ˮ älexandria waz fawnded arawnd a smol enşent ejepşen tawn c. 331 BC bay älexander ża grêt. et bikéym än emportent senter of ża helénestek seveláyzêşen änd remeynd ża kápital of helénestek änd roman änd bizantín ïjept for ölmost 1000 yirz äntel ża moslem konkwest of ïjept en AD 641. ˮ
If you managed to read and understand the text above successfully, congratulations you're already halfway with proficiency in Eskéndereyya. Now, read on to finish the other half.
Eskéndereyya is a writing system that is designed from the ground up to tackle the problem of romanization of Modern Standard Arabic and its derivative languages/dialects but with a new approach that emphasizes ease of use and user friendliness in order to help learners of Arabic as a foreign language to pick up the language more quickly and efficiently.
1- Ease of use:
The writing system draws on the familiarity of the basic Latin alphabet to a wide segment of the population to onboard new learners of Arabic without requiring them first to invest upfront in learning a new writing system to be able to just explore and get a feeling of the new language.
2- Extensive support:
Eskéndereyya was conceived with satisfying present and future needs and requirements in mind and therefore not only does it support the literary or standard variety of the language namely MSA but also other regional languages or dialects.
The first release comes with full support for most common sounds in the mainstream varieties of Egyptian Arabic, Syrian Arabic, Lebanese Arabic and finally Tunisian Arabic with more to come in the future for other derivative languages/dialects thus providing learners of Arabic of all studying profiles with a wide variety of choices to meet their goals and objectives.
3- Intuitiveness
From the start, a great deal of care and energy has been put to ensure that the writing system to be as much intuitive as possible for native speakers of Western languages esp. the Romance subset, and to use cues from those languages to help those speakers navigate texts written in Eskéndereyya. Moreover, the Arabic-specific sounds and letters are represented carefully to have fall-backs that would provide, even for the uninitiated, enough guidance to get immediate and preliminary results from their existing knowledge of European languages.
4- Standardization:
This is just a humble attempt to propose a new standard that combines both simplicity and sufficient academic rigor for an adequate and satisfactory solution for the problem of the romanization of Arabic.
1- Arabic learners:
This system would cut on the time and effort required for beginners to get familiar with the language, and it would aid current Arabic learners to improve their reading, writing and pronunciation skills, and to help them transition later more smoothly to the Arabic script and other aspects of the language like grammar and composition.
2- Media and news organizations:
This could prove helpful to foreign media outlets and news organizations to transliterate Arabic names and terms with accuracy and without confusion or ambiguity.
3- Native Arabic speakers:
Believe it or not, this system is also useful to native Arabic speakers to perfect or train on regional accents and other various derivative languages/dialects in the Arabic-speaking world given that the differences in those varieties of Arabic are not adequately captured or worse completely omitted in the written language in Arabic script.
Head to the guide for the full primer on Eskéndereyya.