# Transliterating Between English and Arabic

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transliterating-between-english-and-arabic/603992>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 24, 2011, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transliterating-between-english-and-arabic/603992 "2011-11-24T18:44:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\
**Post date:** [November 29, 2011, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transliterating-between-english-and-arabic/603992/21 "2011-11-29T07:58:18Z")

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> [@John\_Mace](#):
>
> Not really. [The wikipedia article on Romance Languages](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages) has an in-depth analysis of vowel variation over time in the Romance languages.

I said “no or almost no” and was comparing Romance languages to English. The vowel shifts listed there involve some 20 centuries and have been part of the process leading from having a single language called Latin to having a family of Romance languages - compare to how much English vowels have shifted in just 5.

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**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\
**Post date:** [November 29, 2011, 8:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transliterating-between-english-and-arabic/603992/22 "2011-11-29T08:05:27Z")

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that should say “comparing individual Romance languages”.

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