Romanization

:In Antiquity, Romanization describes the spread of Roman culture and language.

Romanization of specific writing systems

Arabic

For more detail, see Arabic transliteration

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The Arabic alphabet is used to write Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. Romanization standards include:

Related Topics:
Arabic alphabet - Arabic - Persian - Urdu

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• Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (1936): http://www.dmg-web.de/ Adopted by the International Convention of Orientalist Scholars in Rome. Is the basis for the very influential Hans Wehr dictionary (ISBN 0879500034)
• BS 4280 (1968): Developed by the British Standards Institute http://www.bsi-global.com/index.xalter
• SATTS (1970s): Developed by US military
• UNGEGN (1972): http://www.eki.ee/wgrs/rom1_ar.pdf
• DIN-31635 (1982): Developed by the Deutsches Institut für Normung (German Institute for Standardization)
• ISO 233 (1984). Transliteration.
• Qalam (1985): A system that focuses upon preserving the spelling, rather than the pronunciation, and uses mixed case http://eserver.org/langs/qalam.txt
• ISO 233-2(1993). Simplified transliteration.
• Buckwalter Transliteration (1990s): Developed at Xerox by Tim Buckwalter http://www.qamus.org/transliteration.htm; doesn't require unusual diacritics http://www.xrce.xerox.com/competencies/content-analysis/arabic/info/buckwalter-about.html
• ALA-LC (1997): http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/arabic.pdf
• Arabic Chat Alphabet

Hebrew

For more details, see Hebrew alphabet and Romanization of Hebrew.

Related Topics:
Hebrew alphabet - Romanization of Hebrew

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• ANSI Z39.25 (1975):
• UNGEGN (1977): http://www.eki.ee/wgrs/rom1_he.pdf
• ISO 259 (1984): Transliteration.
• ISO 259-2 (1994): Simplified transliteration.
• ISO/DIS 259-3: Phonemic transcription.
• ALA-LC: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/hebrew.pdf

Brahmic scripts

The Brahmic family of abugidas is used for languages of the Indian subcontinent and south-east Asia. There is a long tradition in the west to study Sanskrit and other Indic texts in Latin transliteration. Various transliteration conventions have been used for Indic scripts since the time of Sir William Jones. A comparison of some of them is provided here: http://www.sanskrit-sanscrito.com.ar/english/sanskrit/sanskrit3part2.html

Related Topics:
Brahmic family - Abugida - Sanskrit

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• ISO 15919 (2001): A standard transliteration convention was codified in the ISO 15919 standard. It uses diacritics to map the much larger set of Brahmic consonants and vowels to the Latin script. See also Transliteration of Indic scripts: how to use ISO 15919. The Devanagari-specific portion is identical to the academic standard, IAST: "International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration", and to the United States Library of Congress standard, ALA-LC: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/hindi.pdf
• Harvard-Kyoto: Uses upper and lower case and doubling of letters, to avoid the use of diacritics, and to restrict the range to 7-bit ASCII.
• ITRANS: a transliteration scheme into 7-bit ASCII created by Avinash Chopde that used to be prevalent on Usenet.
• ASTHA: "Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration for HTML", made in Argentina, also into 7-bit ASCII http://www.sanskrit-sanscrito.com.ar/english/sanskrit/sanskrit3.html
• ISCII (1988)
• National Library at Calcutta romanization (?)

Chinese

Romanization of Chinese, in particular, has proved a very difficult problem, although the issue is further complicated by political considerations. Another complication is the fact that Mandarin is not written phonetically, but rather written as ideograms. Because of this, many romanization tables contain Chinese characters plus one or more romanizations or Zhuyin. See also: http://www.pinyin.info http://www.romanization.com/

Related Topics:
Chinese - Zhuyin

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Standard Mandarin

• ALA-LC: Used to be similar to Wade-Giles http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/chinese.pdf, but converted to Hanyu Pinyin since 2000 http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pinyin/romcover.html
• EFEO. Developed by Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient in 19th century, used mainly in France.
• Latinxua Sinwenz (1926): Omitted tone sounds. Used mainly in the Soviet Union and Xinjiang in the 30s. Predecessor of Hanyu Pinyin.
• Lessing-Othmer: Used mainly in Germany.
• Postal System Pinyin (1906): Early standard for international addresses
• Wade-Giles (1912): Transliteration. Very popular from 19th century until recently and continues to be used by some Western academics.
• Yale (1942): Created by the U.S. for battlefield communication and used in the influential Yale textbooks.

Mainland China

• Hanyu Pinyin (1958): In Mainland China, Hanyu Pinyin has been used officially to romanize Mandarin for decades, primarily as a linguistic tool for teaching Standard Mandarin (the standardized Chinese spoken language) to students whose mother tongue is not Standard Mandarin, and has been adopted by much of the international community as a standard for writing Chinese words and names in the Roman alphabet. The value of Hanyu Pinyin in education in China lies in the fact that China, like any other populated area with comparable area and population, has literally thousands of distinct dialects, though there is just one common written language and one common standardized spoken form. (These comments apply to Romanization in general)
• ISO 7098 (1991): Very similar to Hanyu Pinyin.

Taiwan (Republic of China)

• Gwoyeu Romatzyh: (1926): Used in mainland China before the communist takeover in 1949. Primarily used in Taiwan. Replaced by MPS II and no longer commonly used.
• Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II (1984): Primarily used in Taiwan. Not to be confused with MPS I which is Zhuyin. Replaced by Tongyong Pinyin and no longer commonly used.
• Tongyong Pinyin (2000): Primarily used in Taiwan. Literally means "Universal Spell Sound". Very similar to Hanyu Pinyin. Differences between the two are noted here.

Standard Cantonese

• Barnett-Chao
• Guangdong (1960)
• Hong Kong Government
• Jyutping
• Meyer-Wempe
• Sidney Lau
• Yale (1942)

Min Nan

• Guangdong (1960)
• Presbyterian Church in Taiwan

Japanese

Romanization (or, more strictly, Roman letters) in Japanese is called "r?maji". The most common systems are:

Related Topics:
Roman letters - Japanese - R?maji

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• Hepburn (1867): transcription
• Nihon-shiki (1885): transliteration. Also adopted as (ISO 3602 Strict) in 1989.
• Kunrei-shiki (1937): transliteration. Also adopted as (ISO 3602).
• JSL (1987)
• ALA-LC: Similar to Hepburn http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/japanese.pdf
• W?puro

Korean

Main article: Korean romanization

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• McCune-Reischauer (1937): Transcription. Until 2002, the official system for Korean in South Korea was this system, which is still used in North Korea.
• Revised Romanization of Korean (2000): As of 2005, South Korea officially uses this system, that was approved in 2000. Road signs and textbooks are required to follow these rules as soon as possible, at a cost estimated by the government to be at least US$20 million. Proper names are still left to personal preference, but the government encourages using the new system.
• Yale (1942): This system is used mainly in academic literature.
• ALA-LC: Follows McCune-Reischauer in most cases http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/korean.pdf
• ISO/TR 11941 (1996): This actually is two different standards under one name: one for North Korea (DPRK) and the other for South Korea (ROK). The initial submission to the ISO was a joint effort between both countries (and was based heavily on Yale), but they could not agree on the final draft. A comparison between the two is available here: http://www.sori.org/hangul/romanizations.html#Roman_Intro

Thai

Thai, spoken in Thailand, is written with its own script, probably descended from Old Khmer, in the Brahmic family. Also see Thai alphabet.

Related Topics:
Thai - Thailand - Old Khmer - Brahmic family - Thai alphabet

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• Royal Thai General System of Transcription:
• ALA-LC: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/thai.pdf
• ISO 11940 (1998): Transliteration

Cyrillic

In linguistics, scientific transliteration is used for both Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets. This applies to Old Church Slavonic, as well as modern Slavic languages which use these alphabets.

Related Topics:
Scientific transliteration - Cyrillic - Glagolitic alphabet - Old Church Slavonic - Slavic languages

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Belarusian

The Belarusian language has been written with both Cyrillic and Latin scripts. Today the Latin script (Łacinka, or Łacinica) is rarely used, although it has its advocates. Despite the existence of a native Latin alphabet, Belarusian names are usually transcribed similarly to the Russian language.

Related Topics:
Belarusian language - Łacinka

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• Belarusian National System of Romanization
• ALA-LC: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/beloruss.pdf
• BGN/PCGN
• ISO9

External link: Thomas T. Pederson's chart (PDF).

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Russian

There is no single universally accepted system of writing Russian using the Latin script — in fact there are a huge number of such systems: some are adjusted for a particular target language (e.g. German or French), some are designed as a librarian's transliteration, some are prescribed for Russian traveller's passports; the transcription of some names is purely traditional.   All this has resulted in great reduplication of names.   E.g. the name of the great Russian composer Tchaikovsky may also be written as Tchaykovsky, Tchajkovskij, Tchaikowski, Tschaikowski, Czajkowski, Čajkovskij, Čajkovski, Chajkovskij, Chaykovsky, Chaykovskiy, Chaikovski, Tshaikovski, T?aikovski etc. Systems include:

Related Topics:
Russian - Latin script - Tchaikovsky

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• BGN/PCGN (1947): Transliteration system (United States Board on Geographic Names & Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use). http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/avenue/vy75/cyrillic.htm
• GOST 16876-71 (1983): From the Main Administration of Geodesy and Cartography of the former Soviet Union. Russian abbreviation of GOsudarstvenny STandart, "the State Standard". http://www.ccl.net/cca/software/SOURCES/C/translit/phg-koi8.shtml
• United Nations standard (1987): Based on GOST. Used in the Russian Federation and increasingly in international cartographic products.
• ISO 9 (1995): Transliteration. From the International Organization for Standardization.
• ALA-LC (1997): http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/russian.pdf
• "Volapuk" encoding (1990s): Slang term (it's not really Volapük) for a writing method that's not truly a transliteration, but used for similar goals (see article).
• Internal Wikipedia standard (2004): Derived from BGN/PCGN, documented at Transliteration of Russian into English, but essentially congruent with de-facto internet practices.

Ukrainian

Ukrainian personal names are usually transcribed phonetically; see the main article section Conventional romanization of proper names. The Ukrainian National system is used for geographic names in Ukraine.

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• ALA-LC: (PDF).
• ISO 9
• Ukrainian National transliteration: (JPEG, in Ukrainian).
• Ukrainian National and BGN/PCGN systems, at the UN Working Group on Romanization Systems: (PDF).
• Thomas T. Pederson's comparison of five systems: (PDF).

Greek

Greek language includes the modern language spoken in Greece, as well as ancient Polytonic orthography. See also Greeklish.

Related Topics:
Greek language - Greece - Polytonic orthography - Greeklish

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• ISO 843 (1997): http://www.biology.uoc.gr/gvd/contents/databases/01c.htm
• ALA-LC: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/greek.pdf