#transliterations

[wordsarereallyhard]

Was visiting all the cats at Petsmart for Free Serontonin and all the kitties had Xmas decorations except for one. His name was Salem and I love him.

Chag Hanukkah sameach, Salem!

[loquaciousnesssesquipedalian]

Chess variant mentions, and also transliterations

I play chess variants online frequently, mostly through here. International Chess is not even remotely the only one or even the first, and there are others often played as well if not instead in some areas, but mostly in various parts of Asia. Also, all of Asia counts here, not just far east/northeast Asia.

Anyway, for the sake of considering non-English languages, I will also be posting transliterations of various non-Latinic writing systems I came up with. That will in fact be relevant here, considering various pre-modern Asian chess variants, including but not limited to the oldest known one of all, Caturangga (not exactly a literal transliteration, but pretty close, and the ‘C’ sounds like or close to what an English/Spanish speaker would expect ‘ch’ to sound like).

I am particularly interested in Xiangqi, Janggi, Chess with Different Armies, and certain Shogi variants, so expect some focus on variants of those. The east/northeast variants are definite outliers, being less directly influenced by Caturangga than Middle Eastern and southeast Asian ones.

[darkhei-noam]

Okay, but couldn't you also argue that you can transliterate chag sameach into Arabic as حج سميح because ج is pronounced as gim in some countries and in some cases? Or do the ج with the three dots?

Yes, you absolutely could! There are always a variety of possible transliterations. In fact حج is a very good transliteration because it reminds us that the Hebrew “hag” and the Arabic “hajj” are cognate. :D

[dailyduaa]

Hi, I really like all the beautiful duas you post. I would like to request you to post it along with english texts as well as my Arabic pronunciation isn't so good. Thanks

In shaa Allah we will be working to get as many transliterations (English pronunciations) up as possible. Sometimes we may not necessarily get to them as fast as liked, but if there are particular duaa's you want to ask about, you can send us a link and we'll update those. (just write the link in brackets like this: (dot)tumblr(dot)com  so we can be get those links)We will also try to tag them and have a link to it on the sidebar. Jazak Allah for the question and improving this for everyone. May you be blessed with rewards and Allah's forgiveness. Ameen.

[ikkiichiyuu-dreaming]

During the story, there is an assassination.

The halls fall silent slowly, and then all attention is turned to him.

Soft footsteps trail up to him, and he sees her slippered feet, so tiny against the golden tiles.

Loki cannot meet her gaze for fear of the loneliness that will surely stop his heart - he pictures her eyes to be twin daggers of accusation.

[ikkiichiyuu-dreaming]

Blood, be it made of fire or frost, runs through veins.

[ikkiichiyuu-dreaming]

Mouth open wide as if in song. Wings spread wide as if in flight. Chest thrust proudly, straight into a wicked thorn. There is agony and perfection, all in the same note. A thornbird.