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]] In Linguistics , romanization (or ''Latinization'', also spelled ''romanisation'' or ''Latinisation'') is the representation of a Word or Language with the Roman (Latin) Alphabet , or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different Writing System (or none). Methods of romanization include Transliteration , for representing written text, and Transcription , for representing the spoken word. The latter can be subdivided into '' Phonemic 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. Examples of languages to which this process is often applied are Chinese , Japanese and Korean ( CJK ). Cyrillization is the similar process of representing a language using the Cyrillic Alphabet . METHODS OF ROMANIZATION Transliteration See Also: 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 romanization of Japanese allows the informed reader to reconstruct the original Japanese Kana syllables with 100% accuracy, but requires additional knowledge for correct pronunciation. Transcription See Also: Transcription (linguistics) Phonemic See Also: Phonemic orthography 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 and attempt to render the significant sounds ( Phonemes ) of the original as faithfully as possible in the target language. The popular Hepburn Romanization of Japanese is an example of a transcriptive romanization designed for English speakers. Phonetic See Also: Phonetic transcription A Phonetic conversion goes one step further and attempts to depict all Phone s 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 effects -- and instead limits itself to the most significant allophonic distinctions. The International Phonetic Alphabet 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 represents any Spoken Language with perfect accuracy and the vocal interpretation of a Script 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 じゅうじゅつ, but most native English speakers or rather readers would find it easier to guess the pronunciation from the Hepburn version, '' Jūjutsu ''. ROMANIZATION OF SPECIFIC WRITING SYSTEMS Arabic ''For more detail, see Arabic Transliteration '' The Arabic Alphabet is used to write Arabic , Persian , and Urdu . Romanization standards include:
Hebrew ''For more details, see Hebrew Alphabet and Romanization Of Hebrew .''
Brahmic scripts The Brahmic Family of Abugida s 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: {Link without Title}
See Also: Devanagari transliteration Romanization of Malayalam Chinese See Also: Romanization of Chinese Romanization of the Chinese Language , 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 perceived to be written non-phonetically, and this myth has retarded acceptance of romanisation efforts. Because of this, many romanization tables contain Chinese characters plus one or more romanizations or Zhuyin . Standard Mandarin
=Mainland China
=Taiwan See Also: Romanization of Chinese in Taiwan
=Singapore See Also: Chinese language romanisation in Singapore Standard Cantonese
Standard Shanghainese Min Nan
Min Dong Japanese Romanization (or, more generally, Roman Letters ) is called " Rōmaji " in Japanese . The most common systems are:
Korean ''Main article: Korean Romanization '' While romanization is often been carried out irrespective of any system, there are some rulesets available to choose from:
Several problems with MR led to the development of the newer systems:
Thai Thai , spoken in Thailand , is written with its own script, probably descended from Old Khmer , in the Brahmic Family . Also see Thai Alphabet .
Cyrillic In linguistics, Scientific Transliteration is used for both Cyrillic and Glagolitic Alphabet s. This applies to Old Church Slavonic , as well as modern Slavic Languages which use these alphabets. Belarusian
''See also:'' Belarusian Latin Alphabet Bulgarian The official Bulgarian scheme for the Roman transliteration of Bulgarian Cyrillic is the English-oriented Streamlined System proposed by L.L. Ivanov and introduced by the Antarctic Place-names Commission Of Bulgaria on 2 March 1995. The Streamlined System was subsequently adopted by the Bulgarian Government (Ordinances #61 of 2 April 1999 and #10 of 11 February 2000) for the purposes of introducing new identity documents . Presently the system is being promulgated by the Ministry of Public Administration and Administrative Reform for further usage in road signs, street names, official information systems, databases, local authorities’ websites etc. In the USA and Britain, the US Board on Geographic Names ( BGN ) and the UK Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use ( PCGN ) still retain their 1952 BGN/PCGN System for the Romanization of Bulgarian, used primarily in the English spelling of Bulgarian geographical names. That system differs from the Streamlined System in the case of three Cyrillic letters. See also Romanization Of Bulgarian .
Russian There is no single universally accepted system of writing may also be written as ''Tchaykovsky'', ''Tchajkovskij'', ''Tchaikowski'', ''Tschaikowski'', ''Czajkowski'', ''Čajkovskij'', ''Čajkovski'', ''Chajkovskij'', ''Çaykovski'', ''Chaykovsky'', ''Chaykovskiy'', ''Chaikovski'', ''Tshaikovski'', ''Tšaikovski'' etc. Systems include:
Ukrainian See Also: Romanization of 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.
''See also:'' Ukrainian Latin Alphabet Greek Greek Language includes the modern language spoken in Greece , as well as ancient Polytonic Orthography . See also Greeklish . 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. (Because the number of Hangul characters are prohibitively large, only the first characters are provided in the following table.)
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