Devanagari transliteration
Encyclopedia
There are several methods of transliteration
from Devanāgarī
to the Roman script
, which is a process also known as Romanization in the Indian subcontinent
. The Hunterian transliteration
system is the "national system of romanization in India
" and the one officially adopted by the Government of India
.
, then Surveyor General of India. When it was proposed, it immediately met with opposition from supporters of the earlier practiced non-systematic and often distorting "Sir Roger Dowler method" (an early corruption of Siraj ud-Daulah
) of phonetic transcription, which climaxed in a dramatic showdown in an India Council meeting on 28 May 1872 where the new Hunterian method carried the day. The Hunterian method was inherently simpler and extensible to several Indic scripts because it systematized grapheme transliteration, and it came to prevail and gain government and academic acceptance. Opponents of the grapheme transliteration model continued to mount unsuccessful attempts at reversing government policy until the turn of the century, with one critic calling appealing to ""the Indian Government to give up the whole attempt at scientific (i.e. Hunterian) transliteration, and decide once and for all in favour of a return to the old phonetic spelling."
Over time, the Hunterian method extended in reach to cover several Indic scripts, including Burmese and Tibetan
. Provisions for schwa deletion in Indo-Aryan languages
were also made where applicable, e.g. the Hindi कानपुर is transliterated as kānpur (and not kānapura) but the Sanskrit क्रम is transliterated as krama (and not kram). The system has undergone some evolution over time. For instance, long vowels were marked with an accent
diacritic
in the original version, but this was later replaced in the 1954 Government of India update with a macron
. Thus, जान (life) was previously romanized as ján but began to be romanized as jān. The Hunterian system has faced criticism over the years for not producing phonetically-accurate results and being "unashamedly geared towards an English-language receiver audience." Specifically, the lack of differentiation between retroflex
and dental consonants (e.g. द and ड are both represented by d) has come in for repeated criticism and inspired several proposed modifications of Hunterian, including using a diacritic below retroflexes (e.g. making द=d and ड=ḍ, which is more readable but requires diacritic printing) or capitalizing them (e.g. making द=d and ड=D, which requires no diacritic printing but is less readable because it mixes small and capital letters in words).
methods for Devanāgarī:
. IAST is the de-facto standard used in printed publications, like books and magazines, and with the wider availability of Unicode
fonts, it is also increasingly used for electronic texts.
, intended for the romanization of all Indic scripts
, is an extension of IAST
. It differs from IAST in the use of the symbols ē and ō for ए and ओ (e and o are used for the short vowels present in many Indian languages), the use of 'ḷ' for the consonant (in Kannada) , and the absence of symbols for ॠ ऌ and ॡ.
convention not just for Devanagari, but for all South-Asian languages was codified in the ISO 15919 standard of 2001, providing the basis for modern digital libraries that conform to International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) norms. ISO 15919 defines the common Unicode basis for Roman transliteration of South-Asian texts in a wide variety of languages/scripts.
ISO 15919 transliterations are platform-independent texts, so that they can be used identically on all modern operating systems and software packages, as long as they comply with ISO norms. This is a prerequisite for all modern platforms, so that ISO 15919 has become the new standard for digital libraries and archives for transliterating all South Asian texts.
ISO 15919 uses diacritic
s to map the much larger set of Brahmi
c graphemes to the Latin script.
See also Transliteration of Indic scripts: how to use ISO 15919. The Devanagari-specific portion is nearly identical to the academic standard, IAST
: "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
, Harvard-Kyoto
looks much simpler. It does not contain all the diacritic
marks that IAST contains. This makes typing in Harvard-Kyoto much easier than IAST. Harvard-Kyoto uses capital letters that can be difficult to read in the middle of words.
is an extension of Harvard-Kyoto
. Many webpages are written in ITRANS. Many forums are also written in ITRANS.
The ITRANS transliteration scheme was developed for the ITRANS
software package, a pre-processor for Indic scripts. The user inputs in Roman letters and the ITRANS preprocessor converts the Roman letters into Devanāgarī (or other Indic scripts). The latest version of ITRANS
is version 5.30 released in July, 2001.
schemes is case-sensitivity, implying that transliterated names may not be capitalized. This difficulty is avoided with the system developed in 1996 by Frans Velthuis for TeX
, loosely based on IAST, in which case is irrelevant.
consonant letters include an implicit 'a' sound. In all of the transliteration systems, that 'a' sound must be represented explicitly.
, that must be explicitly represented with an 'a' character in the transliteration. Many words and names transliterated from Devanāgarī end with "a", to indicate the pronunciation in the original Sanskrit
. This schwa is obligatorily deleted
in several modern Indo-Aryan languages
, including Hindi-Urdu. This results in differing transliterations for Sanskrit and schwa-deleting languages that retain or eliminate the schwa as appropriate:
Some words may keep the final a, generally because they would be difficult to say without it:
Some Indian languages, like Kannada
, continue to use the original pronunciation today. Some, like Marathi
, have an intermediate pronunciation.
make a distinction between the retroflex and dental forms of the dental consonants. In formal transliteration schemes, the standard Roman letters are used to indicate the dental form, and the retroflex form is indicated by special marks, or the use of other letters. E.g., in IAST
transliteration, the retroflex forms are and .
In most informal transliterations the distinction between retroflex and dental consonants is not indicated.
. Thus "ph" is pronounced as the p in "pit" (with a small puff of air released as it is said), never as the ph in "photo" (IPA
/f/). (On the other hand, "p" is pronounced as the p in "spit" with no release of air.) Similarly "th" is an aspirated "t", neither the th of "this" (voiced, IPA /ð/) nor the th of "thin" (unvoiced, IPA /θ/).
The aspiration is generally indicated in both formal and informal transliteration systems.
scripts. These writing systems, though adequate for Middle Indic languages, were not well-adapted to writing Sanskrit. However, later descendants of Brahmi were modified so that they could record Sanskrit in exacting phonetic detail. The earliest physical text in Sanskrit is a rock inscription by the Western Kshatrapa
ruler Rudradaman, written c. 150 CE in Junagadh
, Gujarat. Due to the remarkable proliferation of different varieties of Brahmi in the Middle Ages, there is today no single script used for writing Sanskrit; rather, Sanskrit scholars can write the language in a form of whatever script is used to write their local language. However, since the late Middle Ages, there has been a tendency to use Devanagari
for writing Sanskrit texts for a widespread readership.
Western scholars in the 19th century adopted Devanagari for printed editions of Sanskrit texts. The editio princeps
of the Rigveda
by Max Müller
was in Devanagari, a typographical tour de force at the time. Müller's London typesetters competed with their Petersburg peers working on Böhtlingk's and Roth's dictionary in cutting all the required ligature types.
From its beginnings, Western Sanskrit philology also felt the need for a romanized spelling of the language. Franz Bopp
in 1816 used a romanization scheme, alongside Devanagari, differing from IAST in expressing vowel length by a circumflex (â, î, û), and aspiration by a spiritus asper
(e.g. for IAST ). The sibilants IAST and he expressed with spiritus asper and lenis, respectively . Monier-Williams in his 1899 dictionary used and sh for IAST and , respectively.
From the late 19th century, Western interest in typesetting Devanagari decreased. Theodor Aufrecht
published his 1877 edition of the Rigveda in romanized Sanskrit, and Arthur Macdonell's 1910 Vedic grammar (and 1916 Vedic grammar for students) likewise do without Devanagari (while his introductory Sanskrit grammar for students retains Devanagari alongside romanized Sanskrit). Contemporary Western editions of Sanskrit texts appear mostly in IAST.
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...
from Devanāgarī
Devanagari
Devanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal...
to the Roman script
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
, which is a process also known as Romanization in the Indian subcontinent
Indian subcontinent
The Indian subcontinent, also Indian Subcontinent, Indo-Pak Subcontinent or South Asian Subcontinent is a region of the Asian continent on the Indian tectonic plate from the Hindu Kush or Hindu Koh, Himalayas and including the Kuen Lun and Karakoram ranges, forming a land mass which extends...
. The Hunterian transliteration
Hunterian transliteration
The Hunterian transliteration system is the "national system of romanization in India" and the one officially adopted by the Government of India. Hunterian transliteration was sometimes also called the Jonesian transliteration system because it derived closely from a previous transliteration method...
system is the "national system of romanization in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
" and the one officially adopted by the Government of India
Government of India
The Government of India, officially known as the Union Government, and also known as the Central Government, was established by the Constitution of India, and is the governing authority of the union of 28 states and seven union territories, collectively called the Republic of India...
.
Hunterian transliteration system
The Hunterian system was developed in the nineteenth century by William Wilson HunterWilliam Wilson Hunter
Sir William Wilson Hunter KCSI CIE was a Scottish historian, statistician, a compiler and a member of the Indian Civil Service, who later became Vice President of Royal Asiatic Society.-Early life and education:...
, then Surveyor General of India. When it was proposed, it immediately met with opposition from supporters of the earlier practiced non-systematic and often distorting "Sir Roger Dowler method" (an early corruption of Siraj ud-Daulah
Siraj ud-Daulah
Mîrzâ Muhammad Sirâj-ud-Daulah , more commonly known as Siraj ud-Daulah , was the last independent Nawab of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. The end of his reign marks the start of British East India Company rule over Bengal and later almost all of South Asia...
) of phonetic transcription, which climaxed in a dramatic showdown in an India Council meeting on 28 May 1872 where the new Hunterian method carried the day. The Hunterian method was inherently simpler and extensible to several Indic scripts because it systematized grapheme transliteration, and it came to prevail and gain government and academic acceptance. Opponents of the grapheme transliteration model continued to mount unsuccessful attempts at reversing government policy until the turn of the century, with one critic calling appealing to ""the Indian Government to give up the whole attempt at scientific (i.e. Hunterian) transliteration, and decide once and for all in favour of a return to the old phonetic spelling."
Over time, the Hunterian method extended in reach to cover several Indic scripts, including Burmese and Tibetan
Tibetan script
The Tibetan alphabet is an abugida of Indic origin used to write the Tibetan language as well as the Dzongkha language, Denzongkha, Ladakhi language and sometimes the Balti language. The printed form of the alphabet is called uchen script while the hand-written cursive form used in everyday...
. Provisions for schwa deletion in Indo-Aryan languages
Schwa deletion in Indo-Aryan languages
The schwa deletion or schwa syncope phenomenon plays a crucial role in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu, Kashmiri, Punjabi, Gujarati, Maithili and several other Indo-Aryan languages, where schwas implicit in the written scripts of those languages are obligatorily deleted for correct pronunciation. Schwa...
were also made where applicable, e.g. the Hindi कानपुर is transliterated as kānpur (and not kānapura) but the Sanskrit क्रम is transliterated as krama (and not kram). The system has undergone some evolution over time. For instance, long vowels were marked with an accent
Acute accent
The acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...
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...
in the original version, but this was later replaced in the 1954 Government of India update with 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...
. Thus, जान (life) was previously romanized as ján but began to be romanized as jān. The Hunterian system has faced criticism over the years for not producing phonetically-accurate results and being "unashamedly geared towards an English-language receiver audience." Specifically, the lack of differentiation between retroflex
Retroflex consonant
A retroflex consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants, especially in Indology...
and dental consonants (e.g. द and ड are both represented by d) has come in for repeated criticism and inspired several proposed modifications of Hunterian, including using a diacritic below retroflexes (e.g. making द=d and ड=ḍ, which is more readable but requires diacritic printing) or capitalizing them (e.g. making द=d and ड=D, which requires no diacritic printing but is less readable because it mixes small and capital letters in words).
Alternative transliteration methods
The following are the major alternative transliterationTransliteration
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...
methods for Devanāgarī:
IAST
The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is the most popular academic standard for the romanization of SanskritSanskrit
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...
. IAST is the de-facto standard used in printed publications, like books and magazines, and with the wider availability of Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
fonts, it is also increasingly used for electronic texts.
National Library at Kolkata romanization
The National Library at Kolkata romanizationNational 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:...
. It differs from IAST in the use of the symbols ē and ō for ए and ओ (e and o are used for the short vowels present in many Indian languages), the use of 'ḷ' for the consonant (in Kannada) , and the absence of symbols for ॠ ऌ and ॡ.
ISO 15919
A standard transliterationTransliteration
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 not just for Devanagari, but for all South-Asian languages was codified in the ISO 15919 standard of 2001, providing the basis for modern digital libraries that conform to International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) norms. ISO 15919 defines the common Unicode basis for Roman transliteration of South-Asian texts in a wide variety of languages/scripts.
ISO 15919 transliterations are platform-independent texts, so that they can be used identically on all modern operating systems and software packages, as long as they comply with ISO norms. This is a prerequisite for all modern platforms, so that ISO 15919 has become the new standard for digital libraries and archives for transliterating all South Asian texts.
ISO 15919 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 Brahmi
Brāhmī script
Brāhmī is the modern name given to the oldest members of the Brahmic family of scripts. The best-known Brāhmī inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dated to the 3rd century BCE. These are traditionally considered to be early known examples of Brāhmī writing...
c graphemes to the Latin script.
See also Transliteration of Indic scripts: how to use ISO 15919. The Devanagari-specific portion is nearly identical 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
Harvard-Kyoto
Compared to IASTIAST
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...
looks much simpler. It does not contain all the 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...
marks that IAST contains. This makes typing in Harvard-Kyoto much easier than IAST. Harvard-Kyoto uses capital letters that can be difficult to read in the middle of words.
ITRANS scheme
ITRANSITRANS
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...
is an extension of 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...
. Many webpages are written in ITRANS. Many forums are also written in ITRANS.
The ITRANS transliteration scheme was developed for the 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...
software package, a pre-processor for Indic scripts. The user inputs in Roman letters and the ITRANS preprocessor converts the Roman letters into Devanāgarī (or other Indic scripts). The latest version of 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...
is version 5.30 released in July, 2001.
Velthuis
The disadvantage of the above ASCIIASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
schemes is case-sensitivity, implying that transliterated names may not be capitalized. This difficulty is avoided with the system developed in 1996 by Frans Velthuis for TeX
TeX
TeX is a typesetting system designed and mostly written by Donald Knuth and released in 1978. Within the typesetting system, its name is formatted as ....
, loosely based on IAST, in which case is irrelevant.
Transliteration Comparison
The following is a comparison of the major transliteration methods used for Devanāgarī.Vowels
| Devanāgarī Devanagari Devanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal... | 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... | 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... | Velthuis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| अ | a | a | a | a |
| आ | ā | A | A/aa | aa |
| इ | i | i | i | i |
| ई | ī | I | I/ii | ii |
| उ | u | u | u | u |
| ऊ | |ū | U | U/uu | uu |
| ए | e | e | e | e |
| ऐ | ai | ai | ai | ai |
| ओ | o | o | o | o |
| औ | au | au | au | au |
| ऋ | ṛ | R | RRi/R^i | .r |
| ॠ | ṝ | RR | RRI/R^I | .rr |
| ऌ | ḷ | lR | LLi/L^i | .l |
| ॡ | ḹ | lRR | LLI/L^I | .ll |
| अं | ṃ | M | M/.n/.m | .m |
| अः | ḥ | H | H | .h |
Consonants
The DevanāgarīDevanagari
Devanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal...
consonant letters include an implicit 'a' sound. In all of the transliteration systems, that 'a' sound must be represented explicitly.
| Devanāgarī Devanagari Devanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal... | 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... | 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... | Velthuis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| क | ka | ka | ka | ka |
| ख | kha | kha | kha | kha |
| ग | ga | ga | ga | ga |
| घ | gha | gha | gha | gha |
| ङ | ṅa | Ga | ~Na | "na |
| च | ca | ca | cha | ca |
| छ | cha | cha | Cha | cha |
| ज | ja | ja | ja | ja |
| झ | jha | jha | jha | jha |
| ञ | ña | Ja | ~na | ~na |
| ट | ṭa | Ta | Ta | .ta |
| ठ | ṭha | Tha | Tha | .tha |
| ड | ḍa | Da | Da | .da |
| ढ | ḍha | Dha | Dha | .dha |
| ण | ṇa | Na | Na | .na |
| त | ta | ta | ta | ta |
| थ | tha | tha | tha | tha |
| द | da | da | da | da |
| ध | dha | dha | dha | dha |
| न | na | na | na | na |
| प | pa | pa | pa | pa |
| फ | pha | pha | pha | pha |
| ब | ba | ba | ba | ba |
| भ | bha | bha | bha | bha |
| म | ma | ma | ma | ma |
| य | ya | ya | ya | ya |
| र | ra | ra | ra | ra |
| ल | la | la | la | la |
| व | va | va | va/wa | va |
| श | śa | za | sha | "sa |
| ष | ṣa | Sa | Sha | .sa |
| स | sa | sa | sa | sa |
| ह | ha | ha | ha | ha |
Irregular Consonant Clusters
| Devanāgarī Devanagari Devanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal... | 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... | 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... | 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... |
|---|---|---|---|
| क्ष | kṣa | kSa | kSa/kSha/xa |
| त्र | tra | tra | tra |
| ज्ञ | jña | jJa | GYa/j~na |
| श्र | śra | zra | shra |
Other Consonants
| Devanāgarī Devanagari Devanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal... | 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... | 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... |
|---|---|---|
| क़ | qa | qa |
| ख़ | k͟ha | Kha |
| ग़ | ġa | Ga |
| ज़ | za | za |
| फ़ | fa | fa |
| ड़ | ṛa | .Da/Ra |
| ढ़ | ṛha | .Dha/Rha |
Treatment of inherent schwa
Devanāgarī consonants include an 'inherent a' sound, called the schwaSchwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean the following:*An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel...
, that must be explicitly represented with an 'a' character in the transliteration. Many words and names transliterated from Devanāgarī end with "a", to indicate the pronunciation in the original 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...
. This schwa is obligatorily deleted
Schwa deletion in Indo-Aryan languages
The schwa deletion or schwa syncope phenomenon plays a crucial role in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu, Kashmiri, Punjabi, Gujarati, Maithili and several other Indo-Aryan languages, where schwas implicit in the written scripts of those languages are obligatorily deleted for correct pronunciation. Schwa...
in several modern Indo-Aryan languages
Indo-Aryan languages
The Indo-Aryan languages constitutes a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, itself a branch of the Indo-European language family...
, including Hindi-Urdu. This results in differing transliterations for Sanskrit and schwa-deleting languages that retain or eliminate the schwa as appropriate:
- Sanskrit: Mahābhārata, Rāmāyaṇa, Śiva, Sāmaveda
- Hindi: Mahābhārat, Rāmāyaṇ, Śiv, Sāmved
Some words may keep the final a, generally because they would be difficult to say without it:
- Krishna, vajra, Maurya
Some Indian languages, like Kannada
Kannada language
Kannada or , is a language spoken in India predominantly in the state of Karnataka. Kannada, whose native speakers are called Kannadigas and number roughly 50 million, is one of the 30 most spoken languages in the world...
, continue to use the original pronunciation today. Some, like Marathi
Marathi language
Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...
, have an intermediate pronunciation.
Retroflex consonants
Most Indian languagesLanguages of India
The languages of India belong to several language families, the major ones being the Indo-European languages—Indo-Aryan and the Dravidian languages...
make a distinction between the retroflex and dental forms of the dental consonants. In formal transliteration schemes, the standard Roman letters are used to indicate the dental form, and the retroflex form is indicated by special marks, or the use of other letters. E.g., in 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:...
transliteration, the retroflex forms are and .
In most informal transliterations the distinction between retroflex and dental consonants is not indicated.
Aspirated consonants
Where the letter "h" appears after a plosive consonant in Devanāgarī transliteration, it always indicates aspirationAspiration (phonetics)
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...
. Thus "ph" is pronounced as the p in "pit" (with a small puff of air released as it is said), never as the ph in "photo" (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...
/f/). (On the other hand, "p" is pronounced as the p in "spit" with no release of air.) Similarly "th" is an aspirated "t", neither the th of "this" (voiced, IPA /ð/) nor the th of "thin" (unvoiced, IPA /θ/).
The aspiration is generally indicated in both formal and informal transliteration systems.
History of Sanskrit Transliteration
Early Sanskrit texts were originally transmitted by memorization and repetition. Post-Harappan India had no system for writing Indic languages until the creation (in the 4th-3rd centuries BCE) of the Kharoshti and BrahmiBrāhmī script
Brāhmī is the modern name given to the oldest members of the Brahmic family of scripts. The best-known Brāhmī inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dated to the 3rd century BCE. These are traditionally considered to be early known examples of Brāhmī writing...
scripts. These writing systems, though adequate for Middle Indic languages, were not well-adapted to writing Sanskrit. However, later descendants of Brahmi were modified so that they could record Sanskrit in exacting phonetic detail. The earliest physical text in Sanskrit is a rock inscription by the Western Kshatrapa
Western Kshatrapas
The Western Satraps, Western Kshatrapas, or Kshaharatas were Saka rulers of the western and central part of India...
ruler Rudradaman, written c. 150 CE in Junagadh
Junagadh
Junagadh is the headquarters of Junagadh district in the Indian state of Gujarat. The city is the 7th largest in Gujarat. The city is located at the foot of the Girnar hills, 355 km south west of state capital Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad. The city is in western India. Literally translated,...
, Gujarat. Due to the remarkable proliferation of different varieties of Brahmi in the Middle Ages, there is today no single script used for writing Sanskrit; rather, Sanskrit scholars can write the language in a form of whatever script is used to write their local language. However, since the late Middle Ages, there has been a tendency to use Devanagari
Devanagari
Devanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal...
for writing Sanskrit texts for a widespread readership.
Western scholars in the 19th century adopted Devanagari for printed editions of Sanskrit texts. The editio princeps
Editio princeps
In classical scholarship, editio princeps is a term of art. It means, roughly, the first printed edition of a work that previously had existed only in manuscripts, which could be circulated only after being copied by hand....
of the Rigveda
Rigveda
The Rigveda is an ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns...
by Max Müller
Max Müller
Friedrich Max Müller , more regularly known as Max Müller, was a German philologist and Orientalist, one of the founders of the western academic field of Indian studies and the discipline of comparative religion...
was in Devanagari, a typographical tour de force at the time. Müller's London typesetters competed with their Petersburg peers working on Böhtlingk's and Roth's dictionary in cutting all the required ligature types.
From its beginnings, Western Sanskrit philology also felt the need for a romanized spelling of the language. Franz Bopp
Franz Bopp
Franz Bopp was a German linguist known for extensive comparative work on Indo-European languages.-Biography:...
in 1816 used a romanization scheme, alongside Devanagari, differing from IAST in expressing vowel length by a circumflex (â, î, û), and aspiration by a spiritus asper
Spiritus asper
In the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, the rough breathing , is a diacritical mark used to indicate the presence of an sound before a vowel, diphthong, or rho. It remained in the polytonic orthography even after the Hellenistic period, when the sound disappeared from the Greek language...
(e.g. for IAST ). The sibilants IAST and he expressed with spiritus asper and lenis, respectively . Monier-Williams in his 1899 dictionary used and sh for IAST and , respectively.
From the late 19th century, Western interest in typesetting Devanagari decreased. Theodor Aufrecht
Theodor Aufrecht
Simon Theodor Aufrecht was a German indologist.-Biography:Aufrecht was born in Leschnitz, Prussian Silesia, and was educated in Berlin, graduating in 1847, in which year he also published a treatise on Sanskrit accent . With Kirchhoff, he collaborated in the publication of Die umbrischen Denkmäler...
published his 1877 edition of the Rigveda in romanized Sanskrit, and Arthur Macdonell's 1910 Vedic grammar (and 1916 Vedic grammar for students) likewise do without Devanagari (while his introductory Sanskrit grammar for students retains Devanagari alongside romanized Sanskrit). Contemporary Western editions of Sanskrit texts appear mostly in IAST.
See also
- The National Library at Kolkata romanizationNational Library at Kolkata romanizationThe 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...
, and ISO 15919ISO 15919ISO 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...
are extensions of IASTIASTThe International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration is a transliteration scheme that allows a lossless romanization of Indic scripts as employed by the Sanskrit language.-Popularity:...
to transcribe all Indic scriptsBrahmic familyThe 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... - ISCIIISCIIIndian 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,...
is an 8-bit encoding for Indic scripts - ITRANSITRANSThe "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 used in Phonetic Devanagari typing tools - Hunterian transliterationHunterian transliterationThe Hunterian transliteration system is the "national system of romanization in India" and the one officially adopted by the Government of India. Hunterian transliteration was sometimes also called the Jonesian transliteration system because it derived closely from a previous transliteration method...
, the government-approved standard for transliterating Standard Hindi in India
External links
- Transliteration tool - Web based transliteration tool for Devanagari, Velthuis, Harvard-Kyoto, ITRANS, Simplified
- http://www.cdacmumbai.in/xlit/editor for English to Indian Language Transliteration
- Romanized Latin to Sanskrit - English to sanskrit converter unicode - Converts Harvard-Kyoto transliterations into Unicode Devanagari
- International Components for Unicode - Java/C API to transliterate Unicode text from many languages to Devanagari, supports 8 languages
- HiTrans - Extended ITRANS scheme and real-time Unicode conversion tool
- Quillpad - Intuitive real-time Transliteration for Indian languages
- Google Indic Transliteration - real-time Latin-to-Indic character transliteration
- Modern Transcription of Sanskrit - download-able specifications for IAST and notes on transcribing Devanagari.
- Girgit Online Indic to Indic Transliteration of Webpages বংলা (Bengali), हिन्दी (Devanagari), ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada), മലയാളം (Malayalam), ଓଡ଼ିଆ (Oriya), ਗੁਰਮੁਖੀ (Punjabi), தமிழ் (Tamil), తెలుగు (Telugu), ગુજરાતી (Gujarati), English
- Indinator Indic language transliterator Free online tool for , a download version is available as well.
- "South Asian text editor" with virtual keyboard providing support for ISO 15919 text input
- Lipikaar - Comprehensive Devanagari typing tool, easy for typing words with halant and nuktas.
- Indian Languages Transliteration
- Phonetic Translation Library C/C++ API for transliterating Indian Language content. Supported Languages: Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu
- Devanāgarī to ISO 15919 (IAST) converter Online tool for converting Devanagari to IAST
- Simple Devanagari - Latin Transliteration, useful as filename
- WERD - Write English Read Devanagari, the free and opensource Indic transliteration tool