Romanization - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

, romanization or latinization is the representation of a written word

Word

In language, a word is the smallest free form that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content . This contrasts with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own...

or spoken speech with the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system

Writing system

A writing system is a symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language.-General properties:Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that the reader must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to...

(or none). Methods of romanization include transliteration

Transliteration

Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...

, for representing written text, and transcription

Transcription (linguistics)

Transcription in the linguistic sense is the systematic representation of language in written form. The source can either be utterances or preexisting text in another writing system, although some linguists only consider the former as transcription.Transcription should not be confused with...

, for representing the spoken word. The latter can be subdivided into phonemic
Phonemic orthography
A phonemic orthography is a writing system where the written graphemes correspond to phonemes, the spoken sounds of the language. In terms of orthographic depth, these are termed shallow orthographies, contrasting with deep orthographies...

transcription, which records the phonemes or units of semantic meaning in speech, and more strict phonetic transcription, which records speech sounds with precision. Each romanization has its own set of rules for pronunciation of the romanized words.

Transliteration

If the romanization attempts to transliterate the original script, the guiding principle is a one-to-one mapping of characters in the source language into the target script, with less emphasis on how the result sounds when pronounced according to the reader's language. For example, the Nihon-shiki

Nihon-shiki

Nihon-shiki or Nippon-shiki Rōmaji is a romanization system for transliterating the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet. In discussion about romaji, it is abbreviated as Nihon-shiki or Nippon-shiki. Among the major romanization systems for Japanese, Nippon-shiki is the most regular, and has...

romanization of Japanese

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

allows the informed reader to reconstruct the original Japanese kana

Kana

Kana are the syllabic Japanese scripts, as opposed to the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as rōmaji...

syllables with 100% accuracy, but requires additional knowledge for correct pronunciation.

Phonemic

Most romanizations are intended to enable the casual reader who is unfamiliar with the original script to pronounce the source language reasonably accurately. Such romanizations follow the principle of phonemic transcription

Phonemic orthography

A phonemic orthography is a writing system where the written graphemes correspond to phonemes, the spoken sounds of the language. In terms of orthographic depth, these are termed shallow orthographies, contrasting with deep orthographies...

and attempt to render the significant sounds (phoneme

Phoneme

In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....

s) of the original as faithfully as possible in the target language. The popular Hepburn romanization

Hepburn romanization

The is named after James Curtis Hepburn, who used it to transcribe the sounds of the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet in the third edition of his Japanese–English dictionary, published in 1887. The system was originally proposed by the in 1885...

of Japanese is an example of a transcriptive romanization designed for English speakers.

Phonetic

A phonetic conversion goes one step further and attempts to depict all phones in the source language, sacrificing legibility if necessary by using characters or conventions not found in the target script. In practice such a representation almost never tries to represent every possible allophone—especially those that occur naturally due to coarticulation

Coarticulation

Coarticulation in its general sense refers to a situation in which a conceptually isolated speech sound is influenced by, and becomes more like, a preceding or following speech sound...

effects—and instead limits itself to the most significant allophonic distinctions. The International Phonetic Alphabet

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 the most common system of phonetic transcription.

Tradeoffs

For most language pairs, building a usable romanization involves tradeoffs between the two extremes. Pure transcriptions are generally not possible, as the source language usually contains sounds and distinctions not found in the target language, but which must be shown to for the romanized form to be comprehensible. Furthermore due to diachronic and synchronic variance no written language

Written language

A written language is the representation of a language by means of a writing system. Written language is an invention in that it must be taught to children, who will instinctively learn or create spoken or gestural languages....

represents any spoken language

Spoken language

Spoken language is a form of human communication in which words derived from a large vocabulary together with a diverse variety of names are uttered through or with the mouth. All words are made up from a limited set of vowels and consonants. The spoken words they make are stringed into...

with perfect accuracy and the vocal interpretation of a script

Writing system

may vary by a great degree among languages. In modern times the chain of transcription is usually spoken foreign language, written foreign language, written native language, spoken (read) native language. Reducing the number of those processes, i.e. removing one or both steps of writing, usually leads to more accurate oral articulations. In general, outside a limited audience of scholars romanizations tend to lean more towards transcription. As an example, consider the Japanese martial art 柔術: the Nihon-shiki romanization zyûzyutu may allow someone who knows Japanese to reconstruct the kana syllables , but most native English speakers or rather readers would find it easier to guess the pronunciation from the Hepburn version, jūjutsu
Jujutsu
Jujutsu , also known as jujitsu, ju-jitsu, or Japanese jiu-jitsu, is a Japanese martial art and a method of close combat for defeating an armed and armored opponent in which one uses no weapon, or only a short weapon....

.

Arabic

The Arabic alphabet

Arabic alphabet

The Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjad is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters. Because letters usually stand for consonants, it is classified as an abjad.-Consonants:The Arabic alphabet has...

is used to write Arabic

Arabic language

Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...

, Persian

Persian language

Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

, and Urdu as well as numerous other languages in the Muslim world, particularly African

Languages of Africa

There are over 2100 and by some counts over 3000 languages spoken natively in Africa in several major language families:*Afro-Asiatic spread throughout the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahel...

and Asian

Languages of Asia

There is a wide variety of languages spoken throughout Asia, comprising a number of families and some unrelated isolates. Many languages have a long tradition of writing.-Central and North Asian languages:*Turkic**Azeri**Kazak**Kyrgyz**Tatar**Turkish...

languages without alphabets of their own. Romanization standards include the following:

Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft
Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft
The Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft , in English the German Oriental Society, is a scholarly organization dedicated to studies of Asia and the broader Orient....

(1936): Adopted by the International Convention of Orientalist Scholars in Rome. It is the basis for the very influential Hans Wehr dictionary
Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic
The Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic is an Arabic-English dictionary compiled by Hans Wehr and edited by J Milton Cowan.First published in 1961 by Otto Harrassowitz in Wiesbaden, Germany, it was an enlarged and revised English version of Wehr's German Arabisches Wörterbuch für die Schriftsprache...

(ISBN 0-87950-003-4).
BS 4280 (1968): Developed by the British Standards Institution http://www.bsi-global.com/index.xalter
SATTS (1970s): A one-for-one substitution system, a legacy from the Morse code era
UNGEGN (1972): http://www.eki.ee/wgrs/rom1_ar.pdf
DIN-31635 (1982): Developed by the Deutsches Institut für Normung
Deutsches Institut für Normung
is the German national organization for standardization and is that country's ISO member body. DIN is a Registered German Association headquartered in Berlin...

(German Institute for Standardization)
ISO 233
ISO 233
The international standard ISO 233 establishes a system for Arabic transliteration . It has been completed by ISO 233-2 in 1993.- 1984 edition :The table below shows the consonants for the Arabic language.- ISO 233-2:1993 :...

(1984). Transliteration.
Qalam
Qalam
A qalam is a type of pen made from a dried reed, used for Islamic calligraphy. The word derives from the Greek word κάλαμος, meaning reed. In modern Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Kurdish, the word simply means "pen" or "pencil", while in Hindi and Urdu, the word solely means "pen". It is also the...

(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
Buckwalter transliteration
The Buckwalter Arabic transliteration was developed at Xerox by Tim Buckwalter in the 1990s. It is an ASCII only transliteration scheme, representing Arabic orthography strictly one-to-one, unlike the more common romanization schemes that add morphological information not expressed in Arabic script...

(1990s): Developed at Xerox
Xerox
Xerox Corporation is an American multinational document management corporation that produced and sells a range of color and black-and-white printers, multifunction systems, photo copiers, digital production printing presses, and related consulting services and supplies...

by Tim Buckwalter http://www.qamus.org/transliteration.htm; doesn't require unusual diacritic
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...

s 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
Arabic Chat Alphabet
The Arabic chat alphabet, Arabizi, Arabish or Araby, , is an alphabet used to communicate in the Arabic language over the Internet or for sending messages via cellular phones when the actual Arabic alphabet is unavailable for technical reasons...

Hebrew

The Hebrew alphabet

Hebrew alphabet

The Hebrew alphabet , known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, or more historically, the Assyrian script, is used in the writing of the Hebrew language, as well as other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, and Judeo-Arabic. There have been two...

is romanized using several standards:

ANSI
American National Standards Institute
The American National Standards Institute is a private non-profit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organization also coordinates U.S. standards with international...

Z39.25 (1975):
UNGEGN (1977): http://www.eki.ee/wgrs/rom1_he.pdf
ISO 259
ISO 259
ISO 259 is a series of international standards for the romanization of Hebrew, dating to 1984, with updated ISO 259-2 and ISO 259-3 .-External links:...

(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 (Indic) scripts

The Brahmic family

Brahmic family

The Brahmic or Indic scripts are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout South Asia , Southeast Asia, and parts of Central and East Asia, and are descended from the Brāhmī script of the ancient Indian subcontinent...

of abugida

Abugida

An abugida , also called an alphasyllabary, is a segmental writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as a unit: each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel notation is obligatory but secondary...

s is used for languages of the Indian subcontinent and south-east Asia. There is a long tradition in the west to study Sanskrit

Sanskrit

Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...

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

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

(2001): A standard transliteration
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...

convention was codified in the ISO 15919 standard. It uses diacritic
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...

s to map the much larger set of Brahmic consonant
Consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...

s and vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

s to the Latin script. See also Transliteration of Indic scripts: how to use ISO 15919. The Devanagari-specific portion is very similar to the academic standard, IAST
IAST
The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration is a transliteration scheme that allows a lossless romanization of Indic scripts as employed by the Sanskrit language.-Popularity:...

: "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, although there are a few differences
The National Library at Kolkata romanization
National Library at Kolkata romanization
The National Library at Kolkata 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...

, intended for the romanization of all Indic scripts
Brahmic family
The Brahmic or Indic scripts are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout South Asia , Southeast Asia, and parts of Central and East Asia, and are descended from the Brāhmī script of the ancient Indian subcontinent...

, is an extension of IAST
IAST
The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration is a transliteration scheme that allows a lossless romanization of Indic scripts as employed by the Sanskrit language.-Popularity:...
Harvard-Kyoto
Harvard-Kyoto
The Harvard-Kyoto Convention is a system for transliterating in ASCII the Sanskrit language and other languages that use the Devanāgarī script...

: 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
ITRANS
The "Indian languages TRANSliteration" is an ASCII transliteration scheme for Indic scripts, particularly for Devanagari script. It was developed by Avinash Chopde. The latest version of ITRANS is version 5.30 released in July, 2001...

: a transliteration scheme into 7-bit ASCII created by Avinash Chopde that used to be prevalent on Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...

.
ISCII
ISCII
Indian Standard Code for Information Interchange is a coding scheme for representing various writing systems of India. It encodes the main Indic scripts and a Roman transliteration. The supported scripts are: Assamese, Bengali , Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya , Tamil,...

(1988)

Chinese

Romanization of the Chinese language

Chinese language

The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

, in particular, has proved a very difficult problem, although the issue is further complicated by political considerations. Because of this, many romanization tables contain Chinese characters plus one or more romanizations or Zhuyin.

Mandarin

ALA-LC: Used to be similar to Wade-Giles http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/chinese.pdf, but converted to Hanyu Pinyin in 2000 http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pinyin/romcover.html
EFEO. Developed by Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient
École française d'Extrême-Orient
The École française d'Extrême-Orient is a French institute dedicated to the study of Asian societies. Translated into English, it approximately means the French School of the Far East. It was founded in 1900 with headquarters in Hanoi in what was then French Indochina. After independence, its...

in 19th century, used mainly in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

.
Latinxua Sinwenz
Latinxua Sinwenz
Latinxua Sin Wenz is a little-used romanization system for Mandarin Chinese. It was usually written without tones under the assumption that the proper tones could be understood from context....

(1926): Omitted tone sounds. Used mainly in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

and Xinjiang
Xinjiang
Xinjiang is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. It is the largest Chinese administrative division and spans over 1.6 million km2...

in the 30s. Predecessor of Hanyu Pinyin.
Lessing-Othmer
Lessing-Othmer
Lessing-Othmer is a romanisation of Mandarin Chinese that was once used by Germans written by F. Lessing and Dr. W. Othmer, who in 1912 printed their book "Lehrgang der nordchinesischen Umgangssprache" in Qingdao whilst it was a German colony in 1912 through the "Deutsch-Chinesische Druckerei und...

: Used mainly in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

.
Chinese Postal Map Romanization (1906): Early standard for international addresses
Wade-Giles
Wade-Giles
Wade–Giles , sometimes abbreviated Wade, is a romanization system for the Mandarin Chinese language. It developed from a system produced by Thomas Wade during the mid-19th century , and was given completed form with Herbert Giles' Chinese–English dictionary of 1892.Wade–Giles was the most...

(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.
Legge romanization
Legge romanization
Legge romanization is a transcription system for Mandarin Chinese, used by the prolific 19th century sinologist James Legge. It was replaced by the Wade-Giles system, which itself has been mostly supplanted by Pinyin...

: Created by James Legge
James Legge
James Legge was a noted Scottish sinologist, a Scottish Congregationalist, representative of the London Missionary Society in Malacca and Hong Kong , and first professor of Chinese at Oxford University...

a Scottish missionary.

Mainland China

Hanyu Pinyin (1958): In mainland China
Mainland China
Mainland China, the Chinese mainland or simply the mainland, is a geopolitical term that refers to the area under the jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China . According to the Taipei-based Mainland Affairs Council, the term excludes the PRC Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and...

, Hanyu Pinyin has been used officially to romanize Mandarin
Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese, or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....

for decades, primarily as a linguistic tool for teaching the standardized language. The system is also used in other Chinese-speaking areas such as Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

and parts of Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...

, 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 numerous 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): Based on Hanyu Pinyin.

Taiwan

Gwoyeu Romatzyh
Gwoyeu Romatzyh
Gwoyeu Romatzyh , abbreviated GR, is a system for writing Mandarin Chinese in the Latin alphabet. The system was conceived by Y.R. Chao and developed by a group of linguists including Chao and Lin Yutang from 1925 to 1926. Chao himself later published influential works in linguistics using GR...

(GR, 1928–1986, in Taiwan 1945-1986; Taiwan used Japanese Romaji before 1945),
Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II
Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II
Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II , abbreviated MPS II, is a romanization system formerly used in the Republic of China . It was created to replace the complex tonal-spelling Gwoyeu Romatzyh, and to co-exist with the popular Wade-Giles and Zhuyin...

(MPS II, 1986–2002),
Tongyong Pinyin
Tongyong Pinyin
Tongyong Pinyin was the official Romanization of Mandarin Chinese in the Republic of China between 2002 and 2008. The system was unofficially used between 2000 and 2002, when a new romanization system for the Republic of China was being evaluated for adoption. The ROC's Ministry of Education...

(2002–2008), and
Hanyu Pinyin (since January 1, 2009).

Cantonese

Barnett-Chao
Barnett-chao
The Barnett–Chao system of romanization for writing Cantonese is based on the principles of the Gwoyeu Romatzyh system for writing Mandarin Chinese in the Latin alphabet. The Barnett–Chao system has had a limited following and appears almost exclusively in Y.R. Chao's Cantonese Primer...
Guangdong (1960)
Hong Kong Government
Hong Kong Government Cantonese Romanisation
The Hong Kong Government Cantonese Romanisation is the more or less consistent way for romanising Cantonese proper nouns employed by the Hong Kong Government departments and many non-governmental organisations in Hong Kong...
Jyutping
Jyutping
Jyutping is a romanization system for Cantonese developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong in 1993. Its formal name is The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanization Scheme...
Meyer-Wempe
Meyer-Wempe
The Meyer–Wempe romanization system was developed by two Roman Catholic missionaries in Hong Kong, Bernhard F. Meyer and Theodore F. Wempe, during the 1920s and 1930s for romanizing Cantonese.-Initials:...
Sidney Lau
Sidney Lau
Sidney Lau wrote a series of textbooks in the 1970s, for teaching western people to speak Cantonese. The textbooks were initially used for teaching western expatriates working in the Hong Kong Police Force and other government bodies...
Yale (1942)
Cantonese Pinyin

Min Nan

Pe̍h-oē-jī (POJ), once the de facto official script of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan (since the late 19th century). Technically this represented a largely phonemic transcription system, as Min Nan
Min Nan
The Southern Min languages, or Min Nan , are a family of Chinese languages spoken in southern Fujian, eastern Guangdong, Hainan, Taiwan, and southern Zhejiang provinces of China, and by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora....

was not commonly written in Chinese.
Guangdong (1960), for the distinct Teochow variety.

Japanese

Romanization (or, more generally, Roman letters) is called "rōmaji" in Japanese

Japanese language

. The most common systems are:

Hepburn
Hepburn romanization
The is named after James Curtis Hepburn, who used it to transcribe the sounds of the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet in the third edition of his Japanese–English dictionary, published in 1887. The system was originally proposed by the in 1885...

(1867): transcription to Anglo-American practices, used in geographical names
Nihon-shiki
Nihon-shiki
Nihon-shiki or Nippon-shiki Rōmaji is a romanization system for transliterating the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet. In discussion about romaji, it is abbreviated as Nihon-shiki or Nippon-shiki. Among the major romanization systems for Japanese, Nippon-shiki is the most regular, and has...

(1885): transliteration. Also adopted as (ISO 3602 Strict) in 1989.
Kunrei-shiki
Kunrei-shiki
is a Japanese romanization system, i.e. a system for transcribing the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet. It is abbreviated as Kunrei-shiki. Its name is rendered Kunreisiki using Kunrei-shiki itself....

(1937): transliteration. Also adopted as (ISO 3602).
JSL (1987)
ALA-LC: Similar to Hepburn http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/japanese.pdf
Wāpuro
Wapuro romaji
, or kana spelling, is a style of romanization of Japanese originally devised for entering Japanese into word processors while using a Western QWERTY keyboard....

: ("word processor romanization") transliteration. Not strictly a system, but a collection of common practices that enables input of Japanese text.

Korean

While romanization has taken various and at times seemingly unstructured forms, some sets of rules do exist:

McCune-Reischauer
McCune-Reischauer
McCune–Reischauer romanization is one of the two most widely used Korean language romanization systems, along with the Revised Romanization of Korean, which replaced McCune–Reischauer as the official romanization system in South Korea in 2000...

(MR; 1937?), the first transcription to gain some acceptance. A slightly changed version of MR was the official system for Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...

in South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...

from 1984 to 2000, and yet a different modification is still the official system in North Korea
North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...

. Uses breve
Breve
A breve is a diacritical mark ˘, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. It resembles the caron , but is rounded, while the caron has a sharp tip...

s, apostrophe
Apostrophe
The apostrophe is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritic mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet or certain other alphabets...

s and diereses, the latter two indicating orthographic syllable boundaries in cases that would otherwise be ambiguous.
What is called MR may in many cases be any of a number of systems that differ from each other and from the original MR mostly in whether word endings are separated from the stem by a space, a hyphen or – according to McCune's and Reischauer's system – not at all; and if a hyphen or space is used, whether sound change is reflected in a stem's last and an ending's first consonant letter (e.g. pur-i vs. pul-i). Although mostly irrelevant when transcribing uninflected words, these aberrations are so widespread that any mention of "McCune-Reischauer romanization" may not necessarily refer to the original system as published in the 1930s.
- There is, for example, the ALA-LC / U.S. Library of Congress system, based on MR but with some deviations. Word division is addressed in detail, with a generous use of spaces to separate word endings from stems that is not seen in MR. Syllables of given names are always separated with a hyphen, which is expressly never done by MR. Sound changes are ignored more often than in MR. Distinguishes between ‘ and ’. http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/korean.pdf

Several problems with MR led to the development of the newer systems:

Yale (1942): This system has become the established standard romanization for Korean among linguists
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

. Vowel length in old or dialectal pronunciation is indicated by a macron
Macron
A macron, from the Greek , meaning "long", is a diacritic placed above a vowel . It was originally used to mark a long or heavy syllable in Greco-Roman metrics, but now marks a long vowel...

. In cases that would otherwise be ambiguous, orthographic syllable boundaries are indicated with a period. Indicates disappearance of consonants.
Revised Romanization of Korean
Revised Romanization of Korean
The Revised Romanization of Korean is the official Korean language romanization system in South Korea proclaimed by Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, replacing the older McCune–Reischauer system...

(RR; 2000): Includes rules both for transcription and for transliteration. South Korea now officially uses this system which was approved in 2000. Road signs and textbooks were required to follow these rules as soon as possible, at a cost estimated by the government to be at least US$20 million. All road signs, names of railway and subway stations on line maps and signs etc. have been changed. The change has been either ignored or grandfathered
Grandfather clause
Grandfather clause is a legal term used to describe a situation in which an old rule continues to apply to some existing situations, while a new rule will apply to all future situations. It is often used as a verb: to grandfather means to grant such an exemption...

in some cases, notably the romanization of names and existing companies. RR is generally similar to MR, but uses no diacritics or apostrophes, and uses distinct letters for ㅌ/ㄷ (t/d), ㅋ/ㄱ (k/g), ㅊ/ㅈ (ch/j) and ㅍ/ㅂ (p/b). In cases of ambiguity, orthographic syllable boundaries were intended to be indicated with a hyphen
Hyphen
The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. The hyphen should not be confused with dashes , which are longer and have different uses, or with the minus sign which is also longer...

, but this is inconsistently applied in practice.
ISO/TR 11941
ISO/TR 11941
ISO/TR 11941:1996 is a Korean romanization system used in ISO. It is not commonly used; it is only used in Unicode character names.It is very similar to Yale Romanization.- Consonants :- Vowels :- Usage :...

(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 based heavily on Yale and was a joint effort between both states, but they could not agree on the final draft. A superficial comparison between the two is available here: http://www.sori.org/hangul/romanizations.html#Roman_Intro
Lukoff
Fred Lukoff
Fred Lukoff was an American linguist who specialized in the study of the Korean language and was the first president of the International Association for Korean Language Education ....

romanization, developed 1945-47 for his Spoken Korean coursebooks http://www.glossika.com/en/dict/korpin.html

Thai

Thai language

Thai , also known as Central Thai and Siamese, is the national and official language of Thailand and the native language of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Tai–Kadai language family. Historical linguists have been unable to definitively...

, spoken in Thailand

Thailand

Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...

and some areas of Laos, Burma and China, is written with its own script, probably descended from mixture of Tai–Laotian and Old Khmer, in the Brahmic family

Brahmic family

. Also see Thai alphabet

Thai alphabet

Thai script , is used to write the Thai language and other, minority, languages in Thailand. It has forty-four consonants , fifteen vowel symbols that combine into at least twenty-eight vowel forms, and four tone marks ....

Royal Thai General System of Transcription
Royal Thai General System of Transcription
The Royal Thai General System of Transcription is the official system for rendering Thai language words in the Latin alphabet, published by the Royal Institute of Thailand...

:
ALA-LC: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/thai.pdf
ISO 11940
ISO 11940
ISO 11940 is an ISO standard for the romanization of the Thai alphabet, published in 1998 and updated in September 2003.-Consonants:The transliteration of the pure consonants is derived from their usual pronunciation as an initial consonant. An unmarked h is used to form digraphs denoting...

(1998): Transliteration

Cyrillic

In English-language library catalogues, bibliographies, and most academic publications, the Library of Congress transliteration method

ALA-LC romanization for Russian

The ALA-LC Romanization tables for Slavic alphabets is a set of standards for romanization of texts in various writing systems used in North American libraries and publications. The latest version was published by the American Library Association & Library of Congress in 1997...

is used worldwide.

In linguistics, scientific transliteration

Scientific transliteration

Scientific transliteration, variously called academic, linguistic, or scholarly transliteration, is an international system for transliteration of text from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet...

is used for both Cyrillic

Cyrillic alphabet

The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...

and Glagolitic alphabet

Glagolitic alphabet

The Glagolitic alphabet , also known as Glagolitsa, is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. The name was not coined until many centuries after its creation, and comes from the Old Slavic glagolъ "utterance" . The verb glagoliti means "to speak"...

s. This applies to Old Church Slavonic

Old Church Slavonic

Old Church Slavonic or Old Church Slavic was the first literary Slavic language, first developed by the 9th century Byzantine Greek missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius who were credited with standardizing the language and using it for translating the Bible and other Ancient Greek...

, as well as modern Slavic languages

Slavic languages

The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...

which use these alphabets.

Belarusian

BGN/PCGN romanization of Belarusian
BGN/PCGN romanization of Belarusian
The BGN/PCGN romanization system for Belarusian is a method for romanization of Cyrillic Belarusian texts, that is, their transliteration into the Latin alphabet....

, 1979 (United States Board on Geographic Names
United States Board on Geographic Names
The United States Board on Geographic Names is a United States federal body whose purpose is to establish and maintain uniform usage of geographic names throughout the U.S. government.-Overview:...

and Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use
Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use
The Permanent Committee on Geographical Names is an independent inter-departmental body established in 1919. Its function is to establish standard names for places outside the UK, for the use of the British government....

)
Scientific transliteration
Scientific transliteration
Scientific transliteration, variously called academic, linguistic, or scholarly transliteration, is an international system for transliteration of text from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet...

, or the International Scholarly System for linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
ALA-LC romanization
ALA-LC Romanization
ALA-LC is a set of standards for romanization, or the representation of text in other writing systems using the Latin alphabet. The initials stand for American Library Association - Library of Congress....

, 1997 (American Library Association and Library of Congress): http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/beloruss.pdf
ISO 9
ISO 9
The international standard ISO 9 establishes a system for the transliteration into Latin characters of Cyrillic characters constituting the alphabets of many Slavic and some non-Slavic languages....

:1995
Instruction on transliteration of Belarusian geographical names with letters of Latin script
Instruction on transliteration of Belarusian geographical names with letters of Latin script
Instruction on transliteration of Belarusian geographical names with letters of Latin script is an officially adopted method of Romanisation of the Belarusian Cyrillic text in geographical names. It was adopted by the decree of the State Committee on land resources, geodetics and cartography . The...

, 2000

See also: Belarusian Latin alphabet

Belarusian Latin alphabet

The Belarusian Latin alphabet or Łacinka is the common name of the several historical alphabets to render the Belarusian text in Latin script.-Use:...

Bulgarian

A system based on scientific transliteration

Scientific transliteration

Scientific transliteration, variously called academic, linguistic, or scholarly transliteration, is an international system for transliteration of text from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet...

and ISO/R 9:1968 was considered official in Bulgaria since the 1970s. Since the late 1990s, Bulgarian authorities have switched to a new system avoiding the use of diacritics and optimized for compatibility with English. This system became mandatory for public use with a law passed in 2009. Where the old system uses <č,š,ž,št,j,ă>, the new system uses .

Different transliteration standards are in use at the US Board on Geographic Names (BGN) and the UK Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use (PCGN), as well as the US Library of Congress (ALA-LC Romanization

ALA-LC Romanization

ALA-LC is a set of standards for romanization, or the representation of text in other writing systems using the Latin alphabet. The initials stand for American Library Association - Library of Congress....

). These English-based systems agree with the new official system in the use of , but differ in their treatment of some vowel letters.

Russian

There is no single universally accepted system of writing Russian

Russian language

Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

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 travellers' passports; the transcription of some names is purely traditional. All this has resulted in great reduplication of names. E.g. the name of the Russian composer Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...

may also be written as Tchaykovsky, Tchajkovskij, Tchaikowski, Tschaikowski, Czajkowski, Čajkovskij, Čajkovski, Chajkovskij, Çaykovski, Chaykovsky, Chaykovskiy, Chaikovski, Tshaikovski, Tšaikovski, Tsjajkovskij etc. Systems include:

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
GOST 16876-71
GOST 16876-71 is a romanization system devised by the National Administration for Geodesy and Cartography of the Soviet Union. It is based on the scientific transliteration system used in linguistics. GOST was an international standard so it included provision for a number of the languages of...

(1971): A now defunct Soviet transliteration standard. Replaced by GOST 7.79, which is an ISO 9
ISO 9
The international standard ISO 9 establishes a system for the transliteration into Latin characters of Cyrillic characters constituting the alphabets of many Slavic and some non-Slavic languages....

equivalent.
United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

romanization system for geographical names (1987): Based on GOST 16876-71
GOST 16876-71
GOST 16876-71 is a romanization system devised by the National Administration for Geodesy and Cartography of the Soviet Union. It is based on the scientific transliteration system used in linguistics. GOST was an international standard so it included provision for a number of the languages of...

.
ISO 9
ISO 9
The international standard ISO 9 establishes a system for the transliteration into Latin characters of Cyrillic characters constituting the alphabets of many Slavic and some non-Slavic languages....

(1995): Transliteration. From the International Organization for Standardization
International Organization for Standardization
The International Organization for Standardization , widely known as ISO, is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. Founded on February 23, 1947, the organization promulgates worldwide proprietary, industrial and commercial...

.
ALA-LC (1997): http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/russian.pdf
"Volapuk" encoding
Volapuk encoding
Volapuk encoding or latinitsa is a slang term for rendering the letters of the Cyrillic script with Latin ones...

(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).
Conventional English transliteration is based to BGN/PCGN, but doesn't follow a particular standard. Described in detail at transliteration of Russian into English.
Streamlined system for the transliteration of Russian
Comparative transliteration of Russian in different languages (Western European, Arabic, Georgian, Braille, Morse)

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.

ALA-LC: (PDF).
ISO 9
ISO 9
The international standard ISO 9 establishes a system for the transliteration into Latin characters of Cyrillic characters constituting the alphabets of many Slavic and some non-Slavic languages....
Ukrainian National transliteration: (JPEG, in Ukrainian).
Ukrainian National and BGN/PCGN systems, at the UN Working Group on Romanization Systems: (PDF).
Thomas T. Pedersen's comparison of five systems: (PDF).

See also: Ukrainian Latin alphabet

Ukrainian Latin alphabet

A Latin alphabet for the Ukrainian language has been proposed or imposed several times in the history in Ukraine, but has never challenged the conventional Cyrillic Ukrainian alphabet. Actually it is promoted as a way of facilitating the Ukrainian integration within the European Union.In or...

Greek

There are romanization systems for both Modern

Modern Greek

Modern Greek refers to the varieties of the Greek language spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic...

and Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

ISO 843
ISO 843
ISO 843 is a system for the transliteration of Greek characters into Latin characters.- 1997 edition :Exceptions:*double vowels are transliterated as au*double vowels are transliterated as eu*double vowels are transliterated as ou- See also :...

(1997): http://www.biology.uoc.gr/gvd/contents/databases/01c.htm
ALA-LC: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/greek.pdf
Beta code
Beta code
Beta Code is a method of representing, using only ASCII characters, characters and formatting found in ancient Greek texts . Its aim is to be not merely a romanization of the Greek alphabet, but to represent faithfully a wide variety of source texts – including formatting as well as rare or...

: http://www.tlg.uci.edu/BCM2004.pdf
Greeklish
Greeklish
Greeklish, a portmanteau of the words Greek and English, also known as Grenglish, Latinoellinika/Λατινοελληνικά or ASCII Greek, is the Greek language written using the Latin alphabet...

Overview and summary

The chart below shows the most common phonemic transcription romanization used for several different alphabets. While it is sufficient for many casual users, there are multiple alternatives used for each alphabet, and many exceptions. For details, consult each of the language sections below. (Hangul characters are broken down into jamo components.)

Romanized	Greek Greek language Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...	Russian Russian language Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics... (Cyrillic)	Hebrew Hebrew language Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...	Arabic Arabic language Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...	\| Persian Persian language Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...	Katakana Katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...	Hangul Hangul Hangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...
A	A	А	ַ, ֲ, ָ	َ, ا	ا, آ	ア	ㅏ
AE							ㅐ
AI			י ַ
B	ΜΠ, Β	Б	בּ	ﺏ ﺑ ﺒ ﺐ	ﺏ ﺑ		ㅂ
C	Ξ
CH	TΣ̈	Ч	צ׳		چ		ㅊ
CHI						チ
D	ΝΤ, Δ	Д	ד	ﺩ — ﺪ, ﺽ ﺿ ﻀ ﺾ	د		ㄷ
DH	Δ		דֿ	ﺫ — ﺬ
DZ	ΤΖ	Ѕ
E	Ε, ΑΙ	Э	, ֱ, י ֵֶ, ֵ, י ֶ			エ, ヱ	ㅔ
EO							ㅓ
EU							ㅡ
F	Φ	Ф	פ (final ף )	ﻑ ﻓ ﻔ ﻒ	ﻑ
FU						フ
G	ΓΓ, ΓΚ, Γ	Г	ג		گ		ㄱ
GH	Γ	Ғ	גֿ, עֿ	ﻍ ﻏ ﻐ ﻎ	ق غ
H	Η	Һ	ח, ה	ﻩ ﻫ ﻬ ﻪ, ﺡ ﺣ ﺤ ﺢ	ه ح ﻫ		ㅎ
HA						ハ
HE						ヘ
HI						ヒ
HO						ホ
I	Η, Ι, Υ, ΕΙ, ΟΙ	И	ִ, י ִ	دِ		イ, ヰ	ㅣ
IY				دِي
J	TZ̈	ДЖ, Џ	ג׳	ﺝ ﺟ ﺠ ﺞ	ج		ㅈ
JJ							ㅉ
K	Κ	К	כּ (final ךּ )	ﻙ ﻛ ﻜ ﻚ	ک		ㅋ
KA						カ
KE						ケ
KH	X	Х	כ ,חֿ (final ך )	ﺥ ﺧ ﺨ ﺦ	خ
KI						キ
KK							ㄲ
KO						コ
KU						ク
L	Λ	Л	ל	ﻝ ﻟ ﻠ ﻞ	ل		ㄹ
M	Μ	М	מ (final ם )	ﻡ ﻣ ﻤ ﻢ	م		ㅁ
MA						マ
ME						メ
MI						ミ
MO						モ
MU						ム
N	Ν	Н	נ (final ן )	ﻥ ﻧ ﻨ ﻦ	ن	ン	ㄴ
NA						ナ
NE						ネ
NG							ㅇ
NI						ニ
NO						ノ
NU						ヌ
O	Ο, Ω	О	, ֳ, וֹֹ		ُا	オ	ㅗ
OE							ㅚ
P	Π	П	פּ (final ףּ )		پ		ㅍ
PP							ㅃ
PS	Ψ
Q	Θ		ק	ﻕ ﻗ ﻘ ﻖ	غ ق
R	Ρ	Р	ר	ﺭ — ﺮ	ر		ㄹ
RA						ラ
RE						レ
RI						リ
RO						ロ
RU						ル
S	Σ	С	ס, שׂ	ﺱ ﺳ ﺴ ﺲ, ﺹ ﺻ ﺼ ﺺ	س ث ص		ㅅ
SA						サ
SE						セ
SH	Σ̈	Ш	שׁ	ﺵ ﺷ ﺸ ﺶ	ش
SHCH		Щ
SHI						シ
SO						ソ
SS							ㅆ
SU						ス
T	Τ	Т	ט, תּ, ת	ﺕ ﺗ ﺘ ﺖ, ﻁ ﻃ ﻄ ﻂ	ت ط		ㅌ
TA						タ
TE						テ
TH	Θ		תֿ	ﺙ ﺛ ﺜ ﺚ
TO						ト
TS	ΤΣ	Ц	צ (final ץ )
TSU						ツ
TT							ㄸ
U	ΟΥ, Υ	У	, וֻּ	دُ		ウ	ㅜ
UI							ㅢ
UW				دُو
V	B	В	ב		و
W	Ω		ו, וו	ﻭ — ﻮ
WA						ワ	ㅘ
WAE							ㅙ
WE							ㅞ
WI							ㅟ
WO						ヲ	ㅝ
X	Ξ, Χ
Y	Υ, Ι, ΓΙ	Й, Ы, Ј	י	ﻱ ﻳ ﻴ ﻲ	ی
YA		Я				ヤ	ㅑ
YAE							ㅒ
YE		Е, Є					ㅖ
YEO							ㅕ
YI		Ї
YO		Ё				ヨ	ㅛ
YU		Ю				ユ	ㅠ
Z	Ζ	З	ז	ﺯ — ﺰ, ﻅ ﻇ ﻈ ﻆ	ز ظ ذ ض
ZH	Ζ̈	Ж	ז׳		ژ

External links

Unicode Transliteration Guidelines
UNGEGN Working Group on Romanization Systems
U.S. Library of Congress Romanization Tables in PDF format
Download IPA for Urdu and Roman Urdu for Mobile and Internet Users
One of the few printed books with lists of romanizations is ALA-LC Romanization Tables, Randall Barry (ed.), U.S. Library of Congress, 1997, ISBN 0-8444-0940-5.
Microsoft Transliteration Utility - A tool for creating, debugging and using transliteration modules from any script to any other script.
eiktub - An Arabic Transliteration Pad
Chinese Phonetic Conversion Tool - Converts between Pinyin and other formats
Lingua::Translit - Perl
Perl
Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...

module and online service covering a variety of writing systems e.g. Cyrillic or Greek. Provides a lot of standards as well as common transliteration schemes.

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.