Arba'in — Page xvi
xiv ARBAIN Please note that in transliterated words the letter 'e' is to be pro- nounced as in 'prey' which rhymes with ‘day'; however the pro- nunciation is flat without the element of English diphthong. If in Urdu and Persian words 'e' is lengthened a bit more it is transliter- ated as 'ei' to be pronounced as 'ei' in 'feign' without the element of diphthong thus ' کے ’is transliterated as ‘Kei. For the nasal sound of 'n' we have used the symbol 'n. Thus the Urdu word ' میں ' is transliterated as 'mein. The consonants not included in the above list have the same phonetic value as in the principal languages of Europe. As noted above, the single quotation mark ' is used for trans- literating which is distinct from the apostrophe 'used for . . We have not transliterated some Arabic words which have become part of English language, e. g. Islam, Mahdi, jihad, Ramadan, and ummah. The Royal Asiatic Society's rules of trans- literation for names of persons, places, and other terms, are not followed throughout the book as many of the names contain non-Arabic characters and carry a local transliteration and pro- nunciation style.