Romanization of Persian

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Romanization of Persian

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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....
(in the strict sense) attempts to be a complete representation of the original writing, so that an informed reader should be able to reconstruct the original spelling of unknown transliterated words. Transliterations of Persian are used to represent individual Persian words or short quotations, in scholarly texts in English or other languages that do not use the Arabic alphabet.

A transliteration will still have separate representations for different consonants of the Persian alphabet that are pronounced identically in Persian.

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Transliteration

BGN/PCGN romanization

BGN/PCGN romanization refers to the systems for romanization and Roman-script spelling conventions adopted by the United States Board on Geographic Names and the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use ....
and 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....
.

Non-academic English-language quotation of Persian words usually uses a simplification of one of the strict transliteration schemes (typically omitting diacritical marks) and/or unsystematic choices of spellings meant to guide English speakers using English spelling rules towards an approximation of the Persian sounds.

Transcription

Transcriptions

Transcription (linguistics)

Transcription is the conversion into written, typewritten or printed form, of a spoken language source, such as the proceedings of a court hearing....
of Persian attempt to straightforwardly represent Persian phonology

Persian phonology

The Persian language has six vowel phonemes and twenty-three consonant phonemes. It features contrastive stress and syllable-final consonant clusters....
in the Roman alphabet, without requiring a close or reversible correspondence with the Perso-Arabic script, and also without requiring a close correspondence to English-language phonetic values of Roman letters; for example, letters such as X, Q, C may be reused for Persian-language phoneme

Phoneme

In human language, a phoneme is the smallest posited linguistically distinctive unit of sound. Phonemes carry no semantic content themselves. In theoretical terms, phonemes are not the physical segment s themselves, but cognitive abstractions or categorizations of them....
s that are not present in English phonology

English phonology

English phonology is the study of the phonology of the English language. Like all languages, spoken English has wide variation in its pronunciation both Historical linguistics and Descriptive linguistics from dialect to dialect....
or do not have a consistent or single-letter English spelling.

Proposed Roman-alphabet scripts intended to be a primary representation of Persian, for use by Persian speakers as an alternative to the Perso-Arabic script, fall into this category. Some of these proposed scripts are described at .

Comparison of proposed Persian and neighboring Latin-based scripts

			tm Turkmen alphabet The current official Turkmen language alphabet as used in Turkmenistan is a modified Latin alphabet based on the Turkish alphabet, but with notable differences: J is used instead of the Turkish C; ? is used instead of the Turkish J; Y is used instead of the Turkish dotted and dotless I ; ? is used instead of the Turkish consonantal Y; and the...	az Azerbaijani alphabet In Republic of Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijani alphabet may refer to either of two alphabets used to write the Azerbaijani language: one Cyrillic-based alphabet and one Latin-based alphabet....	tk Turkish alphabet The Turkish alphabet is a Latin-based alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, a certain number of which have been adapted or modified for the phonetic requirements of the language....	ASCII	English
A A The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is a ; the plural is aes or, more commonly, a's.... a			Ä Æ ? is a grapheme formed from the letters a and e. Originally a ligature representing a Latin diphthong, it has been promoted to the full status of a letter in the alphabets of many languages.... ä	? ? or is a letter derived from the Latin alphabet. Both glyphs of the majuscule and Lower case forms of this letter are based on the rotated form of a minuscule e; a similar letter with identical minuscule is used in the Pan-Nigerian Alphabet, but has the capital form majuscule , based on a horizontally flipped majuscule E.... ?	E e	a	cat
Á A The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is a ; the plural is aes or, more commonly, a's.... á	Â A The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is a ; the plural is aes or, more commonly, a's.... â	Ã A The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is a ; the plural is aes or, more commonly, a's.... ã	A a			aa	father
Sc sc	Š Š The grapheme ?, ? is used in various contexts, usually denoting the voiceless postalveolar fricative , including in phonetic transcription.... š		S S S is the nineteenth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled ess or generally es- when part of a compound word, plural esses.... s			sh	ship
Zc zc	Ž Ž The grapheme ? is formed from Latin Z with the addition of h?cek. It is used in various contexts, usually denoting the voiced postalveolar fricative , including phonetic transcription.... ž			J J J or j is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing a voiced postalveolar fricative , and is equivalent to the voiced postalveolar fricative, , or the voiced retroflex fricative, .... j		zh	vision
C C C or c is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing a voiceless postalveolar affricate , and is equivalent to the voiceless postalveolar affricate, , or the voiceless retroflex affricate, ... c			Ç C C or c is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing a voiceless postalveolar affricate , and is equivalent to the voiceless postalveolar affricate, , or the voiceless retroflex affricate, ... ç			ch	church
J J J or j is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing a voiced postalveolar fricative , and is equivalent to the voiced postalveolar fricative, , or the voiced retroflex fricative, .... j				C c		j	judge
Q Q Q is the seventeenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled cue .... q				G G G is the seventh letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled gee.... g		gh	none
X X X is the twenty-fourth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled ex , plural exes .History... x				X X X is the twenty-fourth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled ex , plural exes .History... x		kh	none
	'					'	uh-oh

One common theme is that in transcriptions of Persian, the unmarked letter a is used for the front vowel /æ/, while accented or doubled versions of the letter are used for the back vowel /??/; this is opposite to the conventions in Latin alphabets of Turkic languages

Turkic languages

The Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean Sea to Siberia and Western China, and are sometimes considered to be part of the proposed Altaic languages....
, although similar to some romanizations of Arabic.

Romanization schemes

UniPers

UniPers, also called Pârsiye Jahâni (literally: global Persian) by its creators, is a proposed Latin-based alphabet

Alphabet

An alphabet is a standardized set of letter basic written symbols each of which roughly represents a phoneme, a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past....
for the Persian language

Persian language

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumae alphabet, and was initially developed by the Ancient Romes to write the Latin....
plus a few modified letters (Â/â, Š/š, Ž/ž, and an apostrophe

Apostrophe

The apostrophe is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritic mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet or certain other alphabets. In English it has two main functions: it marks omissions, and it assists in marking the possessives of all nouns and many pronouns....
).

The creators of the system have mentioned that they have the following criteria for their design of the system: serving the Persian language and no other, only using the Latin script, simplicity and ease of use by using a minimal number of diacritical letters and rules, one-to-one correspondence between the sound values of the language and the letters in the system (which may be relaxed in case of š and ž), and conformance with standard pronunciation of the language.

Vowel	as in	Vowel	as in
A a	/æ/	I i	/i/
Â â		O o
E e	/e/	U u	/u/
Consonant	as in	Consonant	as in
B b	/b/	Q q
C c		R r
D d	/d/	S s	/s/
F f	/f/	Š š
G g		T t	/t/
H h	/h/	V v	/v/
J j		W w	/w/; only used in diphthong ow and digraph xw
K k	/k/	X x
L l	/l/	Y y	/j/
M m	/m/	Z z	/z/
N n	/n/	Ž ž
P p	/p/	'
Digraph	as	Diphthong	as in
xw	x	ow	/o?/

Baha'i Farsi Romanization

All officially translated Baha'i books from Persian to English use a standardized scheme that differ significantly from UniPers, especially in vowel presentation. For example, what is in UniPers "Tehran" is presented in many Baha'i translations as "Tihiran". The name of the Baha'i women's right activist and martyr "Táhirih

Táhirih

T?hirih or Qurratu'l-`Ayn are both Persian names of F?timih Baragh?n? , an influential poet and theologian of the B?b?s faith in Iran....
" would be pronounced in Farsi according to the UniPers translation "Tahereh", but never printed as "Tahereh" in Baha'i books. The use of "i" in the case of "Tahereh", illustrates the Baha'i system's emphasis on literal correspondence with the Farsi script, rather than the pronunciation of the modern national language of Iran. A detailed introduction to the Baha'i Farsi Romanization can usually be found at the back of a Baha'i scripture.

ASCII Internet romanizations

It is common to write Persian language with only English letters especially when commenting in weblogs or when using cellphones to send SMS. One form of such writing is as below

A a	AA aa	B b	CH ch	D d	E e	F f	G g	H h	I i
/æ/		/b/		/d/	/e/	/f/		/h/	/i/
J j	K k	L l	M m	N n	O o	P p	GH gh	R r	S s
	/k/	/l/	/m/	/n/		/p/			/s/
SH sh	T t	U u	V v	W w	KH kh	Y y	Z z	ZH zh	'
	/t/	/u/	/v/	/w/		/j/	/z/

Tajik Latin alphabet

The Tajik language

Tajik language

The Tajik language, or Tajik Persian, or Tajiki, is a modern variety of the Persian language spoken in Central Asia. An Indo-European languages language of the Iranian languages language group, most speakers of Tajik live in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan....
is closely related to Persian. It was written in Tajik SSR

Tajik SSR

The Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic , also known as the Tajik SSR for short, was one of the 15 Republics of the Soviet Union that made up the Soviet Union....
in a standardized Latin script from 1926 until late 1930s, when the script was officially changed to Cyrillic. However, Tajik phonology differs slightly from that of Persian in Iran; see Persian phonology#Historical shifts

Persian phonology

The Persian language has six vowel phonemes and twenty-three consonant phonemes. It features contrastive stress and syllable-final consonant clusters....
.

style="font-size:smaller;" | **The Tajik alphabet in Latin**
A a	B ?	C c	Ç ç	D d	E e	F f	G g		H h	I i	I i

J j	K k	L l	M m	N n	O o	P p	Q q	R r	S s	S s	T t

U u	U u	V v	X x	Z z		'

External links

web-based Arabic transliteration pad, with support for Persian characters

Romanization of Persian

Transliteration

Transcription

Comparison of proposed Persian and neighboring Latin-based scripts

Romanization schemes

UniPers

Baha'i Farsi Romanization

ASCII Internet romanizations

Tajik Latin alphabet

See also

External links