Транскрипция и транслитерация иврита латиницей.

Transcription of Hebrew into the Latin alphabet
the transcription of Hebrew into the Roman alphabet used by English

The Hebrew language uses the Hebrew alphabet with optional vowel diacritics. The romanization of Hebrew is the use of the Latin alphabet to transliterate Hebrew words. For example, the Hebrew name spelled יִשְׂרָאֵל ("Israel") in the Hebrew alphabet can be romanized as or in the Latin alphabet. Romanization includes any use of the Latin alphabet to transliterate Hebrew words. Usually, it is to identify a Hebrew word in a non Hebrew language that uses the Latin alphabet, such as German, Spanish, Turkish, and so on. Transliteration uses an alphabet to represent the letters and sounds of a word spelled in another alphabet, whereas transcription uses an alphabet to represent the sounds only. Romanization can refer to either. To go the other way, that is from English to Hebrew, see Hebraization of English. Both Hebraization of English and Romanization of Hebrew are forms of transliteration. Where these are formalized these are known as "transliteration systems", and, where only some words, not all, are transliterated, this is known as "transliteration policy".

Transliteration assumes two different script systems. The use of a French word in English without translation, such as "bourgeois", is not transliteration. The use of a Hindi word in English such as "khaki" (originally खाकी) is transliteration. Transliteration of a foreign word into another language is usually the exception to translation, and often occurs when there is something distinctive about the word in the original language, such as a double entendre, uniqueness, religious, cultural or political significance, or it may occur to add local flavor. In the cases of Hebrew transliteration into English, many Hebrew words have a long history of transliteration, for example Amen, Satan, ephod, Urim and Thummim have traditionally been transliterated, not translated. These terms were in many cases also first transliterated into Greek and Latin before English. Different publishers have different transliteration policies. For example ArtScroll publications generally transliterate more words relative to sources such as The Jewish Encyclopedia 1911 or Jewish Publication Society texts.

There are various transliteration standards or systems for Hebrew to English; no one system has significant common usage across all fields. Consequently, in general usage there are often no hard and fast rules in Hebrew to English transliteration, and many transliterations are an approximation due to a lack of equivalence between the English and Hebrew alphabets. Conflicting systems of transliteration often appear in the same text, as certain Hebrew words tend to associate with certain traditions of transliteration. For example,

This text includes instances of the same word transliterated in different ways: The Hebrew word בית is transliterated as both Beith and Bet. These discrepancies in transliterations of the same word can be traced to discrepancies in the transliterations of individual Hebrew letters, reflecting not only different traditions of transliteration into different languages that use Latin alphabets, but also the fact that different pronunciation styles exist for the same letters in Israel (e. g. mainstream secular pronunciations used in the media versus Mizrahi, Arab, or Orthodox Ashkenazi colloquial pronunciations). For example, Hanukkah and Chayyim are transliterated with different initial letter combinations, although in Hebrew both begin with the letter ח; the use of "ch" reflects German / Yiddish influence and pronunciation, whereas the "h" or "ḥ" may indicate a softer pronunciation of ח as in ancient Hebrew, Judeo Arabic or Mizrahi Hebrew. Similarly, the Hebrew letter ת is transliterated as th in the word Beith, s in the word talis, and t in the word Bet, even though it is the same letter in all three words in Hebrew. The Hebrew letter ק is transliterated as c in Isaac, k in Yitzchak, and q in Qehila. Finally, the Hebrew letter צ is transliterated variously as s (in Isaac), tz (in Yitzchak), and ts (in Tsfat), again reflecting different traditions of spelling or pronunciation. These inconsistencies make it more difficult for the non Hebrew speaking reader to recognize related word forms, or even to properly pronounce the Hebrew words thus transliterated.

Early romanization of Hebrew occurred with the contact between the Romans and the Jews. It was influenced by earlier transliteration into the Greek language. For example, the name of the Roman province of Iudaea (63 BCE) was apparently derived from the Greek words Ἰούδα (Iouda) and Ἰουδαία (Ioudaia). These words can be seen in Chapter 1 of Esdras (Ezra) in the Septuagint, a Hellenistic translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. The Greek words in turn are transliterations of the Hebrew word יהודה (Yehuda) that we now know adapted in English as the names Judah, Judas and Jude. In the 1st century, Satire 14 of Juvenal uses the Hebraic words sabbata, Iudaicum, and Moyses, apparently adopted from the Greek. The 4th century and 5th century Latin translations of the Hebrew Bible romanize its proper names. The familiar Biblical names in English are derived from these romanizations. The Vulgate, of the early 5th century, is considered the first direct Latin translation of the Hebrew Bible. Apart from names, another term that the Vulgate romanizes is the technical term mamzer (ממזר). With the rise of Zionism, some Jews promoted the use of romanization instead of Hebrew script in hopes of helping more people learn Hebrew. One such promoter was Ithamar Ben Yehuda, or Ittamar Ben Avi as he styled himself. His father Eliezer Ben Yehuda raised him to be the first modern native speaker of Hebrew. In 1927 Ben Avi published the biography Avi in romanized Hebrew (now listed in the online catalog of the Jewish National and University Library). However, the innovation did not catch on. Political activist Ze'ev Jabotinsky, leader of Betar, and Chief Rabbi Kook, also expressed their support for the reform of Hebrew script using Latin letters.

Romanized Hebrew can be used to present Hebrew terminology or text to anyone who is not familiar with the Hebrew script. Many Jewish prayer books in the diaspora include supplementary romanization for some or all of the Hebrew language congregational prayers. Romanized Hebrew is also used for Hebrew language items in library catalogs and Hebrew language place names on maps. In Israel, most catalogs and maps use the Hebrew script, but romanized maps are easily available and road signs include romanized names. Some Hebrew speakers use romanization to communicate when using internet systems that have poor support for the Hebrew alphabet. Frequently, Romanized Hebrew is also used in music scores, in part because music is written left to right and Hebrew is written right to left. Standard romanizations exist for these various purposes. However, non standard romanization is widely seen, even on some Israeli street signs. The standards are not generally taught outside of their specific organizations and disciplines.

Different purposes call for different choices of romanization. One extreme is to make a phonetic transcription of one person's speech on one occasion. In Israel, a pronunciation known as General Israeli Hebrew or Standard Hebrew is widely used and documented. For Israeli speech and text where linguistic groups are not at issue, romanization can use a phonetic transcription according to Standard Hebrew pronunciation. However, there are many Israeli groups with differing pronunciations of Hebrew and differing social priorities. An attempt to devise a more general system of romanization is complicated by the long and varied history of the Hebrew language. Most Hebrew texts can be appropriately pronounced according to several different systems of pronunciation, both traditional and modern. Even today, it is customary to write Hebrew using only consonants and matres lectionis. There was no way to indicate vowels clearly in Hebrew writing until the time of the Second Temple. Since an earlier time, multiple geographically separated communities have used Hebrew as a language of literature rather than conversation. One system of assigning and indicating pronunciation in Hebrew, the Tiberian vocalization, is broadly authoritative for Hebrew text since the end of the Second Temple period (Sáenz Badillos, page xi). It is possible to accommodate the pronunciations of different communities by transliterating the Tiberian vocalization without attempting to transcribe a specific phonetic pronunciation. Notable varieties of Hebrew for which Tiberian vocalization is not suitable are the Hebrew of the Qumran community (as known from the Dead Sea Scrolls) and of the Samaritans. For romanizations of Samaritan pronunciation, it is advisable to take quotations directly from a Samaritan edition of the Hebrew Bible, which has approximately 6,000 textual variations from Jewish editions. It is appropriate to focus only on the consonantal spelling when discussing unusually structured words from ancient or medieval works.

The Tiberian vocalization was devised in order to add indications of pronunciation to the consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible, without changing the consonantal text. It was intended for experts in Biblical Hebrew grammar and morphology. Transliterations usually avoid the typographically complex marks that are used in Tiberian vocalization. They also attempt to indicate vowels and syllables more explicitly than Tiberian vocalization does. Therefore a technical transliteration requires the use of Tiberian principles, as mentioned below, rather than simply representing the Tiberian symbols. Many transliteration standards require a thorough knowledge of these principles, yet they usually do not provide practical details.

There are seven basic vowels. A vowel may be long, short, or ultrashort. The vowel "shva" may be sounded (shva na) or silent (shva nach). Consonants that have been used historically to indicate vowels, the "matres lectionis", are no substitute for proper vowel marks. The vowel "kamets" may have its usual sound (kamets gadol – long "a") or a different sound (kamets katan – short "o").

Six consonants (beth, gimel, daleth, kaph, pe, and tav) can be hard or soft. To be specific, they are pronounced either as stops or fricatives ("spirantized"). For example, the letter bet can be pronounced as "b" or "v". Tiberian vocalization marks a hard consonant with a dagesh kal (in the Hebrew term) or lene (Latin). A soft consonant lacks a dagesh kal, and is sometimes explicitly marked using rafe, an overbar. Transliterations sometimes also use an overbar or underbar to mark a soft consonant. (In Modern Sephardic Hebrew, however, only three consonants—bet, kaph, and pe—retain the hard–soft distinction. In the Ashkenazic style of pronunciation, the soft tav is sounded as "s".) A letter that looks like shin may be that letter (when marked with a shin dot) or the letter sin (when marked with a sin dot). Most consonants can undergo gemination. Tiberian vocalization marks gemination with a dagesh hazak (in the Hebrew term) or forte (Latin), which looks the same as dagesh kal. A consonant that is normally silent (most often he) may be sounded if it is a root consonant or possessive ending. Tiberian vocalization marks such a consonant using a mapiq, which looks like a dagesh. A silent vav may be used to hold a holem vowel, but sometimes a vav with holem has consonant value.