Transliteration and Pronunciation of Turkish and Romanian
Transliteration is the perennial problem of historical scholarship in different branches of Islamic studies. Materials in pre-modern Turkish rendered in the Arab script, as in almost all the sources used in this study, are particularly difficult to standardize, and any transliteration system is bound to be aesthetically displeasing. In this book the Ottoman Turkish technical vocabulary is transliterated in conformity with modern Turkish spelling, and is italicized on each isolated occurrence in the text (e.g. zimmi, cihad, cizye etc.). The Arab and Ottoman names of persons, places, states and dynasties are printed in their modern forms, without diacritical marks. It should be noted that I have not modified the titles of books and articles according to the above-mentioned rules. As concerns the pronunciation of those Turkish and Romanian letters which either do not appear in the English alphabet, or which differ markedly from their English pronunciation, here are the correspondences for more difficult pronunciation cases:
Turkish consonants and vowels:
c j as in jam
ç ch as in church
ǧ a fricative sound
ș sh as in shop
â long a as in father
ı i as in cousin
ö eu as in French jeu
ü u as in French tu
Romanian consonants, vowels, diphthongs and triphthongs:
ș sh as in shop
ț ts as in nuts
ă a as in awake
â, î i as in cousin
ce che as in check
ci chi as in cheese
ge ge as in gesture
gi gi as in genius
chi ki as in kilo
ghi ghi as in gift.