This is very similar to how Latin spelling reflects consonant assimilation of prefixes (like in- and ad-). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/immanis#Latin https:/

This is very similar to how Latin spelling reflects consonant assimilation of prefixes (like in- and ad-). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/immanis#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/immanis#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/alloquor#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/alloquor#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/illumino#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/illumino#Latin Most modern English words starting with a- or i- and a double consonant are inheriting or borrowing a pronunciation spelling from Latin that showed the Latin pronunciation of the ad- or in- prefix in context. There's a challenge in transliterating Arabic because Arabic does what you suggest with the definite article al- <ال>. The /l/ assimilates in pronunciation to the following consonant if it is a so-called "sun letter". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_and_moon_letters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_and_moon_letters So you could transliterate either al-shams (morphological or etymological or letter-by-letter) or ash-shams (pronunciation).