Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Saeed Anvari ¹
• Golnaz Modaresi Ghavami ²

¹ Department of Philosophy, Allameh Tabataba'i University

² Department of Linguistics, Allameh Tabataba'i University

Abstract

With the entry of the works of Greek philosophers into the Islamic world, Greek names and terms appeared in various scientific texts of the Islamic civilization. This process, was accompanied by changes in the pronunciation and recording of these names and terms in Arabic, which in turn led to the multiplicity and diversity of the written forms of these names and terms. The present study, examines the method of transliterating these terms in Arabic texts of the Islamic period from a linguistic point of view. The results of the present study shows that changes in the pronunciation and consequently writing of Greek names in Arabic have resulted from the difference in the set of stops and fricative consonants. The results of this study show that the changes in the pronunciation and writing of these names were mainly due to the differences in the phonetic systems of Greek and Arabic, the characteristics of the Arabic writing system, the unfamiliarity of the scribes with the pronunciation of Greek names, and their mistakes in recording the names. However, the problems of the Arabic writing system, such as the lack of letters for short vowels, the presence of dots, the serrations of some letters, and the mistakes of scribes in recording names, have made it difficult in some cases to identify the Greek original name or term. By examining various examples of proper names and philosophical terms, this study has identified specific patterns in the Arabization of Greek names.

Keywords

• Proper names
• Arabic language
• Greek language
• translation movement
• phonology

Main Subjects

• Phonetics & Phonology