Through the Looking-Glass: Roman Letters in Phonics for Arabic As a Part of Multimedia Support
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Recent Technological Advances in Education Through the Looking-Glass: Roman letters in phonics for Arabic as a part of multimedia support MOSA AHMED EBRAHIM MOHAMED Computer Science Department WASEDA University Okubo, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo JAPAN Educational Technology Department TANTA University Tanta, Al Gharbya EGYPT [email protected] KAKEHI KATSUHIKO Computer Science Department WASEDA University Okubo, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo JAPAN [email protected] Abstract: - As a part of multi-media support system for Arabic e-learning, some vehicle should be provided for training students to pronounce Arabic text themselves. Since the Arabic alphabet is phonetic, it seems a good idea to transliterate Arabic into Roman, the most popular language, but there exists a big gap between Arabic and Roman besides a difference between their alphabets; scripting directions. Arabic script is written from right to left, whereas Roman from left to right. What kind of transliteration would let students jump over this gap? Our solution is to render transliteration results as if seen Through the Looking-Glass. We report our process of trials and errors for seeking solutions, and our ultimate solution. Key-Words: - E-Learning, Multimedia supporting, Arabic learning, Arabic transliteration. 1 Introduction We are living in the age of the e-Learning and Islamic religion and Arabian countries are multimedia. This is why there is an increasing need increasing their presence in the world. The Arabic for cultural exchange and language learning all over language is one of the most popular languages in the the world. Also there is wide range of demand for world, as there are about fifty seven Islamic learning Arabic worldwide. However learning countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and South Arabic is not easy for many people. There are lots of America, in addition to the twenty two Arabian reasons make it difficult; Arabic scripting is one of countries in Africa and Asia. them. There is a strong desire to learn the Islamic Arabic way of scripting is as follows. A sentence culture and Arabic language worldwide, as well as a is a sequence of words arranged from right to left. A huge numbers of tourists all over the world who word is a sequence of 29 Arabic letters, arranged choose to visit the Arabian and the Islamic countries also from right to left. Each letter shows a syllable for cultural purposes and sightseeing. Moreover the with an accompanying diacritic. Basically each foreigners who want to work in the Arabian letter itself designates a leading consonant of the countries for many purposes, such as political syllable. Each of the 10 Arabic diacritics designates relations, trade relations, cultural exchanges; in whether the syllable consists only of that leading addition to the Non-Arabic learners who want to consonant, or the syllable contains one of the 3 study the Islamic religion and the Arabic language Arabic vowels “a”, “i” and “u”, in one of the three in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. ways: having the ending consonant “n”, doubling its leading consonant, or having no consonant ISBN: 978-1-61804-172-2 120 Recent Technological Advances in Education modification. Every letter has three different forms transliterate Arabic diacritics. Moreover we are depending on the position in a word, i.e., at the looking for arranging the Roman transliteration beginning, in the middle, and at the end. in total, from right to left to match Arabic text direction, and there are more than 900 different symbols used for to be ready for appearing under the original Arabic Arabic scripting. text in the Arabic multimedia support. Also, we are There have been many studies (Abdalla, A, looking for representing the new transliteration 2006), (Kurdi, M, 2002) on the learning of Arabic; according to the idea of “Through the Looking- but these studies produced only Arabic materials, Glass”, this means every English letter and symbol textbooks, slides by slides, courseware and e-books. will be reversed horizontally to match Arabic However there is no completely correct direction from right to left. transliteration for Arabic in the available textbooks and Arabic e-Learning systems, also there is no determined method to transliterate Arabic alphabet, 4 The Study syllables and sounds which depend on the Arabic Arabic has 29 alphabets; that means Arabic has diacritics. Moreover we have not found any several letters whole leading consonants designate complete Roman transliteration for Arabic diacritics, unique sounds other than English ones. Most of the so we provide a complete Roman transliteration for current Arabic learning sources concerned about Arabic alphabet, diacritics, syllables and sounds. using Roman letters to transliterate Arabic text There are no educational methods to train the very without taking care of these Arabic special sounds. beginner students of the Arabic to read (pronounce) As a result of current and available Roman Arabic texts by themselves. There is no e-learning transliteration, there are some mistakes leading to system with full multimedia support for Arabic wrong pronunciation. learning especially Arabic transliteration into We started our study by analyzing a lot of the Roman letters. current and available Arabic textbooks, courseware and online learning materials that were published and introduced for non-Arabic speakers. 2 Problem Formulation These analyses helped us to find out some of the Multimedia has a great effect generally in weak and wrong Roman transliteration which knowledge acquisition and skills development. Also belongs to the Arabic Special alphabet and sounds. it has a good effect particularly in languages Then we prepared a new Roman transliteration for teaching for introducing the basics, grammar and Arabic Special alphabet into some Roman letters vocabulary, and developing the skills of the reading, and symbols, to have a clear Arabic transliteration writing, listening and talking. into Roman and to avoid the wrong pronunciation It is important to establish and build-up a new and any misunderstanding. educational multimedia support system for Arabic e- We choose a non-English letter for each letter of learning to help very beginner learners to read Arabic specific sound; yet choose symbols (pronounce) the Arabic text. There are lots of resembling an English letter of nearest sound, as studies on the Romanization of Arabic (Hassan, shown in Fig. 1. Heba, 2012), (Nagato, Y, 2011). However they do Our second trial was holding up workshop not match our requirement that transliteration be workshops with Arabic speakers, teachers and non- displayed just under the original Arabic text as Arabic speakers from Japan, Indonesia and Mexico exemplified in Fig. 5. We had to invent a new to determine the new transliteration. Roman transliteration for Arabic. Here, we present The results are that each Arabic letter with a our study that concerns how to transliterate an diacritic is transliterated to a pair of Roman symbols, Arabic text into a sequence of Roman letters as one for the letter by Table1 and another for the phonetics signs with the help of computer. The diacritic by the Table 2. transliteration should be written and read from right to left since an Arabic text runs in that direction. Fig. 1 Arabic specific sounds and their transliteration س ه غ ع ظ ط ض ص ذ خ ح Objectives ALPH 3 Research objectives are finding out the most ES ĥ ǩ ẑ š ď ť ž â ǎ h ṧ suitable Roman symbols to transliterate Arabic ALPH: Arabic alphabet ES: Roman symbols alphabet and looking for the best Roman symbols to ISBN: 978-1-61804-172-2 121 Recent Technological Advances in Education Table 1 Table 2 horizontally. We decided that every Roman symbol Arabic letters transliteration Arabic diacritics appearing in the transliteration will be mirrored in transliteration its form. So Roman transliteration of Arabic greeting could be re-transliterated from right to left ALPH RSL ALPH RSL ALPH RSL AD RSL and every letter could be reversed using computer effects, as shown in Fig. 2 C. a ََع l ل s س a أ The results of the reading (pronunciation) and i the students suggestions were that it is better to َع m م ṧ ش b ب u capitalize only the initial of the whole sentence to be َُع n ن š ص t ت h transliterated as shown in Fig. 2 D., this is for ه ď ض c ث .sentences which include only two words ˳ َْع w و ť ط j ج ᾶ For the sentences which include more than two َع y words, the students suggested capitalizing the first ى ž ظ ĥ ح ĩ َع t (right most) symbol in each word, i.e. a complete ة â ع ǩ خ ,” اَ ْل سَّﻻمََّّ َعلَ ْي كنََّّوَََّّّر ْحمةَّ ََّّهللاََّّوَََّّّبر َكات ه “ ũ Arabic greeting َع ْ َ َ ِ َ َ َ a ء ǎ غ d د ẚ could be transliterated as shown in Fig. 2 E., in u which each initial letter of a word is capitalized to ؤ f ف ẑ ذ ỉ .i indicate its right-to-left direction ئ q ق r ر aa ủ آ k ك z ز Fig. 2 Transliteration ever tried AD: Arabic diacritics ALPH: Arabic alphabet Roman ESL: Roman symbols RSL: Roman symbols اعَ ْلعـسـﻻ مع َـََـْ ُـُـْع symbols َّ ُ َ ْ ْ (Lower case) (Lower case) A arranged from left to aal˳sᾶlamu âalay˳kum˳ An experiment took place for this new Roman right Roman transliteration by asking the students to read symbols اعَ ْل َّـسـﻻ ُمع َـََ ْـْ ُـُ ْـْع B arranged (pronoun) the Roman transliteration. Also, from right to ˳muk˳yalaâ umalᾶs˳laa questionnaire has been arranged to find out the left Mirrored preferable students choices and opinions to build up Roman اعَ ْلعـ َّسـﻻ ُمع َـََ ْـْ ُـُ ْـْع symbols the best Roman transliteration.