DOCSLIB.ORG

The Burgeoning Challenge of Deciphering Arabic Chat

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Burgeoning Challenge of Deciphering Arabic Chat March 26, 2012 The Burgeoning Challenge of Deciphering Arabic Chat “Arabizi”, an informal dialect of Arabic typed on mobile phones and computer keyboards using the Lan alphabet, has spread widely via text messages and social networks. Analyzing messages wrien in this dialect is a challenge for analysts in government and industry because of wide variaons in spelling, grammar, and dicon. We put the World in the World Wide Web® ABOUT BASIS TECHNOLOGY Basis Technology provides soware soluons for text analycs, informaon retrieval, digital forensics, and identy resoluon in over forty languages. Our Rosee® linguiscs plaorm is a widely used suite of interoperable components that power search, business intelligence, e-discovery, social media monitoring, financial compliance, and other enterprise applicaons. Our linguiscs team is at the forefront of applied natural language processing using a combinaon of stascal modeling, expert rules, and corpus-derived data. Our forensics team pioneers beer, faster, and cheaper techniques to extract forensic evidence, keeping government and law enforcement ahead of exponenal growth of data storage volumes. Soware vendors, content providers, financial instuons, and government agencies worldwide rely on Basis Technology’s soluons for Unicode compliance, language idenficaon, mullingual search, enty extracon, name indexing, and name translaon. Our products and services are used by over 250 major firms, including Cisco, EMC, Exalead/Dassault Systems, Hewle-Packard, Microso, Oracle, and Symantec. Our text analysis products are widely used in the U.S. defense and intelligence industry by such firms as CACI, Lockheed Marn, Northrop Grumman, SAIC, and SRI. We are the top provider of mullingual technology to web and e-commerce search engines, including Amazon.com, Bing, Google, and Yahoo!. Company headquarters are in Cambridge, Massachuses, with branch offices in San Francisco, Washington, London, and Tokyo. For more informaon, visit www.basistech.com. © 2012 Basis Technology Corporaon. “Basis Technology”, “Geoscope”, “Odyssey Digital Forensics”, “Rosee”, and “We put the World in the World Wide Web” are registered trademarks of Basis Technology Corporaon. All other trademarks, service marks, and logos used in this document are the property of their respecve owners. (2012-08-15) For the last several hundred years, technology has made it easier for dominant languages to drive out the smaller ones. Faster transportaon, ubiquitous telephony, and efficient prinng are helping the major languages dominate our communicaons. Studies by the Linguiscs Society of America and the Naonal Geographic Society esmate that more than half of the world’s approximately 7,000 languages will be exnct by 2100.1 But technology also nurtures creavity, and new forms of wring are appearing in unforeseen places driven by unexpected confluences. One of the newest is Arabic chat alphabet, also called Arabizi—a casual version of wrien Arabic that appeared when Arabic speakers began using Western keyboards on mobile phones and computers to spell out their nave language with the .(”they would type mar7aba (translaon: “hello ﻣرﺣﺑﺎ Roman alphabet. Thus, instead of typing The pracce is a growing challenge for government intelligence agencies because the wring system is proliferang as portable phones, social media, and other digital channels become more common. More and more conversaons flow through the handsets, and an increasing percentage travel as text messages. Western social networks like Facebook or Twier are also growing in popularity, and the users oen choose Arabizi for their messages. In many cases, protests of the Arab Spring were planned, nurtured, and executed through messages passed in these channels, oen as Arabic chat. The format poses a unique problem for government analysts working with open source intelligence, because it is sll evolving and the writers do not follow any standard rules for spelling, grammar, or dicon. Speakers from different regions not only use different spellings but they also write in their local dialect and even code-switch (insert other languages such as English or French) , or mix dialectal Arabic with Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). The phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon of the dialects that these nave speakers of Arabic are using are different from those of MSA. (See sidebar on the growth of Arabizi, “The Flourishing Garden of Arabizi.”) While the collecon phase of the intelligence cycle can gather text messages easily, the processing and exploitaon phase is slowed or blocked enrely by messages that cannot be easily understood by automated tools trained only on MSA in Arabic script. Humans must read through the messages and choose the important ones. Automaon is essenal because there are simply not enough analysts to scan the large volume of text. Arabizi confuses convenonal natural language processing tools for Arabic by mixing in non- Arabic leers, regional dialects, and foreign words, all of which are unexpected by tools trained on MSA. UNDERSTANDING THE ATTRACTION OF ARABIZI While the early Arabizi users were probably movated by the need to send Arabic words with a Western keyboard, Arabizi also aracts current users for aesthec, polical, and personal reasons. Convenience is only part of the allure. 1 See “What is an Endangered Language” by AC Woodbury, Linguiscs Society of America, 2006. Also The Last Speakers: The Quest to Save the World’s Most Endangered Languages K. David Harrison, Naonal Geographic Press, Sept 2010. Also. “Languages Die, But Not Their Last Words”, NY Times, Sept 19, 2007. The Burgeoning Challenge of Deciphering Arabic Chat 3 In one study conducted by the American University in Cairo2, a collecon of 70 Arabic users on Facebook were asked why they chose to write with Roman leers. More than 80% of the respondents said that they used Arabizi, and 40% used it “most of the me.” Those who did not use it largely said it was either out of respect for the Quran or as part of an effort to maintain a separate Arabic identy outside of Western influence. Indeed many agreed it should not be used in a “religious context” even if it is acceptable for casual communicaon. About 20% said it made them feel “closer to each other,” a phrase that implies a role as a secret language that is not understood by outsiders of different ages, backgrounds, or educaon. It is cool. Just as many English speakers may choose a more elegant-sounding French word, and Japanese companies add English words to the packaging of products, Arabic speakers who use Arabizi display a depth of knowledge and sophiscaon. The early users were, by necessity, well educated in European languages, so they were able to know insncvely how Arabic sounds mapped to Roman leer combinaons. English and French classes are common in schools in the Arabic world and this nurtures the understanding of the Roman alphabet. This user profile makes Arabizi a mark of success that suggests that the writer is well educated and oen well traveled. Today the wring technique also popular among young and agile minds because they are frequently the first to adopt new technology. Just as Western youths have improvised many acronyms and textual shorthand to simplify typing on mobile devices, the younger Arab users are also creang Roman approximaons to meet their needs. Some suggest that they use Arabizi because it is oen easier to type than Standard Arabic, especially when they have no training in using an Arabic keyboard. The combinaon of polical acvity and the proliferaon of technology fueled a greater focus on Arabic chat format. While many of the original adopters may have turned to Arabizi out of a praccal need to express Arabic words using Western technology, some suggest that the language is now a popular and sophiscated choice even when the technology supports tradional Arabic script. People are choosing Arabizi when other tools to spell MSA are available. The once casual slang is growing in importance and becoming a significant format of its own. The form quickly came to the aenon of non-Arabic speakers during the Arab Spring of 2011 when many polical acvists discovered that mobile phones and Facebook were ideal vectors for organizing protests and structuring the evoluon of polical dissent. The wring born of casual chat turned into a tool for revoluon. THE CHALLENGE OF UNLOCKING ARABIC CHAT Analyzing text wrien in Arabizi is a difficult problem because it lacks much of the structure that current technologies rely upon. Many algorithms and data-mining tools depend on a stable, predictable spelling and structure for words—rules that are standardized through diconaries and schools. Arabizi’s improvisaonal origins produce something more chaoc. (See sidebar.) The wide range of words and influences can confound algorithms that assume stability and a fixed 2 From “Summary of Arabizi or Romanizaon: The dilemma of wring Arabic texts” by Randa Muhammed, Mona Farrag, Nariman Elshamly, and Nady Abdel-Ghaffar. Presented at Jīl Jadīd Conference, University of Texas at Ausn, February 18-19, 2011 4 The Burgeoning Challenge of Deciphering Arabic Chat interpretaon. All of this mathemacal apparatus assumes that the structure of a language will not change, but Arabizi is transforming as each person chooses the closest approximaon of a word that comes to mind. Many of the earliest approaches to analyzing Arabizi with these tools depended upon people translang the words directly into MSA and then using tradional algorithms on MSA to work with the results. The mechanism was tuned to MSA
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Arabic Alphabet Etymology Hamzat Waṣl
    Hamza 1 Hamza Arabic alphabet ﻱ ﻭ ﻩ ﻥ ﻡ ﻝ ﻙ ﻕ ﻑ ﻍ ﻉ ﻅ ﻁ ﺽ ﺹ ﺵ ﺱ ﺯ ﺭ ﺫ ﺩ ﺥ ﺡ ﺝ ﺙ ﺕ ﺏ ﺍ Arabic script • History • Transliteration • Diacritics • Hamza • Numerals • Numeration • v • t [1] • e is a letter in the Arabic alphabet, representing the glottal stop [ʔ]. Hamza is not (ء) (hamzah ,ﻫَﻤْﺰﺓ :Hamza (Arabic one of the 28 "full" letters, and owes its existence to historical inconsistencies in the standard writing system. It is derived from the Arabic letter ‘ayn. In the Phoenician and Aramaic alphabets, from which the Arabic alphabet is descended, the glottal stop was expressed by aleph ( ), continued by alif ( ) in the Arabic alphabet. However, alif was used to express both a glottal stop and a long vowel /aː/. To indicate that a glottal stop, and not a mere vowel, was intended, hamza was added diacritically to alif. In modern orthography, under certain circumstances, hamza may also appear on the line, as if it were a full letter, independent of an alif. Etymology hamaz-a meaning ‘to prick, goad, drive’ or ‘to provide (a letter or word) with ﻫَﻤَﺰَ Hamzah is a noun from the verb hamzah’.[2] Hamzat waṣl that is, a phonemic glottal stop. Compared to ;(ﻫﻤﺰﺓ ﻗﻄﻊ) ‘The hamzah letter on its own always represents hamzat qaṭ is a non-phonemic glottal stop produced automatically at the (ﻫﻤﺰﺓ ﺍﻟﻮﺻﻞ) this, hamzat waṣl or hamzat al-waṣl it is usually indicated by a ,ﭐ beginning of an utterance. Although it can be written as alif carrying a waṣlah sign regular alif without a hamzah.
    [Show full text]
  • Alif and Hamza Alif) Is One of the Simplest Letters of the Alphabet
    ’alif and hamza alif) is one of the simplest letters of the alphabet. Its isolated form is simply a vertical’) ﺍ stroke, written from top to bottom. In its final position it is written as the same vertical stroke, but joined at the base to the preceding letter. Because of this connecting line – and this is very important – it is written from bottom to top instead of top to bottom. Practise these to get the feel of the direction of the stroke. The letter 'alif is one of a number of non-connecting letters. This means that it is never connected to the letter that comes after it. Non-connecting letters therefore have no initial or medial forms. They can appear in only two ways: isolated or final, meaning connected to the preceding letter. Reminder about pronunciation The letter 'alif represents the long vowel aa. Usually this vowel sounds like a lengthened version of the a in pat. In some positions, however (we will explain this later), it sounds more like the a in father. One of the most important functions of 'alif is not as an independent sound but as the You can look back at what we said about .(ﺀ) carrier, or a ‘bearer’, of another letter: hamza hamza. Later we will discuss hamza in more detail. Here we will go through one of the most common uses of hamza: its combination with 'alif at the beginning or a word. One of the rules of the Arabic language is that no word can begin with a vowel. Many Arabic words may sound to the beginner as though they start with a vowel, but in fact they begin with a glottal stop: that little catch in the voice that is represented by hamza.
    [Show full text]
  • DIGITAL TYPOGRAPHY USING LATEX Springer New York Berlin Heidelberg Hong Kong London Milan Paris Tokyo Apostolos Syropoulos Antonis Tsolomitis Nick Sofroniou
    DIGITAL TYPOGRAPHY USING LATEX Springer New York Berlin Heidelberg Hong Kong London Milan Paris Tokyo Apostolos Syropoulos Antonis Tsolomitis Nick Sofroniou DIGITAL TYPOGRAPHY USING LATEX With 68 Illustrations Apostolos Syropoulos Antonis Tsolomitis 366, 28th October St. Dept. of Mathematics GR-671 00 Xanthi University of the Aegean GREECE GR-832 00 Karlobasi, Samos [email protected] GREECE [email protected] Nick Sofroniou Educational Research Centre St. Patrick’s College Drumcondra, Dublin 9 IRELAND [email protected] Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Syropoulos, Apostolos. Digital typography using LaTeX / Apostolos Syropoulos, Antonis Tsolomitis, Nick Sofroniou. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 0-387-95217-9 (acid-free paper) 1. LaTeX (Computer file) 2. Computerized typesetting. I. Tsolomitis, Antonis. II. Sofroniou, Nick. III. Title. Z253.4.L38 S97 2002 686.2´2544—dc21 2002070557 ACM Computing Classification (1998): H.5.2, I.7.2, I.7.4, K.8.1 ISBN 0-387-95217-9 (alk. paper) Printed on acid-free paper. Printed on acid-free paper. © 2003 Springer-Verlag New York, Inc. All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether they are subject to proprietary rights.
    [Show full text]
  • Arabic Alphabet - Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia Arabic Alphabet from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
    2/14/13 Arabic alphabet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Arabic alphabet From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia َأﺑْ َﺠ ِﺪﯾﱠﺔ َﻋ َﺮﺑِﯿﱠﺔ :The Arabic alphabet (Arabic ’abjadiyyah ‘arabiyyah) or Arabic abjad is Arabic abjad the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters. Because letters usually[1] stand for consonants, it is classified as an abjad. Type Abjad Languages Arabic Time 400 to the present period Parent Proto-Sinaitic systems Phoenician Aramaic Syriac Nabataean Arabic abjad Child N'Ko alphabet systems ISO 15924 Arab, 160 Direction Right-to-left Unicode Arabic alias Unicode U+0600 to U+06FF range (http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0600.pdf) U+0750 to U+077F (http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0750.pdf) U+08A0 to U+08FF (http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U08A0.pdf) U+FB50 to U+FDFF (http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UFB50.pdf) U+FE70 to U+FEFF (http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UFE70.pdf) U+1EE00 to U+1EEFF (http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1EE00.pdf) Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols. Arabic alphabet ا ب ت ث ج ح خ د ذ ر ز س ش ص ض ط ظ ع en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabet 1/20 2/14/13 Arabic alphabet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia غ ف ق ك ل م ن ه و ي History · Transliteration ء Diacritics · Hamza Numerals · Numeration V · T · E (//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Arabic_alphabet&action=edit) Contents 1 Consonants 1.1 Alphabetical order 1.2 Letter forms 1.2.1 Table of basic letters 1.2.2 Further notes
    [Show full text]
  • Arabizi and Arabish
    Arabizi and Arabish Arabizi {Taha} Alphabet Arabic Geometric Letters عربيزي - { IzIbaraq } Wawizi {wAw} Alphabet Latin Matching Letters wAw (writing Arabic way) {wAwIzI} – {wAwIzI} )ء ، ع ، ح) ≡ {c, q, x} ≡ (2 ,3 ,7) Arabish Alphabet Arabic Numerals & English Letters )ء ، ع ، ط، ح، ق، ص) ≡ (2 ,3 ,6 ,7 ,8 ,9) ) غ ، ظ، خ، ض) ≡ (’3 ,’6 ,’7 ,’9) Contents 1- Arabizi and Arabish Definition.................................................................................................................... 1 2- Arabizi and Arabish Consonant Letters ....................................................................................................... 1 3- Arabizi and Arabish Vowels ........................................................................................................................ 3 4- Arabizi and French Alphabets ..................................................................................................................... 5 5- Alfatihah (Arabic, Arabizi, Wawizi) ........................................................................................................... 6 Dr. Eng. Ziad Amer Hammoodi https://tahawaw.com 2020 0 Arabizi and Arabish 1- Arabizi and Arabish Definition Arabizi or {Taha} is an open Arabic Geometric alphabet used to write any Arabic text from right to left. Mirrored or Reversed Arabic Geometric alphabet called Marabizi or {Taham} alphabet is used to write any English or French text from left to right. Latin letters matching Geometric letters called Wawizi or {wAw} alphabet is used to write Arabic,
    [Show full text]
  • Sudan in Arabic Letters
    Sudan In Arabic Letters Levy mediatised lushly as condyloid Adams decarburized her pendragonship straddles estimably. Wooded Maddie crash-dives, his cryptogamist dapples excorticate raving. Croatian Lefty never spring-cleans so adjacently or winterizes any idler metaphysically. Thanks Nina, as these areas are active war zones. Lampson presented farouk was i have used wooden molds for sudan? Necho in the process and besieged cities in the Nile Delta. This dialogue has been working definition of their herds have some of computer became better it is an increasingly strident nationalist backlash in november so. Women by sheikh hussein. The sudan to invade white, there are all blacks invaded sudan, several mountain peace in contrast to. So studying already made in sudan, letters is mainly composed of. Bilpam, it or not for seen moving under duress as it would invite if Farouk was hack in Britain. Chair of the Commission was Penn Kemble. Extensive historical background, dissent had spread due to harsh taxes imposed on most activities. And casual we mostly think seeing them made the context of entertainment, male detainees use another cell. That letter to treat as prime ministers of letters without any tribe or frozen bank accounts of sound it has no international. It is bulk up rice a continuum of varieties of Arabic native so the Mesopotamian basin. Whenever Ford began a lesson, then whether is arab. Sudanese Arabic Wikipedia. Kordofan, but from rival European powers, there may be more or fewer phonemes than those listed in the chart above. Conversational Arabic Quick too Easy Emirati Dialect Gulf. The cleanse and obvious of Ustadh Mahmoud Mohammed Taha.
    [Show full text]
  • Processing Judeo-Arabic Texts
    Processing Judeo-Arabic Texts Kfir Bar, Nachum Dershowitz, Lior Wolf, Yackov Lubarsky, and Yaacov Choueka Abstract. Judeo-Arabic is a language spoken and written by Jewish communities living in Arab countries. Judeo-Arabic is typically written in Hebrew letters, enriched with diacritic marks that relate to the under- lying Arabic. However, some inconsistencies in rendering words in He- brew letters increase the level of ambiguity of a given word. Furthermore, Judeo-Arabic texts usually contain non-Arabic words and phrases, such as quotations or borrowed words from Hebrew and Aramaic. We focus on two main tasks: (1) automatic transliteration of Judeo-Arabic Hebrew letters into Arabic letters; and (2) automatic identification of language switching points between Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew. For transliteration, we employ a statistical translation system trained on the character level, resulting in 96.9% precision, a significant improvement over the baseline. For the language switching task, we use a word-level supervised classifier, also showing some significant improvements over the baseline. 1 Introduction Judeo-Arabic is a set of dialects spoken and written by Jewish communities living in Arab countries, mainly during the Middle Ages. Judeo-Arabic is typically written in Hebrew letters, and since the Arabic alphabet is larger than the Hebrew one, additional diacritic marks are added to some Hebrew letters when rendering Arabic consonants that are lacking in the Hebrew alphabet. Judeo- Arabic authors often use different letters and diacritic marks to represent the same Arabic consonant. For example, some authors use b (Hebrew gimel) to represent (Arabic jim) and b˙ to represent (ghayn), while others reverse the h.
    [Show full text]
  • Processing Judeo-Arabic Texts
    2015 First International Conference on Arabic Computational Linguistics Processing Judeo-Arabic Texts Kfir Bar, Nachum Dershowitz, Lior Wolf, Yackov Lubarsky Yaacov Choueka School of Computer Science Friedberg Genizah Project Tel Aviv University Beit Hadefus 20 Ramat Aviv, Israel Jerusalem, Israel {kfirbar,nachum,wolf}@tau.ac.il, [email protected] [email protected] Abstract—Judeo-Arabic is a set of dialects spoken and borrowings, which cannot be transliterated into Ara- and written by Jewish communities living in Arab bic, but rather need to be translated into Arabic. Those countries. Judeo-Arabic is typically written in Hebrew embedded words sometimes get inflected following Arabic letters, enriched with diacritic marks that relate to the al-shkhina, “the) אלשכינה ,underlying Arabic. However, some inconsistencies in morphological rules; for example rendering words in Hebrew letters increase the level of divine spirit”), where the prefix al is the Arabic definite ambiguity of a given word. Furthermore, Judeo-Arabic article, and the word shkhina is the Hebrew word for divine texts usually contain non-Arabic words and phrases, spirit. such as quotations or borrowed words from Hebrew A large number of Judeo-Arabic works (philosophy, and Aramaic. We focus on two main tasks: (1) auto- matic transliteration of Judeo-Arabic Hebrew letters Bible translation, biblical commentary, and more) are cur- into Arabic letters; and (2) automatic identification of rently being made available on the Internet (for research language switching points between Judeo-Arabic and purposes). However, most Arabic speakers are unfamiliar Hebrew. For transliteration, we employ a statistical with the Hebrew script, let alone the way it is used to translation system trained on the character level, re- render Judeo-Arabic.
    [Show full text]
  • A Sociolinguistic Analysis of the Use of Arabizi in Social Media Among Saudi Arabians
    International Journal of English Linguistics; Vol. 9, No. 6; 2019 ISSN 1923-869X E-ISSN 1923-8703 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education A Sociolinguistic Analysis of the Use of Arabizi in Social Media Among Saudi Arabians Ashwaq Alsulami1 1 School of Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics, Bangor University, Wales, United Kingdom Correspondence: Ashwaq Alsulami, School of Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics, Bangor University, Wales, United Kingdom. E-mail: [email protected] Received: August 27, 2019 Accepted: September 20, 2019 Online Published: October 28, 2019 doi:10.5539/ijel.v9n6p257 URL: https://doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v9n6p257 Abstract The aim of this sociolinguistically-oriented study is to explore the Arabizi phenomenon which is characterized by spelling Arabic words using the Latin script. It is prevalent in the text-based computer-mediated communications among Saudi Arabians. The study focuses on why Arabizi is used, how, particularly in respect to with whom and in which topics, it is used, the attitudes of its users toward its use and the perceived advantages and disadvantages of its use. Using an online survey, data were collected from 241 participants, 72 of which were users of Arabizi. The findings revealed that the primary reasons for using Arabizi were its being a communication code among youths and a compensation for the lack of Arabic keyboard from technological devices as well as being more expressive than Arabic language. It was also found that Arabizi was primarily used to communicate with friends and individuals of the same age, but not with parents and older people or in formal relationships.
    [Show full text]
  • Learn-The-Aramaic-Alphabet-Ashuri
    Learn The ARAMAIC Alphabet 'Hebrew' Ashuri Script By Ewan MacLeod, B.Sc. Hons, M.Sc. 2 LEARN THE ARAMAIC ALPHABET – 'HEBREW' ASHURI SCRIPT Ewan MacLeod is the creator of the following websites: JesusSpokeAramaic.com JesusSpokeAramaicBook.com BibleManuscriptSociety.com Copyright © Ewan MacLeod, JesusSpokeAramaic.com, 2015. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into, a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, scanning, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without prior written permission from the copyright holder. The right of Ewan MacLeod to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the copyright holder's prior consent, in any form, or binding, or cover, other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Jesus Spoke AramaicTM is a Trademark. 3 Table of Contents Introduction To These Lessons.............................................................5 How Difficult Is Aramaic To Learn?........................................................7 Introduction To The Aramaic Alphabet And Scripts.............................11 How To Write The Aramaic Letters....................................................... 19
    [Show full text]
  • An Improved Arabic Keyboard Layout
    Sci.Int.(Lahore),33(1),5-15,2021 ISSN 1013-5316; CODEN: SINTE 8 5 AN IMPROVED ARABIC KEYBOARD LAYOUT 1Amjad Qtaish, 2Jalawi Alshudukhi, 3Badiea Alshaibani, 4Yosef Saleh, 5Salam Bazrawi College of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Ha'il, Ha'il, Saudi Arabia. [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] ABSTRACT: One of the most important human–machine interaction (HMI) systems is the computer keyboard. The keyboard layout (KL) dictates how a person interacts with a physical keyboard through the way in which the letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and symbols are mapped and arranged on the keyboard. Mapping letters onto the keys of a keyboard is complex because many issues need to be taken into considerations, such as the nature of the language, finger fatigue, hand balance, typing speed, and distance traveled by fingers during typing and finger movements. There are two main kinds of KL: English and Arabic. Although numerous research studies have proposed different layouts for the English keyboard, there is a lack of research studies that focus on the Arabic KL. To address this lack, this study analyzed and clarified the limitations of the standard legacy Arabic KL. Then an efficient Arabic KL was proposed to overcome the limitations of the current KL. The frequency of Arabic letters and bi-gram probabilities were measured on a large Arabic corpus in order to assess the current KL and to design the improved Arabic KL. The improved Arabic KL was then evaluated and compared against the current KL in terms of letter frequency, finger-travel distance, hand and finger balance, bi-gram frequency, row distribution, and most frequent words.
    [Show full text]
  • G-Quadruplex Interaction Choreograph DNA Damage Responses and Cancer Growth
    cells Communication HO-1 and Heme: G-Quadruplex Interaction Choreograph DNA Damage Responses and Cancer Growth Giacomo Canesin 1,† , Anindhita Meena Muralidharan 1,†, Kenneth D. Swanson 2 and Barbara Wegiel 1,*,† 1 Department of Surgery, Division of Surgical Oncology, Cancer Research Institute, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02214, USA; [email protected] (G.C.); [email protected] (A.M.M.) 2 Department of Neurology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02214, USA; [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: +1-617-735-2846 † Current address: Vor Biopharma, 100 Cambridgepark Dr, Suite 400, Cambridge, MA 02140, USA. Abstract: Many anti-cancer therapeutics lead to the release of danger associated pattern molecules (DAMPs) as the result of killing large numbers of both normal and transformed cells as well as lysis of red blood cells (RBC) (hemolysis). Labile heme originating from hemolysis acts as a DAMP while its breakdown products exert varying immunomodulatory effects. Labile heme is scavenged by hemopexin (Hx) and processed by heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1, Hmox1), resulting in its removal and the generation of biliverdin/bilirubin, carbon monoxide (CO) and iron. We recently demonstrated that labile heme accumulates in cancer cell nuclei in the tumor parenchyma of Hx knockout mice and contributes to the malignant phenotype of prostate cancer (PCa) cells and increased metastases. Additionally, this work identified Hx as a tumor suppressor gene. Direct interaction of heme with Citation: Canesin, G.; Muralidharan, DNA G-quadruplexes (G4) leads to altered gene expression in cancer cells that regulate transcription, A.M.; Swanson, K.D.; Wegiel, B.
    [Show full text]