Dec 17, 2006 11:17
17 yrs ago
Arabic term

el/al bahnasa & el/al minya

Arabic to English Art/Literary Archaeology need to confirm spelling
I need to confirm which is more correct of teh following:

el bahnasa or al bahnasa

el minya or al minya

I also need to know which of the words should be capitalised.

I don't know any Arabic; this is for a translation on archaeology from Spanish to English.

TIA:-)

Proposed translations

+4
8 mins
Selected

Different spellings

You will find that the article "Al" is often rendered "El" in English, but "Al" is the proper spelling.

As for which part to capitalise, I don't think there's a real agreement on that. You will find al-Minya, Al-Minya and Al-minya.

Personally, I prefer the version "al-Minya", though "Al-Minya" is fine too. But I would avoid the third option, as I believe "Minya" should remain capitalised.
I would also put a dash between Al and the following word, just to make clear that it's really one word, composed of the article and the town name.


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Note added at 19 mins (2006-12-17 11:37:07 GMT)
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Check this out - from "Arabic Romanization at the Library of Congress" (The Library of Congress transliteration (romanization) system is widely adopted throughout the world):

In romanization, the article al- (“the”) is always lowercased and attached to the following word with a hyphen.
Arabic names often include the use of an inseparable prefix such as Abã, Ibn, Bint, }l. These are always capitalized wherever they appear except for Ibn and Bint. When used as the initial elements (including entry elements) of a name, Ibn and Bint are capitalized; otherwise,
they are lowercased. Example:
Ibn al-Firk
Bint al-Hudá

www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/arabic1.pdf
Peer comment(s):

agree Khalid Nasir
51 mins
agree Noha Kamal, PhD. : explained like only a pro could :)
1 hr
Da bass men zo'ek! :-)
agree Chowdhury : Great put!
4 hrs
agree Abdallah Ali
13 hrs
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4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Great explanation:-) Thanks"
1 hr

Both (with reasons)

El-/Al-Bahnasa & El-/Al-Minya

Talking about Arabic, the last diacritical mark of a word changes the first diacritical mark (sound) of the following word. Example, Qalaallaho (Allah said), Besmellahe (In the name of Allah)…notice the letter before double L (ll)...it is "a" in (Qala”a”llaho) and “e” in (Besm”e”llahe). So I think that varieties in “Al” and “El” came from the varity of pronunciation resulting from diacritics.
Kind regards
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