Sunday, 15 November 2015

Is there a standard for writing Hebrew words in English letters



Is there a standard for writing Hebrew words in English letters in the context of religious texts? I see a different way to write the same word or distinction between "כ" and "ק" or "כ" and "ח" and even "ת" and "ט".


To focus on my questions I give examples from real life as it's more common and more accessible then examples in religious texts.


I see "חיה" written as "chaya", "haya", "khaya". Same goes to writing city names such as "פתח תקווה": "Petach Tikva" and I saw "Petach Tikqa" (even in road signs in Israel). And "נצרת" written as "Nazareth", "Natsert", "Natsreth", "Natsrat" and more.


So is there a standard for writing Hebrew words in English letters?



Answer



The challenge is that there are different ways to pronounce Hebrew. Ashkenazim, Sefaradim, Teimanim, etc. all pronounce words differently.


There is a very interesting project called OpenSiddur which developed an open source tool to build your own siddur. As part of this they have incorporated eight(!) different transliteration schemes




See their site for a tool enabling you to transliterate any Hebrew into latin characters using any of the above schemes.


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