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The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a popular transliteration
Transliteration

Transliteration is the practice of transcribing a word or text written in one writing system into another writing system or system of rules for such practice....
 scheme that allows a lossless romanization
Romanization

In linguistics, romanization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Latin alphabet, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system ....
 of Indic scripts
Brahmic family

The Brahmic family is a family of syllabaries used in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and parts of Central Asia and East Asia, descended from the Brahmi script....
.

IAST is the most popular transliteration scheme for romanization of Sanskrit
Sanskrit

Sanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India....
 and Pali
Páli

P?li is a village in Gyor-Moson-Sopron county, Hungary.External links...
. It is often used in printed publications, especially for books dealing with ancient Sanskrit and Pali
Páli

P?li is a village in Gyor-Moson-Sopron county, Hungary.External links...
 topics related to Indian religions. With the wider availability of Unicode
Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate Character expressed in most of the world's writing systems....
 fonts, it is also increasingly used for electronic texts.

IAST is based on a standard established by the International Congress of Orientalists at Geneva
Geneva

Geneva is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie . Situated where the Rh?ne River exits Lake Geneva , it is the capital of the Canton of Geneva....
 in 1894.






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The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a popular transliteration
Transliteration

Transliteration is the practice of transcribing a word or text written in one writing system into another writing system or system of rules for such practice....
 scheme that allows a lossless romanization
Romanization

In linguistics, romanization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Latin alphabet, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system ....
 of Indic scripts
Brahmic family

The Brahmic family is a family of syllabaries used in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and parts of Central Asia and East Asia, descended from the Brahmi script....
.

IAST is the most popular transliteration scheme for romanization of Sanskrit
Sanskrit

Sanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India....
 and Pali
Páli

P?li is a village in Gyor-Moson-Sopron county, Hungary.External links...
. It is often used in printed publications, especially for books dealing with ancient Sanskrit and Pali
Páli

P?li is a village in Gyor-Moson-Sopron county, Hungary.External links...
 topics related to Indian religions. With the wider availability of Unicode
Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate Character expressed in most of the world's writing systems....
 fonts, it is also increasingly used for electronic texts.

IAST is based on a standard established by the International Congress of Orientalists at Geneva
Geneva

Geneva is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie . Situated where the Rh?ne River exits Lake Geneva , it is the capital of the Canton of Geneva....
 in 1894. It allows a lossless transliteration of Devanagari
Devanagari transliteration

There are several methods of transliteration from Devanagari into Latin alphabet. The most widely used transliteration methods are IAST and ITRANS . However, there are other transliteration options....
 (and other Indic scripts
Brahmic family

The Brahmic family is a family of syllabaries used in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and parts of Central Asia and East Asia, descended from the Brahmi script....
, such as Sharada script), and as such represents not only the phonemes of Sanskrit
Sanskrit

Sanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India....
, but allows essentially phonetic transcription (e.g. Visarga is an allophone
Allophone

In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds that belong to the same phoneme. A phoneme is an abstract unit of speech sound that can distinguish words: That is, changing a phoneme in a word can produce another word....
 of word-final r and s).

The National Library at Kolkata romanization
National Library at Kolkata romanization

The National Library of India romanization is the most widely used transliteration scheme in dictionaries and grammars of Indic languages. This transliteration scheme is also known as Library of Congress and is nearly identical to one of the possible ISO 15919 variants.The tables below mostly use Devanagari but include letters from Kannad...
, intended for the romanization of all Indic scripts
Brahmic family

The Brahmic family is a family of syllabaries used in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and parts of Central Asia and East Asia, descended from the Brahmi script....
, is an extension of IAST.

IAST sign inventory and conventions


The sign inventory of IAST (both small and capital letters) shown with Devanagari
Devanagari

, or 'Nagari', is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal. It is written from left to right, lacks distinct letter cases, and is recognizable by a distinctive horizontal line running along the tops of the letters that links them together....
 equivalents and phonetic values in IPA
International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic....
, is as follows (valid for Sanskrit
Sanskrit

Sanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India....
; for Hindi
Hindi

Standard Hindi, also known as High Hindi, Nagari Hindi or Literary Hindi is a Standard language register of Hindi. It is one of the 22 official languages of India, and is used, along with English language, for administration of the central government....
, some minor phonological changes have occurred):











Note: Unlike ASCII
ASCII

American Standard Code for Information Interchange , is a coding standard that can be used for interchanging information, if the information is expressed mainly by the written form of English words....
-only romanizations such as ITRANS
ITRANS

The "Indian languages TRANSliteration" is an ASCII transliteration scheme for Brahmic family, particularly, but not exclusively, for Devanagari ....
 or Harvard-Kyoto
Harvard-Kyoto

The Harvard-Kyoto Convention is a system for transliteration in ASCII the Sanskrit language and other languages that use the Devanagari script. It is predominantly used informally in e-mail, and for electronic texts....
, the diacritics used for IAST allow capitalization of proper names. The capital variants of letters never occurring word-initially are only useful in contexts, where the convention is to typeset the IT sounds as capital letters (see ).

Comparison with ISO 15919


For the most part, IAST is a subset of ISO 15919
ISO 15919

ISO 15919 Transliteration of Devanagari and related Brahmic family of scripts into Latin characters is an international standard for the transliteration of Indic scripts to the Latin alphabet formed in 2001....
. The following five exceptions are due to the ISO standard accommodating an extended repertoire symbols to allow transliteration of Devanagari and other Indic scripts as used for languages other than Sanskrit.

DevanagariIASTISO 15919Comment
e e e represents .
o o o represents .
represents Gurmukhi Tippi .
represents ?? /?
Retroflex flap

The retroflex flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r`....
/.
.


See also

  • Devanagari transliteration
    Devanagari transliteration

    There are several methods of transliteration from Devanagari into Latin alphabet. The most widely used transliteration methods are IAST and ITRANS . However, there are other transliteration options....
  • Harvard-Kyoto
    Harvard-Kyoto

    The Harvard-Kyoto Convention is a system for transliteration in ASCII the Sanskrit language and other languages that use the Devanagari script. It is predominantly used informally in e-mail, and for electronic texts....
  • ITRANS
    ITRANS

    The "Indian languages TRANSliteration" is an ASCII transliteration scheme for Brahmic family, particularly, but not exclusively, for Devanagari ....
  • National Library at Kolkata romanization
    National Library at Kolkata romanization

    The National Library of India romanization is the most widely used transliteration scheme in dictionaries and grammars of Indic languages. This transliteration scheme is also known as Library of Congress and is nearly identical to one of the possible ISO 15919 variants.The tables below mostly use Devanagari but include letters from Kannad...
  • ISO 15919
    ISO 15919

    ISO 15919 Transliteration of Devanagari and related Brahmic family of scripts into Latin characters is an international standard for the transliteration of Indic scripts to the Latin alphabet formed in 2001....
  • Shiva Sutra
    Shiva Sutra

    The Shiva Sutras or Maheshvara Sutras are fourteen verses that organize the phonemes of the Sanskrit language as referred to in the of , the foundational text of Sanskrit grammar....