Scientific transliteration
Encyclopedia
Scientific transliteration, variously called academic, linguistic, or scholarly transliteration, is an international system for transliteration
of text from the Cyrillic
to the Latin alphabet
(romanization
). This system is most often seen in linguistics
publications on Slavic languages
.
, in which each letter corresponds directly to a Cyrillic letter of the related Serbian language
, and was heavily based on the earlier Czech alphabet
. It was codified in the 1898 Prussian Instructions for libraries, or Preußische Instruktionen (PI). It can also be used to romanize the early Glagolitic alphabet
, which has a close correspondence to Cyrillic.
Scientific transliteration is often adapted to serve as a phonetic alphabet.
Scientific transliteration was the basis for the ISO 9
transliteration standard. While linguistic transliteration tries to preserve the original language's pronunciation
to a certain degree, the latest version of the ISO standard (ISO 9:1995) has abandoned this concept, which was still found in ISO/R 9:1968 and is now restricted to a one-to-one mapping of letters. It thus allows for unambiguous reverse transliteration into the original Cyrillic text and is language-independent.
The previous official Soviet romanization system, GOST 16876-71
, is also based on scientific transliteration but used Latin h for Cyrillic х instead of Latin x or ssh or sth for Cyrillic Щ and had a number of other differences. Most countries using Cyrillic script now have adopted GOST 7.79 instead, which is not the same as ISO 9 but close to it.
Representing all of the necessary diacritics on computers requires Unicode
, Latin-2, Latin-4, or Latin-7 encoding.
* : Archaic letters
†: Church Slavonic Iotified A (IA)
: Letters in parentheses are older or alternate transliterations.
Ukrainian and Belarusian apostrophe are not transcribed. The early Cyrillic letter koppa
(Ҁ, ҁ) was used only for transliterating Greek and its numeric value
and was thus omitted. ISO 9:1995 is provided for comparison.
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...
of text from the 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...
to the Latin alphabet
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...
(romanization
Romanization
In linguistics, romanization or latinization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Roman script, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system . Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written...
). This system is most often seen in 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....
publications on 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...
.
Details
The scientific transliteration system is roughly as phonemic as is the orthography of the language transliterated. The deviations are with щ, where the transliteration makes clear that two phonemes are involved, and џ, where it fails to represent the (monophonemic) affricate with a single letter. The transliteration system is based on the Croatian alphabetCroatian alphabet
Gaj's Latin alphabet is a variant of the Latin script used for Croatian language. It was devised by Croatian linguist Ljudevit Gaj in 1835, based on Jan Hus's Czech alphabet....
, in which each letter corresponds directly to a Cyrillic letter of the related Serbian language
Serbian language
Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
, and was heavily based on the earlier Czech alphabet
Czech alphabet
The Czech alphabet is a version of the Latin script, used when writing Czech. Its basic principles are "one sound, one letter" and the addition of diacritical marks above letters to represent sounds alien to Latin...
. It was codified in the 1898 Prussian Instructions for libraries, or Preußische Instruktionen (PI). It can also be used to romanize the early 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"...
, which has a close correspondence to Cyrillic.
Scientific transliteration is often adapted to serve as a phonetic alphabet.
Scientific transliteration was the basis for the 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....
transliteration standard. While linguistic transliteration tries to preserve the original language's pronunciation
Pronunciation
Pronunciation refers to the way a word or a language is spoken, or the manner in which someone utters a word. If one is said to have "correct pronunciation", then it refers to both within a particular dialect....
to a certain degree, the latest version of the ISO standard (ISO 9:1995) has abandoned this concept, which was still found in ISO/R 9:1968 and is now restricted to a one-to-one mapping of letters. It thus allows for unambiguous reverse transliteration into the original Cyrillic text and is language-independent.
The previous official Soviet romanization system, 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...
, is also based on scientific transliteration but used Latin h for Cyrillic х instead of Latin x or ssh or sth for Cyrillic Щ and had a number of other differences. Most countries using Cyrillic script now have adopted GOST 7.79 instead, which is not the same as ISO 9 but close to it.
Representing all of the necessary diacritics on computers requires 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...
, Latin-2, Latin-4, or Latin-7 encoding.
| Cyrillic | Church Slavonic |
Bulgarian | Russian | Belarusian | Ukrainian | Serbian | Macedonian | ISO 9 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| А а A (Cyrillic) A is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.It commonly represents an open front unrounded vowel , like the pronunciation of ⟨a⟩ in "father".The Cyrillic letter A is romanized using the Latin letter A.-History:... |
a | a | a | a | a | a | a | a |
| Б б Be (Cyrillic) Be is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. It commonly represents the voiced bilabial plosive , like the English pronunciation of ⟨b⟩ in "bee"... |
b | b | b | b | b | b | b | b |
| В в Ve (Cyrillic) Ve is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.It commonly represents the voiced labiodental fricative , like the pronunciation of ⟨v⟩ in "very".... |
v | v | v | v | v | v | v | v |
| Г г Ge (Cyrillic) Ge is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. It is also known in some languages as He. In Unicode this letter is called "Ghe".It commonly represents the voiced velar plosive , like the pronunciation of ⟨g⟩ in "go".... |
g | g | g | h | h | g | g | g |
| Ґ ґ Ge with upturn Ge with upturn is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. In Ukrainian, Urum and Rusyn, this letter is called "Ge", and the letter ⟨Г⟩ is called "He"... |
g* | g | g̀ | |||||
| Д д De (Cyrillic) De is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.De commonly represents the voiced dental plosive , like the pronunciation of ⟨d⟩ in admit.De is romanized using the Latin letter D.-History:... |
d | d | d | d | d | d | d | d |
| Ѓ ѓ Gje Gje is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.It is used in Macedonian to represent the voiced palatal plosive or the voiced alveolo-palatal affricate , similar to the pronunciation of ⟨j⟩ in "jet".... |
ǵ | ǵ | ||||||
| Ђ ђ Dje Dje is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.Dje is the sixth letter of the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet and of the Montenegrin Cyrillic alphabet, used in the Serbian language to represent the voiced alveolo-palatal affricate , similar to the pronunciation of ⟨j⟩ in "jet".Dje corresponds to the Latin... |
đ (dj) | đ | ||||||
| Е е Ye (Cyrillic) Ye is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. In some languages this letter is called E.It commonly represents the vowel or , like the pronunciation of ⟨e⟩ in "yes".Ye is romanized using the Latin letter E.... |
e | e | e | e | e | e | e | |
| Ё ё Yo (Cyrillic) Yo is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. In Unicode, the letter ⟨Ё⟩ is named CYRILLIC CAPITAL/SMALL LETTER IO.It commonly represents the sounds , like the pronunciation of ⟨Yo⟩ in "York".... |
ë | ë | ë | |||||
| Є є Ukrainian Ye Ukrainian Ye is a character of the Cyrillic script. It is considered as an individual letter of modern Ukrainian alphabet and as a variant form of Ye in modern Church Slavonic language... |
e | je | ê | |||||
| Ж ж Zhe (Cyrillic) Zhe is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.It commonly represents the voiced postalveolar fricative , like the pronunciation of ⟨s⟩ in "treasure".Zhe is romanized as ⟨zh⟩ or ⟨ž⟩.-History:... |
ž | ž | ž | ž | ž | ž | ž | ž |
| З з Ze (Cyrillic) Ze is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.It commonly represents the voiced alveolar fricative , like the pronunciation of ⟨z⟩ in "zoo".Ze is romanized using the Latin letter ⟨z⟩.... |
z | z | z | z | z | z | z | z |
| Ѕ ѕ Dze Dze is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, used in the Macedonian language to represent the voiced alveolar affricate , pronounced like ⟨ds⟩ in "pods".... |
dz | dz | ẑ | |||||
| И и I (Cyrillic) I is a letter used in almost all ancient and modern Cyrillic alphabets.It commonly represents the close front unrounded vowel , like the pronunciation of ⟨i⟩ in "machine", or the near-close near-front unrounded vowel , like the pronunciation of ⟨i⟩ in "bin".-History:The Cyrillic letter I was... |
i | i | i | y | i | i | i | |
| I і Ukrainian I Dotted I , also called Decimal I, is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.It commonly represents the close front unrounded vowel , like the pronunciation of ⟨i⟩ in "machine".... |
i | i* | i | i | ì | |||
| Ї ї Yi (Cyrillic) Yi is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.It represents the iotated vowel sound , like the pronunciation of ⟨yi⟩ in "playing", and is used in the Rusyn and Ukrainian alphabets.... |
i | ï (ji) | ï | |||||
| Й й Short I Short I is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. It is made of the Cyrillic letter И with a breve.Short I represents the palatal approximant , like the pronunciation of ⟨y⟩ in toy.... |
j | j | j | j | j | |||
| Ј ј Je (Cyrillic) Je is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.It commonly represents the palatal approximant , like the pronunciation of ⟨y⟩ in "yes".-Usage:-Related letters and other similar characters:... |
j | j | ǰ | |||||
| К к Ka (Cyrillic) Ka is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.It commonly represents the voiceless velar plosive , like the pronunciation of ⟨k⟩ in "king".-History:... |
k | k | k | k | k | k | k | k |
| Л л El (Cyrillic) El is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.El commonly represents the alveolar lateral approximant , like the pronunciation of ⟨l⟩ in "lip".-Form:... |
l | l | l | l | l | l | l | l |
| Љ љ Lje Lje is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.Lje represents a palatal lateral , a sound similar to the palatalized alveolar lateral which is represented by the digraph ЛЬ and pronounced like the ⟨ll⟩ in "million".Lje was invented by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić... |
lj | lj | l̂ | |||||
| М м Em (Cyrillic) Em is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.Em commonly represents the bilabial nasal consonant , like the pronunciation of ⟨m⟩ in "him".It is derived from the Greek letter Mu .... |
m | m | m | m | m | m | m | m |
| Н н En (Cyrillic) En is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.It commonly represents the alveolar nasal consonant , like the pronunciation of ⟨n⟩ in "nice".-History:The Cyrillic letter En was derived from the Greek letter Nu .... |
n | n | n | n | n | n | n | n |
| Њ њ Nje Nje is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.It is a ligature of the Cyrillic letters En ⟨Н⟩ and Soft Sign ⟨Ь⟩. It was invented by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić. It corresponds to the digraph ⟨nj⟩ in the Serbian Latin and Croatian alphabets.It is used in Macedonian and Serbian, where it represents a... |
nj | nj | n̂ | |||||
| О о O (Cyrillic) O is a letter of the Cyrillic script.O commonly represents the close-mid back rounded vowel , like the pronunciation of ⟨o⟩ in "go".-History:The Cyrillic letter O was derived from the Greek letter Omicron .... |
o | o | o | o | o | o | o | o |
| П п Pe (Cyrillic) Pe is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.It commonly represents the voiceless bilabial plosive , like the pronunciation of ⟨p⟩ in "pack".-History:... |
p | p | p | p | p | p | p | p |
| Р р Er (Cyrillic) Er is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.It commonly represents the alveolar trill , like the "rolled" sound in the Scottish pronunciation of ⟨r⟩ in "curd".-History:... |
r | r | r | r | r | r | r | r |
| С с Es (Cyrillic) Es is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.It commonly represents the voiceless alveolar fricative , like the pronunciation of ⟨s⟩ in "sand".-History:... |
s | s | s | s | s | s | s | s |
| Т т Te (Cyrillic) Te is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.It commonly represents the voiceless alveolar plosive , like the pronunciation of ⟨t⟩ in "tick".-History:... |
t | t | t | t | t | t | t | t |
| Ќ ќ Kje Kje is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, used only in the Macedonian alphabet, where it It represents the voiceless palatal plosive , or the voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate . Kje is the 24th letter In this alphabet... |
ḱ | ḱ | ||||||
| Ћ ћ Tshe Tshe is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, used only in the Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin alphabets, where it represents the voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate , somewhat like the pronunciation of ⟨ch⟩ in "chew". The sound of Tshe is produced from the voiceless alveolar plosive by iotation.... |
ǵ | ć | ć | |||||
| У у U (Cyrillic) U is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. It commonly represents the close back rounded vowel , somewhat like the pronunciation of ⟨oo⟩ in "boot"... |
u | u | u | u | u | u | u | |
| ОУ оу Uk (Cyrillic) Uk is a letter of the early Cyrillic alphabet. It was originally a digraph of the Cyrillic letters O and U or less frequently O and Izhitsa . To save space, it was often written as a vertical ligature , called "monograph Uk"... |
u | |||||||
| Ў ў Short U Short U is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.The only Slavic language using this letter is the Belarusian Cyrillic alphabet.... |
ŭ (w) | ŭ | ||||||
| Ф ф | f | f | f | f | f | f | f | f |
| Х х | x | h | x | x | x | h | h | h |
| Ц ц Tse (Cyrillic) Tse is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.It commonly represents the voiceless alveolar affricate , like the pronunciation of ⟨ts⟩ in "cats".In English, Tse is commonly romanized as ⟨ts⟩... |
c | c | c | c | c | c | c | c |
| Ч ч Che (Cyrillic) Che or Cha is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.It commonly represents the voiceless postalveolar affricate , like the pronunciation of ⟨ch⟩ in "change".... |
č | č | č | č | č | č | č | č |
| Џ џ Dzhe Dzhe is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet used in Serbian and Macedonian to represent the voiced postalveolar affricate , like the pronunciation of ⟨j⟩ in "jump"... |
dž | dž | d̂ | |||||
| Ш ш | š | š | š | š | š | š | š | š |
| Щ щ Shcha (Cyrillic) Shcha is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. In Russian, it represents the voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative , similar to the pronunciation of ⟨sh⟩ in sheep ; in Ukrainian and Rusyn it represents the consonant cluster ; and in Bulgarian, it represents the consonant cluster .In English, Shcha is... |
šč (št) | št | šč | šč | ŝ | |||
| Ъ ъ Yer The letter yer of the Cyrillic alphabet, also spelled jer or er, is known as the hard sign in the modern Russian and Rusyn alphabets and as er golyam in the Bulgarian alphabet... |
ъ (ǔ) | ǎ | ʺ | ʺ | ||||
| Ы ы Yery Yery or Yeru is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet. It represents the phoneme after non-palatalised consonants in the Belarusian and Russian alphabets... |
y (ū) | y | y | y | ||||
| Ь ь Soft sign The soft sign , also known as yer, is a letter of the Cyrillic script. In Old Church Slavonic, it represented a short front vowel. As with its companion, the back yer, the vowel phoneme it designated was later partly dropped and partly merged with other vowels... |
ь (ǐ) | j | ʹ | ʹ | ʹ | ʹ | ||
| Ѣ ѣ Yat Yat or Jat is the thirty-second letter of the old Cyrillic alphabet. Its name in Old Church Slavonic is jěd’ or iad’ . In the common scientific Latin transliteration for old Slavic languages, the letter is represented by e with caron: .The yat represented a Common Slavic long vowel... |
ě | ě* | ě* | ě* | ě | |||
| Э э E (Cyrillic) E , also known as Backwards E from , E oborotnoye, is a letter found amongst Slavonic languages only in Russian and Belarusian, representing the sounds and... |
è | è | è | |||||
| Ю ю Yu (Cyrillic) Yu is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. After a palatalized consonant, it represents the close back rounded vowel , somewhat like the pronunciation of ⟨oo⟩ in "boot"; elsewhere it is a so-called iotated vowel representing the combination , like the pronunciation of ⟨you⟩ in "youth"... |
ju | ju | ju | ju | ju | û | ||
| Я я Ya (Cyrillic) Ya is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, the civil script variant of Old Cyrillic Little Yus . Among modern Slavonic languages it is used by Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian and Bulgarian to represent both the combination in initial or post-vocalic position and after a palatalised consonant; in... |
ja† | ja | ja | ja | ja | â | ||
| ’ Apostrophe The apostrophe is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritic mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet or certain other alphabets... |
– | – | ’ | |||||
| Ѡ ѡ Omega (Cyrillic) Omega is a letter used in the early Cyrillic alphabet. Its name and form are derived from the Greek letter Omega .Unlike Greek, the Slavic languages had only a single /o/ sound, so Omega was little used compared to the letter On , descended from the Greek letter Omicron... |
o, ô | |||||||
| Ѧ ѧ | ę | |||||||
| Ѩ ѩ | ję | |||||||
| Ѫ ѫ | ǫ | ǎ | ||||||
| Ѭ ѭ | jǫ | |||||||
| Ѯ ѯ | ks | |||||||
| Ѱ ѱ Psi (Cyrillic) Psi is a letter in the early Cyrillic alphabet, derived from the Greek letter psi . It represents the sound /ps/, as in English naps... |
ps | |||||||
| Ѳ ѳ Fita Fita is a letter of the Early Cyrillic alphabet. The shape and the name of the letter are derived from the Greek letter Theta .In the Cyrillic numeral system, Fita has a value of 9.- Shape :... |
th (θ) | f* | f* | f* | f̀ | |||
| Ѵ ѵ Izhitsa Izhitsa is a letter of the early Cyrillic alphabet. It was used to represent ypsilon in words derived from Greek, such as . It represented the same sound /i/ as the normal letter и in Russian... |
ü | (i*) | (i*) | (i*) | ỳ | |||
| Ѥ ѥ | je |
†: Church Slavonic Iotified A (IA)
: Letters in parentheses are older or alternate transliterations.
Ukrainian and Belarusian apostrophe are not transcribed. The early Cyrillic letter koppa
Koppa
Koppa is an archaic letter-like numeral character of the Cyrillic writing system. Its form are derived from the Greek letter Koppa ....
(Ҁ, ҁ) was used only for transliterating Greek and its numeric value
Cyrillic numerals
The Cyrillic numerals are a numbering system derived from the Cyrillic script, used by South and East Slavic peoples. The system was used in Russia as late as the early 18th century when Peter the Great replaced it with Arabic numerals....
and was thus omitted. ISO 9:1995 is provided for comparison.
See also
- Romanization of BulgarianRomanization of BulgarianRomanization of Bulgarian is the practice of transliteration of text in the Bulgarian language from its conventional Cyrillic orthography into the Latin alphabet. Romanization can be used for various purposes, such as rendering of proper names and place names in foreign-language contexts, or for...
- Romanization of RussianRomanization of RussianRomanization of the Russian alphabet is the process of transliterating the Russian language from the Cyrillic alphabet into the Latin alphabet...
- Romanization of UkrainianRomanization of UkrainianThe romanization or Latinization of Ukrainian is the representation of the Ukrainian language using Latin letters. Ukrainian is natively written in its own Ukrainian alphabet, a variation of Cyrillic....
- Romanization of Macedonian
External links
- Transliteration history—history of the transliteration of Slavic languages into Latin alphabets
- Linguistics Style Sheet of Ohio State University Slavic Studies (PDF)—Scientific transliteration for various languages is shown in a table on p. 4.
- Transliteration of Non-Roman Scripts
- CyrAcademisator Bi-directional online transliteration of Russian for ALA-LC (diacritics), scientific, ISO/R 9, ISO 9, GOST 7.79B and others. Supports Old Slavonic characters
- Ukrainian Transliteration — online service of scientific transliteration to and from Ukrainian. Also supports ISO 9, BGN/PCGN, ALA-LC and other standards of Ukrainian transliteration. (in Ukrainian)