The Life & Character of the Seal of Prophets (sa) – Volume III — Page xi
xi Short vowels are represented by: a for (like u in ‘bud’ ); i for (like i in ‘bid’ ); u for (like oo in ‘wood’ ); ُِِ Long vowels by: ā or (like a in ‘father’ ); ī for or (like ee in ‘deep’ ); ū for (like oo in ‘root’ ); Other: ai for (like i in ‘site’ ) ; au for (resembling ou in ‘sound’ ). 1 1 Please note that in transliterated words the letter ‘e’ is to be pronounced as in ‘prey’ which rhymes with ‘day’; however the pronunciation is flat without the element of English diphthong. If in Urdu and Persian words ‘e’ is lengthened a bit more it is transliterated as ‘ei’ to be pronounced as ‘ei’ in ‘feign’ without the element of diphthong thus is transliterated as ‘kei’. For the nasal sound of ‘n’ we have used the symbol ‘ń’. Thus, the Urdu word would be transliterated as ‘meiń’. The consonants not included above have the same phonetic value as in the principal languages of Europe. For quotes straight commas (straight quotes) are used to differentiate them from the curved commas used in the system of transliteration, ‘ for ع , and ’ for ء. Commas as punctuation marks are used according to the normal usage. Similarly for apostrophe normal usage is followed. 1 In Arabic words like شیخ (Shaikh) there is an element of diphthong which is missing when the word is pronounced in Urdu.