Inscription on Yataghan

ham · 17th May 2005, 05:02 AM

Despite some variation in regional variations and styles, any Arabic characters should be legible to literate native speakers. It is not an easy alphabet, having three cases as it does, distinguished by particular rules of connectivity. But the ability to simply read Arabic characters, regardless of skill, is really not sufficient-- training is required to read period texts since spellings, as well as meanings, change with time. Further, the language spoken by a given reader may utilize Arabic characters though the language itself is different. Latin letters prersent the same problem-- Brits can read German but not understand a word, and though more closely related, Russians can read the Serbian variant of Cyrillic, but certain letters and words will not register... and so on.
The word Agha is Persian, adopted into Ottoman so an Arab speaker would not recognize it at all, and perhaps an Iranian would not associate the spelling with the word. Proper spelling can impact a translation considerably as well-- with a slight orthographic shift, the word AGHA departs the lofty meaning 'lord' to become the decidedly less complimentary "eunuch" in Persian.

Sincerely,

Ham

17th May 2005, 05:02 AM	#4
ham Member Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 190	Despite some variation in regional variations and styles, any Arabic characters should be legible to literate native speakers. It is not an easy alphabet, having three cases as it does, distinguished by particular rules of connectivity. But the ability to simply read Arabic characters, regardless of skill, is really not sufficient-- training is required to read period texts since spellings, as well as meanings, change with time. Further, the language spoken by a given reader may utilize Arabic characters though the language itself is different. Latin letters prersent the same problem-- Brits can read German but not understand a word, and though more closely related, Russians can read the Serbian variant of Cyrillic, but certain letters and words will not register... and so on. The word Agha is Persian, adopted into Ottoman so an Arab speaker would not recognize it at all, and perhaps an Iranian would not associate the spelling with the word. Proper spelling can impact a translation considerably as well-- with a slight orthographic shift, the word AGHA departs the lofty meaning 'lord' to become the decidedly less complimentary "eunuch" in Persian. Sincerely, Ham Last edited by ham; 17th May 2005 at 08:38 AM.