Latin letters, which is also good enough to be pretty much yes all in one. Ly362 (talk) 06:11, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
And the title of this section is incorrect since the ISO259-3 is NOT transliteration. It is a phonemic conversion (considering Hebrew the same language since the beginning) or a morphophonolical one (if you look at it only in the scope of modern Hebrew). Ly362 (talk) 06:18, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
In response:
  1. I'm not happy with using lots of ad-hoc and untypeable diacritics which have no official basis. Also, the חנון I am referring to is a slang word which I had heard of, not (I believe) related to the Hebrew shoresh for "grace". I also think it would be absurd to wind up listing all Israeli slang as "irregular". There are a surprisingly large number of words which don't adhere to the begedkefet "rules".
  2. I don't understand what you mean when saying that "these words are known to be the same words throughout the course of Hebrew". I believe the reason the phonemes were written with the same letter was for historical reasons. But a serious discussion of Biblical Hebrew necessitates a way to notate how the language was presumably actually pronounced, so your suggestions is at best an accompaniment for IPA.
  3. Again, this means that ISO is only useful for readers informed in Hebrew grammar. If your goal is to make things easier for newcomers, this isn't a solution. I'm just saying that I'm not under the impression that a person who knows only Ashkenazi Hebrew would have an easy time of figuring out how each <a> is to be pronounced. And this also means that you can not give words in isolation of their part of speech, which could be a big limitation.
  4. I'm just saying that I haven't seen it in actual use much. Perhaps it's more popular than I think, but it's definitely not use by the Akademya, and I'm not sure whether it's popular among linguists or not.
  5. Point taken.
  6. Regarding schwa, I think there are many issues with loan words, which allow things such as triconsonantal clusters, for example אנגלית /anglit/, נשפריץ /naʃprits/ (not */angelit/, /naʃperits/). Also note that תבלו /tevalu/ and תבלול /tvalul/ would be written <tbalu> and <tbalul>, I think, in ISO. Why, then, couldn't they be pronounced */tvalu/ and */tevalul/? Again, it seems you'd have to already know about Hebrew grammar! Mo-Al (talk) 06:41, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
In response, trying to address each point for our knowledge but at the same time trying to focus you on the main point that I've been trying to explain about the whole idea:
  1. I think that חנון is an Arabic derived slang, it's obvious it is not "Hebrew", it entered the modern language as it is like many many words did, modern, or in the past. But we don't literally have to "list" the irregular words. Just like no one is "listing" here right now the irregular words in English. That was my point, the main thing in what I'm suggesting is actually simply using a uniform orthography for Hebrew, as I continue to explain in the next point.
  2. "These words are known..." When a reader would surf between the different Wikipedia articles he would find the same words spelled consistently in Latin letters, just like they are in Hebrew letters. By "same words" I am metaphorically referring to the same orthography, to the same spelling rules, to the same conversion standard. "The discussion of Biblical Hebrew necess... 'at best' an accompaniment for IPA", yes, yes, exactly. Maybe not exactly IPA, maybe somewhere else the reading rules can be explained, but if not then not, in any case, you got it right. The converted text is not to necessarily replace the other explanations, some articles right now don't include any representation of the Hebrew words in Latin letters except for the IPA, which is a phonetic tool, and it's either not accurate for all reading styles (including within modern), or shouldn't even be there since the article isn't about pronunciation, just like you don't include pronunciation instructions in every English grammar example, when all that matters is the words being written, it's about the words themselves, and we better give a good uniform representation of them for the Latin-script readers.
  3. And English orthography is only for people that know English. I hope that by now you understood my point. I'll still try to explain better next time though, and normalize and organize my explanations, so we can all be on the same wave. I think Ashkenazi Jewish who would read it would know how to read it since he knows his language lol.. but... what you're saying is paradoxal, we can't put a word in isolation and expect them to know how to read it (or what are the niqquds), well, of course not, if it's in isolation and has no context... then what is it? Why do you want to show it? If you explained what is this word and what is its context since you had a purpose then there you go. Since you had a context to explain with this word... you gave its context. And again, I'm just answering this specific point in isolation, but the basic idea is it doesn't "have to" fill all those purposes.
  4. The Akademya (just by the way) published a standard when the roads company pressured them, and this standard does not deliver even the modern Israeli Hebrew correctly. You haven't seen it (ISO) much in actual use, but first of all, (as we discussed in the next point) it looks a lot like many things that do happen here on Wikipedia without any supervision really, and also you can see how nice it looks on the page where no one undid my changes (which would be a silly thing to do seeing what was before it which isn't so different and that's the point) "Hebrew verb conjugations". But anyway, we don't necessarily have to talk about this ISO standard as a whole, we could break it to the main points and see what we agree on, I think the basic table of consonants is not hard to agree with, at least when keeping in mind that we want to represent each Hebrew letter with one Latin letter and in a way that would be uniform to all dialects discussed on Wikipedia. I do think there should be some additions that can discussed separately as well.
  5. Ok.
  6. People do sometimes say /tvalu/ when they speak quickly and fluently, that's the beauty of showing all this happening in one spelling. But anyway this word is a verb with the "t" prefix, and the other which I haven't heard about seems like a noun, and that happens to be the difference, so yes as you say, you have to know Hebrew grammar. As I said, like you have to know English grammar when reading English, and this uniform orthography doesn't come to deliver all the grammar teaching at once, only to be used as the uniform agreed upon orthography that happens to also be good enough. Sorry for repeating myself and for the mess. I'm realizing myself what was my whole point during answering all this. Ly362 (talk) 09:25, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
  1. Well would you say "pardes" is a Hebrew word? This is how all languages change!
  2. There aren't consistent rules that determine where /ɣ χ/ appear. They are phonemic, not allophonic. Thus you can't guess with ISO, and have to have something else, like IPA.
  3. This is what phonologists do. They don't care about morphological context. And IPA does let you read stuff in isolation.
  4. Well, it should be apparent at this point that there are many reasons why people can't agree that easily to use ISO. My issues are often with things that appear in practically every word, like begedkefet and schwa.
  5. Well the point of the transliteration is to let people who don't know anything understand how to pronounce words. If they already know about Hebrew grammar, they might as well read the Hebrew. And [tvalu] is definitely non-standard, if heard in rapid speech. Mo-Al (talk) 21:34, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
Ok, let me put it this way - are these points only your "objections" for picking the ISO standard? Or do you oppose using a uniform orthography? The point is we need a uniform Latin-script orthography, like English articles use the English orthography.
  1. Yes, "pardes" is a Hebrew word and so is חנון. And so is every word that is spoken naturally when a speaker is on the Hebrew mode. That is exactly the point. Sorry if I made the wrong impression.
  2. True, there aren't, we can use some addition for that or IPA.
  3. Use any additional tools to give the pronunciation of the word in isolation if needed.
  4. I think we can overcome the different issues one by one, but that doesn't contradict the greater good of using a uniform system for all Hebrew articles and basing it on an international standard that was made exactly for this and has the potential of being used elsewhere. Let's break it down to chunks that we can agree on, perhaps the consonants, at least basically.
  5. Transliteration is copying sign by sign, transcription is the phonetic term. If you need to give a pronunciation guide give it. But do it like you would have done it in articles about English or any language that has an orthography that is in Latin letters, where people aren't required to learn a different alphabet, nor a different Latin orthography in each article, at least not as long as the original one (like Hebrew script) is the same in all of them. In "çabbar" like Hebrew of today, [tvalu] is "non-standard", but it happens in rapid speech exactly because of the structure of the word. But that doesn't matter, there are many speakers who speak "correct" "radio like" Hebrew and they do say something between /tevalu/ and /tvalu/, and in other eras of Hebrew people might have said /tvalu/ and in anyway it is set in the niqqud and that is included in the Hebrew we want to describe uniformly. Ly362 (talk) 02:07, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
Well then, if this system doesn't work well for new words, requires nonstandard ad-hoc additions which have never been used for any official purpose, can't be used without already knowing a significant amount about Hebrew, and doesn't correctly predict when the vowel /e/ will be pronounced in all places, I think it's clear that at the very least this system can't be used for all samples of Hebrew on Wikipedia. Mo-Al (talk) 03:57, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Comment—just to remind everyone, this page is for the transliteration of Hebrew on Wikipedia, not for transcriptions on a very limited amount of pages that deal with articles about the Hebrew language. There are already guidelines for that somewhere, and obviously IPA should be used for transcription because ISO 259 is a transliteration system, and we already have a transliteration guideline for general articles. —Ynhockey (Talk) 10:23, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

ISO259-3 is NOT a transliteration system, in the sense that it does not pass redundant signs from the original script, and does include such that aren't seen in the original. I guess you mean that it is a system that aims to give the original information on the word as opposed to phonetic or phonemic transcription systems. IPA is indeed such a (phonetic/phonemic) system, and when put in diagonal brackets / / it's supposed to give the phonemes, but therefore it only gives the phonemes of one dialect and a lot of the time is limited since it does not imply all the phenomenas that might happen even within the dialect in certain environments, but it is anyway a more complex and able system, unlike simple human orthographies for a given language. The ISO system is meant to give a uniform orthography for all Hebrew matters, without the redundant and varying signs, with more abilities that are important for Hebrew. If we want to make the Hebrew grammar articles at least as useful as those of languages with set orthographies, the present "transliteration" guideline isn't sufficient, and there also needs to be a guideline for including the agreed orthography in the articles as the main representation of Hebrew in Latin letters. Ly362 (talk) 12:16, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
Ynhockey, what other standard are you referring to? I think there's been a lot of confusion about this, so a link would be appreciated. (Note the Wikipedia:IPA for Hebrew standard seems only to apply to Modern Hebrew.) Mo-Al (talk) 21:21, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
The guidelines are quite clear about using IPA for transcription. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Pronunciation and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (pronunciation). —Ynhockey (Talk) 23:34, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
Ah, thank you! In that case, my question is whether there is any point in using transliteration other than IPA for examples of Hebrew in linguistic contexts. My feeling would be no. Mo-Al (talk) 00:01, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
My feeling is it is useless without a normalized Latin orthography. But if not, then let's be consistent and keep the IPA and the Hebrew script and erase the other transliterations and transcriptions that appear on different articles here, and are different not only between every dialect but between every article, they confuse the readers to think that all these are the agreed Hebrew orthographies. But of course that's not a good idea, that would make the articles about Hebrew very cumbersome to the English-speaking-Latin-script-reader, and would make them inferior to articles about languages that have a set Latin orthography and don't rely on IPA. English has a messy orthography, and many times you need to give the IPA. We actually have the luxury to choose an orthography that in most cases won't even require that. Please think about the big picture. Think about the readers. Not just now, but when the articles will grow and improve (and sometimes merge! or link). Ly362 (talk) 01:44, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
I partially agree with your suggestion (though I don't think we need a Latin orthography), but I think we need community consensus before overhauling anything. Mo-Al (talk) 03:59, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
What is the part you agree with, what you said in brackets confused me. But where is this community? How does it work, where is everybody? It isn't just the five of us is it? But by the way, I'll answer you here on what you said above: Actually if you look at the ISO259-3 (Which I have to show you the version without errors), there is also the simplified version of it, and if I sum it up, it says that you can pretty much write modern Israeli Hebrew the way it sounds, with additional "e"s and "a"s and without doubling consonants, and what not, so you see, it's in the standard too. So, since we deal here with grammatical subjects and about many different dialects, I think what we can do is try to stick with the accurate version as much as we can, and manage between this and the simplified version if needed, and this way it would stay within the standard. Although, as I said, the purpose basically is to give a normalized Latin orthography, and not to represent the pronunciation, and not to try to take on ourselves the linguistic work of spelling reform, English orthography can't be used for all samples either. Do you see what I mean? Basically the issue is not even really ISO259-3 or not, it is simply about a guideline for using a uniform Latin orthography, besides the phonetic tools such as IPA. Maybe it won't even be so uniform all the time, and different writers will use different variation or think the words are actually different, I don't know, in fact it doesn't really matter, it's the micro, the point is to just give some common base, and some macro rules that would put some order and readability that fit the language discussed. Ly362 (talk) 04:47, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
I agree that we need consistency, and should fix non-standard schemes in articles. I disagree in that I don't think we need anything besides Hebrew and IPA. As for where the community is, that is something I would like to figure out too (see my comment directly below). Mo-Al (talk) 04:56, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
I saw the posts on the IPA page, that discussion is relevant too, but I really believe that we can not give the English reader a solution for Hebrew articles in the form of IPA, and neither in the form of any another one to one phonetic transcription system meant for one dialect and one reading style only, in every different place. We need to at least use the principle behind the naming convention that is actually agreed on in this very page! Only that what is on this page is not close to suit our needs. Ly362 (talk) 05:05, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
I disagree, since it seems to go against established policy (though it's not spelled out totally explicitly). But clearly this debate is going nowhere, and I don't want to go in circles. Let's get third party input, as I've suggested on your talk page. Mo-Al (talk) 05:13, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
By the way, where is the correct place to be discussing this? Perhaps the village pump? Mo-Al (talk) 04:00, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
Shrugs. :} Ly362 (talk) 04:51, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
I've made a post on Wikipedia talk:IPA for Hebrew which is sort of relevant. But I think we really need outside input on this specific issue we've been discussing. Mo-Al (talk) 04:56, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Since this has definitely strayed far from the topic of this article, I'll move back to your talk page. Mo-Al (talk) 05:00, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Okay, see RfC below. Mo-Al (talk) 05:40, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Forgive me for not having read the above discussion thoroughly (no time). Hopefully not opening a new Pandora's Box: consider that any attempt to unify standards for Modern Hebrew and Biblical Hebrew might be doomed to failure, since these two languages differ vastly in phonology and syntax. Even the system of Binyanim, which at first glance could appear common to both, obviously differs in some aspects, as the Modern Hebrew examples חַרָפּ /xarap/, אִפֵר /ifer/ or הִתְחַבֵר //hitxaver demonstrate. Dan ☺ 08:53, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
I believe ISO259-3 solves these issues basically, either by the accurate version or the simplified version, or maybe some additions would be needed, but that is not the end of the world. However, I have to tell you that I eventually focused and realized the point of what I myself suggested, and the basic discussion is about the need of having a uniform Latin orthography, instead of sending the readers immediately to the complicated helping tools just because the language is originally not written in the Latin letters, so the very details of how to do so is in second priority. But also, I believe it isn't as problematic as you think. It is all basically the same language, same structure, even if some words have changed, and these changes could easily be within the scope of the agreed spelling system, like new words in a language. Ly362 (talk) 11:37, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
A transliteration must at least differentiate phonemes. Dagesh kal is allophonic in Biblical Hebrew but partially phonemic in Modern Hebrew. The Modern Hebrew phonemes ג׳—ז׳—צ׳ (ʤ—ʒ—ʧ) don't even exist in Biblical Hebrew. Shva is a thoroughly different phenomenon in either. A unified transliteration standard for both languages would necessarily have to represent each an every grapheme, whether phonemic or not, which would make it extremely cumbersome. Dan ☺ 21:30, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
Transliteration is copying every sign in the original script to one in the target script. We should neutrally talk about Romanisation here. ISO259-3 is designed to give the common structure of all types of Hebrew. And it does so with simple reading rules. The modern Hebrew phonemes you said are denoted as ǧ ž č. The different realizations of "shva" are basically predicted in all dialects. A unifed romanization standard would definitely not have to represent any grapheme, only the common structure of the word, and ISO259-3 shows how easy it is. Yet! even if there are specific problems, it does not matter, because the point is not using this as a secondary tool like IPA, but simply using it as a basic uniform orthography for all Hebrew in Latin letters, just like English articles use the English orthography. It is not aimed at solving all the pronunciation and explanations issues, that can be done using other tools if necessary, just like in English articles, however the ISO259-3 already does it in such a way, that it can spare us the use of the other tools many times, you can see this ability as luxury. Please think about it carefully. Ly362 (talk) 04:52, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

RfC

Should examples of Hebrew (modern, historical, and/or liturgical) in linguistic articles include some other transcription scheme (e.g. ISO 259) besides IPA? Mo-Al (talk) 05:38, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

  1. Oppose—the short answer is no, per the discussion above. TL:DR version: the argument is about two different things: transliteration and transcription.
  1. The transliteration guideline had been discussed for 3.5 years before being approved, and even if minor points in it might be contentious, there is very wide consensus that the transliterations shouldn't include weird unicode characters, so ISO 259 is out for transliteration.
  2. The transcription guidelines on Wikipedia are universal, and outside the scope of this guideline or RfC. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Pronunciation and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (pronunciation). —Ynhockey (Talk) 10:41, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
You did not address at all the question of this RfC. The question is not whether to change or not to change the systems, but should anything be used in the articles besides them. I would suggest ignoring the word "transcription" in the question, and simply referring to using any system other than IPA to represent the Hebrew in those articles. Ly362 (talk) 05:11, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
As I said in the original post, the short answer is no. We don't need another system, and you're trying to fix something that isn't broken. —Ynhockey (Talk) 10:58, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
"Other than them" may include this very guideline in this page. Ly362 (talk) 14:56, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
  1. Neither!-since the word transcription here is not correct and I in my view it confuses people here. I suggest using an orthography that would deliver the relevant information in the Hebrew script to the Latin-script reader, in the form of a uniform consistent orthography, regardless of pronunciations or redundant signs, just like English orthography is used in English grammar articles. It is not about either transcription nor transliteration.
  1. The present "transliteration guideline" here is in fact a transcription guideline, just like IPA! but for Israeli Hebrew only, and is at best okay for known names of people and places, it has nothing to do with the needs of representing the Hebrew language itself in Latin letters. It isn't useful as a uniform orthography throughout the different dialects and articles of Hebrew. Seeing what I said above, saying that it shouldn't include "weird" unicode characters is like saying that the Czech or Maltese orthographies shouldn't be used in Wikipedia to deliver the Czech or the Maltese texts. But actually if anything then the first thing that we can do is in fact to actually use this "transliteration" guideline in the grammar articles instead of relying on the IPA.
  2. The "transcription" guideline of Wikipedia is indeed titled "pronunciation". And as I said, I'm not trying to deliver the pronunciation, at least not as a secondary helping tool. Despite the title, the second section of it is Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(pronunciation)#Other_transcription_systems and there it talks about official Romanisation that may exist for a given language. That should be the correct term, but what I'm suggesting is beyond the scope of the "transcription" guideline, it is something new that equals the original orthography of a language. Ly362 (talk) 12:05, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
You are wrong. The guideline presented here is not a transcription guideline. The guideline is a direct transliteration guideline which is slightly simplified from some other transliteration guidelines found worldwide (like the Academy guideline). I believe you are confusing transliterations and transcriptions. Tranliteration = Romanization; Transcription = Pronunciation. I hope that makes it more clear. —Ynhockey (Talk) 00:19, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
I think you are mistaken, check the Wikipedia on it. Transliteration is copying every sign from the original script to a unique one on the target script. Transcription as you say is pronunciation. So in any case the guideline here is transcription since you don't differentiate between different letters that are pronounced the same in Israeli Hebrew, hence it is pronunciation. But actually it isn't even this, it is transcription of English Hebrew, since you don't differentiate between ח and ה. So it is not even that.Ly362 (talk) 04:57, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
But in fact, you did not at all address the question of this RfC, I'm going to respond about this above where you wrote your position. Ly362 (talk) 05:07, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
It's incorrect to suggest that a transliteration must have a different representation for each letter. For example, many Japanese transliteration systems don't differentiate between o (お) and o/wo (を). As I told you before, an intricate transliteration system like ISO 259 or the Hebrew Academy system, have been flat-out rejected by the Wikipedia community several times, and there's no point promoting it again. —Ynhockey (Talk) 10:58, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
Agreed. For what you mean. Ly362 (talk) 15:01, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
  1. Oppose-You can't compare this to Maltese of Czech because romanization systems other than the one used on signs in Israel will be unfamiliar to most Hebrew speakers. Anyway, I think that the differences between Biblical and Modern Hebrew are too wide to unify, so ISO is out. Plus, I only see the utility of using transliteration when dealing with historical Hebrew "dialects" or whatever you want to call them, where the pronunciation of some segments isn't agreed upon.Mo-Al (talk) 21:55, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
Am I allowed to respond to you here like normally?
  1. Too bad you made the RfC with the wrong terminology (but anyway I don't understand if this is like any normal discussion). Transliteration is the act of copying every sign in the original script to the new script. This is exactly what ISO does not do, since almost always, the different Ashkenazi/Biblical/Tiberian different vowel lengths and qualities are automatically derived according to context from the five Hebrew vowel phonemes. They are allophones of the five vowel phonemes. You can fearlessly write the same words in biblical and modern Hebrew with the exact same spelling. The differences aren't wide at all from this point of view, and the ISO was made exactly with this in mind. (They are for sure not as wide as the pronunciation differences between today's English and middle English written with the same orthography, which connects me to the next point).
  2. I've repeated several times, it is not about using transliteration or transcription to address local pronunciation or niqqud issues of specific dialects and words, it is about using a normalized Latin orthography like any other language has.
  3. Agreeing that what we're talking about is an orthography, and assuming that we're talking about choosing ISO for it, giving the argument of road signs in Israel or talking about a system familiar to Hebrew speakers is mostly irrelevant and invalid. First, the old road signs are a total mess with no guideline, and the ones that are about to be, don't represent even modern Israeli Hebrew in a way that Israelis understand (kefar? holon?) and no matter what, there isn't one standard that you can say this is what Israelis are familiar with. The field is totally open. People write and read Hebrew in Latin letters in all kinds of messy inconsistent ways, sometimes trying to represent the simple five vowels in an English manner that is doomed to failure, While on the other hand! some might already be familiar with some spellings that are already going on here on Wikipedia and resemble the ISO very much. We have the chance to choose an orthography that does a better job. But as I said and as you stated in the title, the question is whether to use anything. And besides I gave the Czech and Maltese examples, because they include "weird" unicode characters, and that was a respond to Ynhocky.
  4. I feel like no one here listens carefully to the details. Ly362 (talk) 04:15, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
My point was they can use weird characters precisely because they are established. But there's no point in arguing at the RfC, since the point of this was to get other people's opinions. People will get scared away if we have a huge mess of text here. And honestly, I don't have time to do this much reading. Mo-Al (talk) 04:58, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
Then how would people that just pop into the discussion have any idea that they know at all what is the right thing to do? This is ridiculous. It's like asking people on the street to say "yes" or "no". And I fear it is true for the people that's been in the discussion anyway, since no one really pays attention to the precise points everyone makes, and we have no place to discuss things fluently. If this is how it is everywhere on Wikipedia, it's very hard to build anything that's really been covered. This is simply disappointing. Ly362 (talk) 06:33, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
The people who respond to a linguistics RfC will presumably be more knowledgeable about linguistics and Wikipedia policy than any random user. Mo-Al (talk) 22:01, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose Wikipedia:Naming conventions says "the names of Wikipedia articles should be optimized for readers over editors, and for a general audience over specialists". I would argue that the same principle applies in this instance. Why should we adopt the ISO system, which is used almost exclusively among specialists? Neither our readers nor our editors are familiar with it. I think adopting it would be a mistake. — Malik Shabazz (talk · contribs) 05:23, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
Hello, I would like to focus your attention on the main question here. It isn't about yes or no using ISO259-3. The question is should we use any system to represent Hebrew in Latin letters uniformly across Hebrew grammar articles, in a form of a normal orthography. Hebrew is normally written in the Hebrew script, and that script delivers certain amount of information to the Hebrew reader. On one hand it would be a good idea to deliver at least the same information to the Latin-script reader, since a lot of the time that information is very relevant, on the other hand, this is exactly the point of what you're saying, in a way that is "optimized for the readers", unlike IPA. Hebrew grammar articles should not be inferior to English or any other language, just because it is normally not written in Latin letters. They should deliver the Hebrew text before all with a uniform agreed upon readable orthography, just like English grammar articles do so with English orthography. (ISO259-3 is designed exactly for that, and is very readable). Ly362 (talk) 06:24, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
I refuse to believe that there are people who can fully read and understand the esoteric ISO 259, but can't read Hebrew with nikud. And if there are, they should take an hour to learn the Hebrew script. I have actually been very active in adding nikud to Hebrew text on Wikipedia, in order to make Hebrew accessible to those who can read but not understand Hebrew (and as an added value to Hebrew speakers). Perhaps you can do the same. —Ynhockey (Talk) 11:03, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
That makes these articles inferior to articles about languages with Latin orthography. Why not use this very page's guideline for the main representation of Hebrew in the grammar examples as well. If it isn't required by the guideline anyway. Ly362 (talk) 15:00, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
Why do you think that the Hebrew writing system is "inferior" to those of languages written in the Latin script? Mo-Al (talk) 21:49, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
I do not think that the Hebrew writing system is inferior to Latin writing systems, I think that English Wikipedia articles about Hebrew grammar with Hebrew writing system and IPA are inferior. I also think that they would still be inferior if we use completely different systems for each dialect, which is redundant, but let's assume that's another discussion. I'm thinking about the readers. The guideline gives them some normal orthography in names and general terms and in grammar they have to read IPA. They aren't going to read the Hebrew script, especially not the niqqud. At least not if all they want is to have some general knowledge about what Hebrew is like, and not study it and its original orthography. Ly362 (talk) 03:07, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
One thing I find surprising about all of this is that, since Modern Hebrew has a fairly simple phonology, the IPA symbols used to represent almost all the sounds of the language will be familiar to English-speakers. I venture to say that IPA representations of Hebrew give a much more obvious representation of the pronunciation of Hebrew words to even those without knowledge of the IPA than the ISO 259 ones do. The only unfamiliar symbols are <ʔ ʕ ħ χ j ʃ (ʒ)> and some suprasegmentals. That seem much more manageable than having to learn how to predict vowel length, shva placement, and spirantization (esp. in pairs like ervonot vs. elbonot), stress, and what the symbols < ˀ/`, w, ḥ, ṭ, ˁ/ˊ, c, q, š, (ǧ), (ž), (č), ś> mean. Mo-Al (talk) 03:39, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
I think you just showed that isn't that case. All the symbols you showed are simpler in the ISO, both for English speakers and Israelis. Besides maybe w in Israeli Hebrew, but even that is automatically read by many speakers as /v/ and others are likely to quickly get it, and maybe c before a o u, which by the way Uzzi Ornan now suggests using ç instead of c in any case. And also they are already used here in Wikipedia in many unsupervised places. The other ones are maybe morphophonemic b k p but I think this is a good idea thinking about the different dialects (same reason for c and not ts), and also the fact that they are written the same in Hebrew, and in many words Israeli speakers do actually mix up between the two pronunciation of these letters, and aren't sure a lot of the time which is the "correct" sound. Ly362 (talk) 04:45, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
I don't see how I showed it's not the case. The commonly used <ʔ ʕ ħ χ j ʃ> add up to 6 unfamiliar symbols. <ˀ/`, w, ḥ, ṭ, ˁ/ˊ, c, q, š> add up to 8 unfamiliar symbols. Also, I'm not sure if <ç> is used for any other language to represent /ts/. That plus the shva placement and spirantization issues would definitely make it harder for Israelis and laypeople to understand when reading articles on Modern Hebrew. As for dialect unification, we've already had a long conversation regarding the barriers to that, so I'm not interested in going over it all again. Suffice it to say that any system which doesn't indicate spirantization, realization of shva, or vowel length will be cumbersome for Modern Hebrew, and any that does will create problems with dialect unification. Mo-Al (talk) 21:09, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
You are comparing the number of unfamiliar signs as if this is really what counts. You "win" by two, when the whole system you are using doesn't look natural. At least when you put it in / /. The ISO signs look much more familiar. And fine, let's talk just about Modern Hebrew, and write all the shvas and what not just as the simplified version of the ISO describes. Ly362 (talk) 05:41, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
I personally think the IPA looks more natural than the ISO, and in this regard you seem to be in the minority. Given that IPA is standardized and widely-used, while you are proposing either the esoteric ISO 259 or an ad-hoc system which isn't official anywhere, I see no reason why to adopt your suggestion. Mo-Al (talk)
And in most cases vowel lengthens etc are not at all part of the important information the article wants to give. If needed I guess you can add signs on it if you really insist. It isn't significant enough to make you not choose it as the uniform orthography. Ly362 (talk) 04:53, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
Vowel length is phonemic in reconstructed Hebrew, so if you ignore it your orthography is defective (in the technical sense), which I think is undesirable. And I've already explained why ad hoc diacritics and characters are a bad idea Mo-Al (talk) 21:11, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
I would argue that vowel length is phonemic, or important at all in most cases. And I don't understand what do you suggest instead, using IPA? How is that better in this sense?. Ly362 (talk) 05:28, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
Vowel length is morphophonologically predictable but not phonemically so. For example, the two words both pronounced /itonai/ meaning 'journalist' and 'journalistic' in Modern Hebrew differ in niqqud, but your system spells them both the same. How could someone who isn't intimately familiar with Hebrew grammar already (and who could just read Hebrew script with niqqud) figure this out? Mo-Al (talk) 21:54, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
Wow, wow. First of all the two words are pronounced differently in Modern Hebrew. I don't understand, are you an Israeli? (Informatively asking) And of course regardless they are written differently in ISO: ˁittonaˀy = journalist, ˁittonaˀi = journalistic. The first one is not written ˁittonay so it can reconstruct the "alef" in Hebrew script. In Israeli Hebrew the first is pronounced /ito'naj/, the second is pronounced /itona'i/. In plural ˁitonnaˀim vs ˁittonaˀiyim (I would consider also writing the singular ˁittonaˀiy because of that, but it's clear without it as well). I don't understand what you said in the beginning exactly, but, almost ALWAYS you can predict the "vowel length"=niqqud from the five vowels out of the context, the point is, the different vowel length=niqqud is only the realization of the same word in a different place in the sentence, and almost NEVER creates a new word! מוֹרֶה -> מוֹרֵה־דֶרֶך. more -> more-derk. Therefor it is almost never important in the grammatical sense, and it is only important if your purpose is to give the religious aspect of knowing how to read the holy Bible "correctly", and that one would also require the טעמי מקרא. Which is why the niqqud was invented this way in the first place, for the pronunciation of an already dead language, that doesn't have speakers who pronounce the different allophones naturally. But I'd like to remind you that in my head I separated the two discussions, so this is only about the abilities of the ISO and not about the fact that we should use any system as the main uniform orthography, be it even IPA if that one "wins". But I think you made assumptions about ISO without really knowing it, and also you don't fully know all the different Hebrew phenomenas. Ly362 (talk) 06:16, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
I forgot to mention that this is about tiberian vowel lengthes, but when you have more than one niqqud sign that represents a specific allophonic vowel, the niqqud is not even a persistent authentic guide, the same word in the same context can appear differently throughout the bible, and is picked out only because of the matres loconis that is already written in that particular case, and other random reasons, and the established uniform niqqud principles are only a Modern Israeli thing, that was made by the language committee a long time ago, and still keeps on being modified today by the academy. So you can't give the pointed word as an authentic picture of a specific word, only of a specific instance of it. קוֹלוֹת קֹלֹת קֹלוֹת etc... Ly362 (talk) 09:18, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
Ly362, there's something called nikud. If you really want to improve articles on Hebrew grammar, please feel free to add nikud to the relevant Hebrew words, instead of complaining about the IPA which is a general guideline on Wikipedia outside the scope of this guideline. —Ynhockey (Talk) 00:33, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
I have no problem with the IPA, it just isn't the best option for representing the language as a basic tool, it's good as a secondary tool. And the general guideline of Wikipedia also says that besides the IPA, an official Romanisation standard may be given if it exists. And the guideline in this page here doesn't make it clear if it should also be used as such, and if there is any difference between grammar examples and other texts. Why is it used in general Hebrew terms and names and not in the linguistic examples? Ly362 (talk) 05:08, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
There is already a romanization guideline. It's called Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Hebrew). Feel free to use it in any article, including articles on Hebrew grammar. And just to remind you of the essence of the above post, which you have ignored: nikud. Use it. —Ynhockey (Talk) 06:30, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure linguistic articles should have Hebrew script, IPA, and another romanization system. I think it would by unwieldy, unnecessary, and make it more difficult for users to contribute new content. Mo-Al (talk) 21:09, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
Are you thinking about the readers or the editors? Me too I don't think they should include all three. IPA is redundant in most cases when it's not about pronunciation, and it is a specialists tool. Ly362 (talk) 05:28, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
Both. IPA is less a specialists tool than ISO 259, and is certainly more widely-understood. And IPA is only redundant if you only care about sentential structure and not the words themselves, in which case you might as well just use the Hebrew script I guess. But if we want people to have a general sense of what Hebrew sounds like even in syntax articles, then I think IPA is still a better idea for the reasons I mentioned above (more familiar symbols, less familiarity with Hebrew grammar presumed). Mo-Al (talk) 21:56, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
Well, then what you're saying is we should change the unsupervised transliterations in biblical Hebrew articles to IPA as well, right? Ly362 (talk) 05:54, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Comment - Ok, is the question of this RfC relevant at all? What is the purpose of this page right here about naming conventions? Why isn't it used in grammar articles? Ly362 (talk) 06:49, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

What grammar articles? Can you be more specific? —Ynhockey (Talk) 11:03, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
Let's see, "Hebrew grammar" for starters. I'm not trying to fix what is not broken. Right now the articles about Hebrew grammar are inferior to articles about languages with Latin orthography, because ours here use IPA as the main orthography, or other unsupervised systems (that in fact resemble ISO) in biblical Hebrew and such. None actually use the guideline of this very page here. Ly362 (talk) 14:55, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
I do find the purpose of this page confusing. I think it should be clarified whether "in-line Hebrew" refers to examples of Hebrew words and sentences in linguistic articles. Mo-Al (talk) 21:51, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
Ynhockey just said above I should feel free to use the guideline in grammar articles as well. Do we have an agreement on this? Ly362 (talk) 07:02, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
Personally I think it's a bad idea. I don't think we should use Hebrew script, IPA, and some other transcription/transliteration system in linguistic articles. Mo-Al (talk) 20:22, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
Me too, we should only use one normal human Latin orthography, be it whatever we choose. At least when pronunciation is not the issue, and even then, if we choose the right standard it can spare us other tools. Otherwise the articles are inferior to articles that use normal Latin orthography where the most simple reader doesn't have to learn IPA or another script and can go on with her/his homework. Ly362 (talk) 05:32, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
Well, relatively. By using a normal orthography based on the Latin script that they know. Ly362 (talk) 05:43, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
Dude, IPA is widely-known (unlike any system of romanization specific to Hebrew which will only be understood by Semiticists), doesn't require the reader to understand Hebrew grammar (unlike any system which ignores spirantization, shva, or in the case of historical Hebrew vowel length), and is the standard for Wikipedia articles. Mo-Al (talk) 21:59, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
But dude, that is the point. If IPA is so widely-known and so good, why won't we use it in articles about German, French, Italian, Vietnamese, instead of using their own complicated orthographies that many English speakers have no idea about? That won't require the reader to understand their grammar. If the IPA in them is given as a secondary thing to their default orthography, then OK, I suppose we should do the same here, and give the Hebrew script as the primary example, and the IPA as the secondary, and the same in Biblical Hebrew etc. So let's get rid of these semi-ISO examples in biblical Hebrew and other articles. Ly362 (talk) 05:54, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
That actually is done in many cases, especially in articles on phonetics and phonology - they give examples in the native orthography and in IPA. Mo-Al (talk) 04:19, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
Which means this is what we have to do as well. Ly362 (talk) 06:03, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
Okay, so are we in agreement? Mo-Al (talk) 06:08, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
It really depends if you understood what I meant. That like in those languages, the basic orthography appears anyway, and if needed then the IPA is used. The IPA won't appear as the primary representation of the words, where it wouldn't have been so in the other languages (At least principally talking). If so then Yes. But all that is just the uniformity issue, and the fact that the basic orthography is not for addressing pronunciation issues. It doesn't contradict my belief that we should use a romanisation as the basic orthography, and therefor it should be reconstructible to the original script, and be a better romanisation, both in the scope of the common word structure between the dialects, and in the scope of Modern Hebrew alone as well. A romanization that would already give the pronunciation well. But, for Modern Hebrew (as I said below in "scope") this "transliteration" guide here does actually give the pronunciation pretty well, there isn't much reason why it wouldn't. It only have to include ḥ regularly for that. And a stress mark. Ly362 (talk) 09:17, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I figured out I should explain my opinions more clearly. There are several separate points that I think could be agreed/not-agreed on separately.

  1. I believe articles about the languages that don't use a Latin orthography by default, should not be inferior to those that do.
  2. Therefore Hebrew grammar examples should follow the same principle of parallel articles in other languages, and use the basic orthography in all those cases, and use the IPA for pronunciation issues.
  3. Although the previous point can be agreed on independently, I don't think that this can really be put in isolation, because we can not argue that what is going on here is not actually that those languages use their basic Latin orthography, which is the script readable by users of English Wikipedia, or that they would differentiate between grammar examples and anything else. The bottom line is in those languages the same orthography appears everywhere and it's an advantage. Therefor we shouldn't differentiate at all between grammar examples, and other Hebrew texts anywhere else, and give a Latin orthography/Romanization as the basic orthography everywhere.
  4. Because of the previous point, (although the authentic Hebrew script should be given too) since the original and widely used orthography for Hebrew is the Hebrew script one, the Romanization should be fully reconstructible to it.
  5. If used only for Modern Hebrew, the guideline in this page is almost OK in that sense only (reconstruction). I believe it's easy to choose one that would cover all Hebrew dialects, and a better one in many other aspects. Ly362 (talk) 10:57, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
I am quickly losing interest in this back and forth. Unless you can produce new evidence for why your position is preferable to mine, I continue to object to each of these points for the same reasons I have stated elsewhere. Mo-Al (talk) 00:56, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Scope

The "scope" section of this article is confusing, and if construed to mean that Hebrew in linguistic articles should use this policy would cause problems. I would like to change it to the following, but figured I should post here to see how controversial it would be:

This guideline covers:

  • The conventions for naming an article or section based on a Hebrew word ("article naming").
  • The conventions for including a Hebrew word or phrase in an article ("in-line Hebrew").

This guideline does not cover:

  • Transcription or transliteration of Hebrew words or phrases in linguistic articles

The motivation behind having this romanization convention is that the ability to read Hebrew is not a prerequisite for use of the English Wikipedia. However, articles on linguistics require a more precise method of transcription than is appropriate for general use. (See Wikipedia:IPA for Hebrew.)

Mo-Al (talk) 22:17, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

But articles about the grammar of languages that use a Latin orthography don't say "However, articles on linguistics require a more precise method of transcription than is appropriate for general use" so let use another system. They continue to use the same orthography, and give the additional information in IPA. However, I guess a valid argument would be that this method is not suited for all languages, and semitic languages like Hebrew need different tools since more changes occur within the words themselves. But then it would be very weird looking and confusing to use one system for Hebrew terms and names, and another to grammar examples, that might even include the same words. We should choose a system that can represent Hebrew uniformly everywhere. Ly362 (talk) 06:31, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
But this isn't an orthography used for Hebrew! It's more of a tool for convenience in non-linguistic articles. Look at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese). They say that article titles should omit tone marks, even though no practical orthography for the language would ever do so. Mo-Al (talk) 04:02, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
OK, so what you're saying is, languages that use a Latin orthography have an advantage. Ly362 (talk) 08:58, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Look what I found:" The same rules apply for the other Utility Letters, with the following additions: In a bakhal (בכ"ל) or vav hahibur (וו החיבור) letter with a shva, the shva will always be transliterated as e. The word will only be capitalized once for bakhal or vav hahibur letters preceding a yud with a shva. Thus: BeDimona (בְּדִימוֹנָה), not BDimona Lirushalayim (לִירוּשָׁלַיִם), not LiRushalayim or LIrushalayim"

What is that for if not for specific examples of Hebrew? In general cases it would be "To Dimona; To Jerusalem". Ly362 (talk) 19:37, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

It's for "in-line Hebrew" in non-linguistic settings, I would venture. So for example, if you want to lay something like "The phrase LeShana HaBa'a Birushalayim has become a cultural meme", or something like that, it would be absurd to use IPA. However just like no one is advocating that tone marks be omitted in examples of Pinyin in linguistic articles (example: Uyghur language, near the bottom), I think that using this system would be inadvisable. Mo-Al (talk) 04:07, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Comment—Again, what linguistic articles? How is the editor supposed to understand this? Is there is a clearly-set category or list of such articles? Moreover, you are again confusing two different things: transliteration/romanization and trascription/pronunciation. I will repeat again: this guideline is for transliteration. IPA is for transcription. —Ynhockey (Talk) 04:10, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Clarification: if you are advocating using IPA in articles about linguistics (whatever that means), no one said you can't. You can use it for clarifying pronunciation, alongside WP:HE, which is for romanization/transliteration. —Ynhockey (Talk) 04:12, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Regarding the definition of "linguistic articles", I think the question is whether the article is using the words/phrases in reference to whatever they themselves refer to (e.g. Ariel Sharon), or in reference to their phonetic/phonological/morphological/syntactic properties. Mo-Al (talk) 04:22, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
And yes, I understand the difference between transcription and transliteration. But I think you're mistaken in your definition of romanization, as it can refer either to transcription or transliteration. I don't think transliteration is appropriate for linguistic articles (see definition above), for reasons which I've mentioned many times on this talk page. So the question is whether this standard applies to linguistic articles too, and in my opinion the best answer would be "no". But since the scope section doesn't make this explicit I think it needs the addendum I've proposed above. Mo-Al (talk) 04:27, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
Well actually, that's where I don't agree. The "transliteration" here, although the term is problematic, is used as the plain representing orthography of the language, to deliver the words simply in a uniform way across Wikipedia if not beyond. You shouldn't not-apply it to a particular part of the Hebrew texts. It does not come to solve the pronunciation delivery tasks. Just like in other languages. So actually maybe this is what Ynhonkey is trying to say. You are talking about the additional tool of transcribing. The "transliteration" remains everywhere. I would agree if you said that this "transliteration" guide is not good at all, at least if it does not state clearly that you shouldn't write ח with "h". Ly362 (talk) 06:27, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
The thing is, this is a place where I don't think consistency trumps everything. Using <h> for ח is motivated by convenience and established usage, so forcing all articles to switch to <ḥ> might not make sense. However, for linguistic purposes you need something more precise. That's why I think this standard should only cover article titles and isolated words and phrases, rather than words and phrases being used for their linguistic content. Mo-Al (talk) 08:34, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
In my view the thing actually is, that if we don't care about using the same Romanization for both Modern Hebrew articles and other articles, then there isn't any problem using the current one for both jobs, it in fact gives the pronunciation, and even some of the letter differences. Only a stress mark is missing. Ly362 (talk) 09:06, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
Both jobs = grammar and general. Ly362 (talk) 05:38, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
To put it more clearly: there's a big ongoing debate over whether transliteration should be used in linguistic articles, and if so what system would be best. As such, it would be best to make it clear that this article doesn't solve the problem. Mo-Al (talk) 04:43, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
We agree on that. Ly362 (talk) 06:02, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Not to sound rude, but I honestly believe that you are trying to fix something that isn't broken. A few years ago, Gilgamesh, another user who seems to be a linguist, tried to change all transliterations of Hebrew on Wikipedia into some esoteric system that no one but himself could understand, and this damage took months to repair. I just hope this does not happen again, although I can already see it happening on various Hebrew language-related articles, and don't have time to revert everything unfortunately. I just wish you guys didn't make the changes before gaining wide consensus for them.

You are also incorrect about romanization—IPA and other transcription systems are not forms of romanization. In any case, as I said before, no one is preventing you from using both IPA and the WP:HE transliteration guideline together in an article. What is harmful however, is using a standard that's unreadable to any casual user, and follows neither WP:HE nor IPA. An example of this is the damage already done to Hebrew verb conjugation, which doesn't follow any standard guideline. —Ynhockey (Talk) 11:37, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh, you're referring to me, right? I don't think that it's true, there aren't any pages left this way, but in the beginning where ever I did change things that were according to the guideline I didn't realize they were, but in all other places it was where things weren't by the guideline anyway and were already an inch away from being like ISO, so I went for it and "aligned" it to one side, and thought I didn't ruin anything and they would only serve as good examples. There were so many pages with "unreadable" ISO like transliterations already. And now that you explained about gilgamesh, this is exactly the point, it was some of these pages. What was really the point in reverting my edits to the versions that already include what he did, and that there isn't an agreenment on? But nvmd.
Is it also me you're responding to about the "romanization" terminology? Or Mo-Al? I believe Romanization is any form of representing a language in Roman letters, that isn't normally represented so. In Romanization or in any conversion from one form to another script, Transliteration is basically assigning a unique sign in the target script to any sign in the origin script that represents the language, Transcription is assigning a sign for each phone/sound in the language. But I guess these terms are not well defined everywhere. Phonemic conversion is the term used in the ISO259-3 document to differentiate it from both, and say that it gives the basic structure of the word, but I think that this term only means this if it's clear that the scope is more than one dialect of Hebrew, and the phonemes are in fact morphophonems in the scope of one dialect. Ly362 (talk) 12:35, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

P.S. I have notified WikiProject Israel and User:Epson291 (author of many of the articles under discussion) of this discussion. —Ynhockey (Talk) 11:47, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

As both the author of Wikipedia:IPA for Hebrew, which has been referenced here, and several of these "linguistic" articles, the transliteration system is quite good. The transliteration is widely understood, and fairly consistent and common for readers of Hebrew who do not otherwise understand the Hebrew script, but already understand translitered Hebrew. It also is a uniform method across Wikipedia of transliterating Hebrew across articles in Modern Hebrew. Hebrew benefits from being a relatively simple language phonetically, such as in vowels, which allows it not to be written without many or any diacritics. There is nothing stopping adding IPA or any other transcription scheme in addition, but the transliteration scheme is good for a "general audience," which is who Wikipedia is written for. - Epson291 (talk) 18:26, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
I'm not convinced. Look, say, at the article Hebrew grammar. If you wanted to convert all of the examples to this transliteration system, you would lose some information, specifically stress and the location of /ʕ/. You also fail to mark gemination, which some Israelis preserve in some speech registers. I suppose you could add transliteration to each of the examples in the article, but that seems highly redundant, given the large degree of similarity between the IPA transcription and this method of transliteration. Additionally, this standard doesn't work well for varieties of Hebrew besides Modern Israeli. Mo-Al (talk) 20:23, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
Exactly. We shouldn't lose important information in the process of transliteration. The transliteration system should at the very least be reconstructible to the Hebrew script, since it replaces it. Which means assigning something for ע, and of course ח should be clear. But in my view for א ק שׂ as well, especially since you talk about other varieties of Hebrew. Plus, I've noticed that there are no instructions on what to do when wanting to represent the cluster תז like in תזוזה and the cluster כה like in הכהה (made darker) and the cluster סה. Ly362 (talk) 05:36, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
Wait, since when does the trasliteration replace the Hebrew script? (in linguistic articles, of course) Mo-Al (talk) 06:14, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
By replace I didn't mean it will not be given as well. I mean that is should deliver the same information. Ly362 (talk) 08:51, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
Ly362, this is exactly where our views are diametrically opposed; there were numerous discussions on this page and others about whether the transliteration system should be reconstructible to the Hebrew script, and the consensus always came out to the resounding no. As Mo-Al said above, the transliteration system does not replace the Hebrew script. Anyone who can read esoteric systems like ISO 259 is fully expected to be able to read Hebrew. The current transliteration guideline is intended for average readers—people who can neither read ISO 259 (or similar), nor have any interest in learning it. For everyone else, there's Hebrew with nikud, which I hope you will help add to articles. —Ynhockey (Talk) 07:31, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
Ok, doesn't matter, don't think of it as reconstructibility, the important thing is delivering the relevant information. As Mo-Al said: "If you wanted to convert all of the examples to this transliteration system, you would lose some information, specifically stress and the location of /ʕ/. You also fail to mark gemination, which some Israelis preserve in some speech registers". I don't agree that the "transliteration" should be a pronunciation guide, but since the original Hebrew script gives this information, at least the pointed one, and we only give the transliteration because we're in English Wikipedia, then we should at least give the same information (that Israelis do expect). It's not "replacing". At least in grammar, but then it's silly to differentiate. It's funny to give a grammar example in pointed Hebrew letters where you see all the significant information, and then give some general readable Latin transliteration, that doesn't even cover all current reading styles. Ly362 (talk) 08:51, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
I basically agree. Non-linguists may not care about these details, but many linguists do. And if that necessitates another system of transcription (I'm not saying transliteration because, unlike Yaron, I don't think it necessary), then it would be highly inconvenient to have to also use the transliteration this page mandates in an article like Hebrew grammar. Mo-Al (talk) 16:38, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
Ok, even if you just think of the information that is relevant for the Modern Israeli speakers, all that has to be done is adding these one or two things you've mentioned, I'm not even sure about gemination. We can simply convince the people here to rediscuss the addition of ע, and maybe few others. But, I think that even without it, it wouldn't be worth choosing to not use the "transliteration" that is already used elsewhere, as the basic representation of grammar examples, just like in other languages. It almost gives all of the pronunciation anyway, while giving the sense of uniformity and of normal orthography, and it can theoretically change and improve, and be even better at making the IPA redundant. We should leaves the representation rubric for the "transliteration" which can be discussed and changed, either in the scope of one dialect or of more, and leave the pronunciation issues to IPA, just like other languages. Ly362 (talk) 18:01, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Alright - Do we have an agreement about using the Hebrew naming conventions guideline in grammar examples as well? Ly362 (talk) 12:09, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I still disagree. Mo-Al (talk) 00:50, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
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