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A romanization or latinization is a system for representing a word or language with the Roman (Latin) alphabet, where the original word or language used a different writing system. Methods of romanization include transliteration, representing written text, and transcription, representing the spoken word. The latter can be subdivided into phonological 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. In antiquity, Romanization or Latinization was also the imposition of Roman culture and language. To romanize is to transliterate or transcribe a language into the Roman alphabet. This process is most commonly associated with the Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages (CJK). Cyrillization is the similar process of representing a language using the Cyrillic alphabet. Also spelt romanisation and latinisation.
Methods of romanizationTransliterationIf 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 is not readable without prior study. TranscriptionPhonologicalHowever, most romanizations are intended for the casual reader, who is unfamiliar with the intricacies of the original script and is more interested in pronouncing the source language. Such romanizations follow the principle of phonological 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. PhoneticA 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. The International Phonetic Alphabet is the most common system of phonetic transcription. TradeoffsFor 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 target language, but which must be denoted to achieve comprehensibility. 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 zyūzyutu may allow an expert to reconstruct the kana syllables じゅうじゅつ, but most people would find the Hepburn version jūjutsu more pronounceable. Romanization of specific writing systemsArabicThe Arabic alphabet is used to write Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. Romanization standards include:
A table comparing romanizations using DIN 31635, ISO 233, ISO/R 233, UN, ALA-LC, and Encyclopaedia of Islam systems is available here: [8] (http://ee.www.ee/transliteration/pdf/Arabic.pdf). HebrewFor more details, see Hebrew alphabet and Romanization of Hebrew.
Brahmic scriptsThe 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 good comparison is provided here: [11] (http://www.sanskrit-sanscrito.com.ar/english/sanskrit/sanskrit3part2.html)
ChineseRomanization 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, most romanization tables convert not from directly from the Chinese characters but from the underlying Zhuyin pronunciation. See also: [15] (http://www.iqchina.com/going/PinYin2.asp) [16] (http://www.romanization.com/) Mandarin
Mainland China
Taiwan (Republic of China)
Cantonese
Min NanJapaneseRomanization (or, more strictly, Roman letters) in Japanese is called "romaji". The most common systems are:
KoreanMain article: Korean romanization
ThaiThai, spoken in Thailand, is written with its own script, probably descended from Old Khmer, in the Brahmic family. Also see Thai alphabet.
CyrillicBelarusianThe 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). Still it would seem that Belarusian has already a native romanization system, so we need not to invent anything. However, usually Belarusian names are transcribed differently, using a system like that for the Russian language. Names are then changed like this: Homiel → Homyel', Mahiloŭ → Mahilyow, Viciebsk → Vitsebsk, Baranavičy → Baranavichy, Žytkavičy → Zhytkavichy etc. RussianThere 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 etc. Systems include:
UkrainianMain article: Romanization of Ukrainian Ukrainian personal names are usually transcribed phonetically; see the main article section Conventional romanization of proper names. Scientific transliteration is used in linguistics. The Ukrainian National system is used for geographic names in Ukraine.
GreekGreek language includes the modern language spoken in Greece, as well as ancient Polytonic Greek. See also Greeklish.
Overview/SummaryThe 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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