As a former linguist, I was always interested in the alternative transliterations of [Hizb/Hezb]+[allah/ollah/ullah]. News sources in the West all have different ways of spelling Hizballah. I always just went for the regular Arabic version of Hizb (party) + allah (God). I thought maybe the “i > e” and “a > o, u” changes were due to some sort of vowel harmony or regional accent.
The name ØÂزب اÙ”žÃ™”žÃ™”¡ is transliterated from the Arabic in a number of ways.Both Hizbollah and Hezballah are common transliterations into other languages with a Latin-based alphabet, such as French, Spanish, Italian and the Nordic languages. It may, however, also be written as Hizballah or Hisbollah, and the literal Arabic version Hizb Allah, which is used by Al Jazeera. “Hizb” (party) is the Modern Standard Arabic pronunciation, and “Hezb” is closer to Persian and to Lebanese dialect. The ‘h’ is pharyngeal in Arabic, but a normal ‘h’ sound in Persian. The “-llah” ending, originally “Allah”, means “(the) God”. The name is derived from a Qu’ranic aayat (verse) referring to those who belong to and follow the “Party of God”.
Interesting about the dialect, but not conclusive. So I looked it up on Yahoo! Answers
but it depends on the grammar and where does the words lie in the sentence…you may find it hezbellah or hezballah as well for example…
if it’s a subject..then: hezbullah
if it’s an object then hezballah..
if it’s preceeded by an article..then it’s hezbellah…
there are actually more rules but this is a simple example..
Clear as mud? So it looks like it isn’t phonology but syntax that determines the spelling. Since the same factors are not applicable in English, there seems to be no “correct” spelling of the Party Of God. This is one more argument for every country in the world to switch to the IPA. ;)
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tdaxp added these pithy words on Aug 01 06 at 1:24 amHezbollah v. the Lebanese Nation, Hezbollah v. the United Nations
Hezbollah v. the Lebanese Nation, Hezbollah v. the United Nations
In a recent post, Mark described the violence Hezbollah intentionally inflicts on the Lebanese people
As Hezbollah is a semi-4GW organization, it obeys no recognized rules of warfa…
Sean Meade added these pithy words on 26 Jul 06 at 9:40 pmhow’s switching to IPA going to help us with syntax-determined spelling? ;-)
Younghusband added these pithy words on 26 Jul 06 at 10:35 pmDamn you Sean! I got ahead of myself.
But the IPA would rule. You would have no more stupid mispronounciations of placenames on the news, etc. War IPA!
Sean Meade added these pithy words on 26 Jul 06 at 11:32 pmwoo hoo! score another victory for niggling pedantry! ;-)
how prescriptive of you to want IPA. i thought prescriptive linguistics was out of fashion. do you also advocate truespel, nuspelynh, or simplified spelling? ;-)
lirelou added these pithy words on 27 Jul 06 at 12:11 amDamn the style dictats! All this was noted in a letter from “T.E.” to his editor when the latter complained about a lack of uniformity in the spelling of place names in the Seven Pillars of Wisdom. To paraphrase Lawrence’s reply: Yes, and there’s a lot of other ways I could have spelt them as well.
Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace added these pithy words on 27 Jul 06 at 1:06 pmFascinating post, and much appreciated. Don’t underestimate the intrinsic value of shibboleths….http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth
Yago added these pithy words on 27 Jul 06 at 4:34 pmif the pronunciation changes according to sintax, IPA ain’t gonna make any difference.
I would rather say it’s yet one more argument for everybody to stop arguing for IPA. Phonetic spelling doesn’t necessarily make things easier.
Younghusband added these pithy words on 27 Jul 06 at 5:09 pmYes, yes, that horse is dead. It gave up. Damn logic…
Another argument against IPA is dialects. Americans would not be able to read British writing at all (you think a couple of superfluous [u]’s were bad!), even though they speak the same language.
Nathan added these pithy words on 27 Jul 06 at 11:34 pm
Another argument against IPA is dialects.Which is what I was thinking. The example you give of Americans not being able to read British writing would exist within plenty of countries. (This is actually kind of the case with Uzbeks using the Latin alphabet, and there is huge variation in pronunciation across the country.)
Myself, I was wondering how Americans would do with trying to read all the foreign /a/ nativizations and “aboots” and whatnot from up there in the Great White North.
Elizabeth added these pithy words on 28 Jul 06 at 4:52 pm“but it depends on the grammar and where does the words lie in the sentence”¦”
I don’t think that should be the case. Russian words (which are also highly inflected like Arabic words) are always in the nominative case, singular, when transliterated into English (babushkas). The same should go for Arabic words like Hezbulloh. The reason we do this is that otherwise, words like mujahiddin (Tajik transliteration) get treated as singular and everything starts to get mixed up.
In Tajik, it’s Hezbulloh (the name of God is Alloh in Tajik Persian). Because Tajik writes Persian (with its many Arabic words) in a phonetic alphabet, these changes are very easy to see. They almost always have to do with the Persian accent, and I have not yet seen them translate the inflection/case/mood etc. into Tajik (not from Russian or from Arabic). Exception: pretentious pricks who want to show off their Arabic.
Younghusband added these pithy words on 29 Jul 06 at 1:56 pmSome more indepth grammatical explanations here via praktike who came up with this sentence:
bq.Hizbullah captured two Israeli soldiers. Israel attacked Hizballah in return. Many Arabs expressed their solidarity with Hizbillah.
Elizabeth added these pithy words on 29 Jul 06 at 2:35 pmI don’t think that is a good policy to adopt when translating from inflected languages, because then you’re also going to have:
Babushki held a demonstration against Putin last Thursday. Police were sent to hold back the babushek, but were unable to, as thousands of others were marching with the babushkami.
And that’s just the beginning… you also have gender in there which changes the endings… Estonian has 26 cases which are inflected in the middle of the word. I don’t know if it also has gender.
Surely we can’t expect journalists to use inflections when using foreign nouns in their articles: it would be practically impossible and totally useless.
The variations of Hezbulloh must surely be transliterations from different dialects or languages such as Persian.
AARON added these pithy words on 30 Jul 06 at 6:20 pmHIZBALLAH IS THE CORRECT WAY TO SPELL IT, AS WAS POINTED OUT IT MEANS PARTY OF ‘GOD’. THE MEDIA DOES NOT WANT TO INFLAME THE AMERICAN PEOPLE BY BRINGING THEM FURTHER EVIDENCE OF HOW THE ISLAMIC TERRORISTS CLAIM PIOUSNESS AND THAT GOD TELLS THEM TO KILL JEWS AND CHRISTIANS AND AMERICANS.
THEIR VERSION OF ALLAH IS LIKE THE EMPEROR OF JAPAN IN THE 1940’S, AND, OF COURSE HITLER…THE NUMBER OF CHARISMATIC SHEIKS IS DISGUSTING, AND WORSE YET THE EGOCENTRIC THINKING THAT PEOPLE WHO FOLLOW THEM AND CARRY OUT THEIR MALICIOUS ORDERS TO KILL AMERICANS AND JEWS!
Kirk H. Sowell added these pithy words on 31 Jul 06 at 6:52 pmI’m sorry I haven’t been on top of my daily dose of Anarchy or I would have responded to this one more immediately. A few points:
1) In Arabic it is pronounced hizballah. So it should be spelled “Hizballah.” I have never heard a native Arab say pronounce the second syllable with an ‘o’ or ‘u’ or anything else.
2) I agree with Elizabeth’s general point about not using inflections; that would be a mess with Arabic as with other languages.
3) Grammatical point: In this case, however, it doesn’t matter, because this particular phrase isn’t inflected. This is what in Arabic we refer to as an idafa relationship; the noun is used before the ‘of’ in order to indicate possession, composition or other relationship, and while Arabic does add vowels for conjugation, it doesn’t in the case of an idafa.
Example: The Abbasids famous “House of Wisdom” is bayt al-Hikma. bayt means ‘house.’ You don’t add a vowel afterward because none of the words in the phrase is a verb. An inflected example:
al-rajul daraba al-bayt biyadh (the man hit the house with his hand) =
al-rajulu daraba al-bayta biyadihi.
You add the ‘u’ the ‘a’ and the ‘i’ in each case because of the case system (similar to Elizabeth’s example in Russian, although Arabic’s case system is less complex).4) Broader gramatical point: never transliterate a vowel from Arabic as a short ‘e’ sound, because Arabic doesn’t have that sound. It does have a long ‘i’ sound, as in ‘eat’ (Arabic examples: ‘mujahideen’ or ‘mubeen’) but nothing like the short ‘e’ in ‘bed.’ Thus, ‘Hezballah’ is not correct.
john added these pithy words on 04 Aug 06 at 2:58 pmThanks to all of you. I’ve enjoyed this and you’ve answered a lot of my questions.
But I was wondering if anyone has noticed the NYT using both spellings? “Hez” for the party of god in Lebanon, and “hiz” for the party of god in Israel?
Elizabeth added these pithy words on 05 Aug 06 at 3:59 pmThanks to Kirk for the clearest explanation. And if Arabic cases are less complex… then that’s yet another reason to try to learn Arabic!
