—Reply— Hello!
It’s very fascinating to have someone give examples of a divergent Hebrew spelling system for a distant Jewish language; this kind of research is rarely heard of—let alone recognized—in the academia marketplace. When writing far-and-distant Jewish languages with the Hebrew *ʾalef-beth*, care MUST be taken to use the closest Hebrew letter possible to the actual sound in a given language (Ex.: The /p/ sound—ordinarily written as פּ * peʾ-daghesh* in regular Hebrew—must be written as a ב *beth* having 3 upwards dots above in, let’s say, Juhuri—due to the influence of the Arabic-Farsi letter پ *paʾ*. It’s because the /p/ sound in Arabic is an allophone of the /b/ sound, so—it takes a letter from Farsi to faithfully represent /p/!). As a result of this research, here’s how Hebrew letters would be mapped into Juhuri (Judeo-Arabic) phonemes: א: ʾ (bare); ב: B (1 dot), P (3); ג: J (1 dot), TS (2), CH (3), DZ (4); ד: D (1 dot), DH (2 dots); ה: H (bare), Ħ (2 dots); ו: W (bare), U (1 dot), V (3); ז: Z (1 dot), ZH (3); ח: Ḥ (bare), *KH* (laryngeal—1 dot); ט: Ṭ (bare), Ẓ (1 dot); י: *ʾalif-maqṣurah* (bare), I (1 dot), Y (2); כ: K (bare), G (3); ל: L (bare); מ: M (bare); נ: *nun-ghunnaʾ* (bare), N (1 dot); ס: S (bare); ע: ʿ (bare), *GH* (laryngeal—1 dot), Ñ (palatal nasal—2), Ṅ (velar nasal—3); פ: F (1 dot); צ: Ṣ (bare), Ḍ (1 dot); ק: Q (2 dots); ר: R (bare); ש: Ś (bare), SH (3 dots); ת: T (2 dots), TH (3); ﭏ: ʾAL (*the*—bare), LAʾ (1 dot); או: AW (bare), O (1 dot), Ö (2); אי: AY (bare), E (1 dot), Ü (2) The Hebrew *nǝquddoth* (vowel points) would also be used to represent vowels and diphthongs. The dot groupings would appear thus: (1 dot)—a single dot above; (2 dots)—a dieresis (umlaut sign) above; (3 dots)—a dieresis with an overdot atop that (looking like an upwards-pointing triangle); and (4 dots) would look like a box consisting of 2 dieresii (umlauts) on top of each other! In my new upcoming ISRI Font Series, I reserved the U+E800 area of the Private Use Zone for these extended Hebrew characters (beginning with the 5 extras that Microsoft already uses for backwards compatibility)—which also include oddities like: a *waw* bearing a true *shuruq* (Û) point (that lies a bit higher than a daghesh, like Gesenius recommends), a *waw-daghesh* bearing a *ḫolam* (Ô) point above, another like that—but with a true *shuruq* (Û) point directly above the daghesh, a doubly-pointed *shin*, and an identical letter with an added daghesh! You may still find certain Arabic characters mixed in with Hebrew letters (like ء *hamzaʾ*, for instance) in these texts. I do hope this note is of great help to y’all. Thank You! Robert Lloyd Wheelock International Symbolism Research Institute Augusta, ME U.S.A.
