The
National Library at Kolkata romanisation
Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and ...
[See p 24-26 for table comparing Indic languages,
and p 33-34 for Devanagari alphabet listing. ] is a widely used
transliteration
Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one writing system, script to another that involves swapping Letter (alphabet), letters (thus ''wikt:trans-#Prefix, trans-'' + ''wikt:littera#Latin, liter-'') in predictable ways, such as ...
scheme in dictionaries and grammars of
Indic languages. This transliteration scheme is also known as ''(American)
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
'' and is nearly identical to one of the possible
ISO 15919
ISO 15919 (Transliteration of Devanagari and related Indic scripts into Latin characters) is one of a series of international standards for romanization by the International Organization for Standardization. It was published in 2001 and uses dia ...
variants. The scheme is an extension of the
IAST
The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that emerged during ...
scheme that is used for transliteration of
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
.
Scheme table
The tables below mostly use
Devanagari
Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental syste ...
but they also include letters from
Kannada
Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...
(),
Tamil
Tamil may refer to:
* Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia
**Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils
**Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia
* Tamil language, nativ ...
(),
Malayalam
Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 22 scheduled languages of India. Malayalam was des ...
() and
Bengali
Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to:
*something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia
* Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region
* Bengali language, the language they speak
** Bengali alphabet, the w ...
() to illustrate the transliteration of non-Devanagari characters.
Computer input by selection from a screen
![Gucharmap screenshot](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Gucharmap_screenshot.png)
Many systems provide a way to select Unicode characters visually.
ISO/IEC 14755 ISO/IEC 14755 is a joint ISO and IEC standard for input methods to enter characters defined in ISO/IEC 10646, the international standard corresponding to the Unicode Standard. As the repertoires of ISO/IEC 10646 and the Unicode Standard are identi ...
refers to this as a ''screen-selection entry method''.
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
has provided a
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
version of the Character Map program (find it by hitting then type
charmap
then hit ) since version NT 4.0 – appearing in the consumer edition since XP. This is limited to characters in the
Basic Multilingual Plane
In the Unicode standard, a plane is a continuous group of 65,536 (216) code points. There are 17 planes, identified by the numbers 0 to 16, which corresponds with the possible values 00–1016 of the first two positions in six position hexadecimal ...
(BMP). Characters are searchable by Unicode character name, and the table can be limited to a particular code block. More advanced third-party tools of the same type are also available (a notable
freeware
Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the f ...
example is
BabelMap
Andrew Christopher West (; born 31 March 1960) is an English Sinologist. His first works concerned Chinese novels of the Ming and Qing dynasties. His study of ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms'' used a new approach to analyse the relationship a ...
).
macOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...
provides a "character palette" with much the same functionality, along with searching by related characters, glyph tables in a font, etc. It can b
enabledin the input menu in the menu bar under System Preferences → International → Input Menu (or System Preferences → Language and Text → Input Sources) or can be viewed under Edit → Emoji & Symbols in many programs.
Equivalent tools – such as
gucharmap
GNOME Character Map, formerly known as Gucharmap, is a free and open-source software Unicode character map Computer program, program, part of GNOME. This program allows Character (computing), characters to be displayed by Unicode block or script t ...
(
GNOME
A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characte ...
) or
kcharselect (
KDE
KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that allow collaborative work on this kind of software. Well-known products include the ...
) – exist on most Linux desktop environments.
Font support
Only certain
font
In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design.
In mod ...
s support all Latin
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
characters for the transliteration of Indic scripts according to the
ISO 15919
ISO 15919 (Transliteration of Devanagari and related Indic scripts into Latin characters) is one of a series of international standards for romanization by the International Organization for Standardization. It was published in 2001 and uses dia ...
standard. For example,
Tahoma supports almost all the characters needed.
Arial
Arial (also called Arial MT) is a sans-serif typeface and set of computer fonts in the neo-grotesque style. Fonts from the Arial family are included with all versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 3.1 on, some other Microsoft software appli ...
and
Times New Roman
Times New Roman is a serif typeface. It was commissioned by the British newspaper ''The Times'' in 1931 and conceived by Stanley Morison, the artistic adviser to the British branch of the printing equipment company Monotype, in collaboration wit ...
font packages that come with
Microsoft Office 2007
Microsoft Office 2007 (codenamed Office 12) is an office suite for Windows, developed and published by Microsoft. It was officially revealed on March 9, 2006 and was the 12th version of Microsoft Office. It was released to manufacturing on Novemb ...
and later also support most
Latin Extended Additional
Latin Extended Additional is a Unicode block.
The characters in this block are mostly precomposed combinations of Latin letters with one or more general diacritical marks. Ninety of the characters are used in the Vietnamese alphabet
The Vietna ...
characters like ḍ, ḥ, ḷ, ḻ, ṁ, ṅ, ṇ, ṛ, ṣ and ṭ. The open-source fonts Libertinus Serif and Libertinus Sans (forked from the
Linux Libertine
Linux Libertine is a digital typeface created by the Libertine Open Fonts Project, which aims to create free and open alternatives to proprietary typefaces such as Times New Roman. It is developed with the free font editor FontForge and is licen ...
project) also have full support.
Literature
* Aggarwal, Narindar K. 1985 (1978). A Bibliography of Studies on Hindi Language and Linguistics. 2nd edition. Indian Documentation Service / Academic Press: Gurgaon, Haryana.
See also
*
Brahmic scripts#Comparison
*
Devanagari transliteration
Devanagari is an Indian script used for many languages of India and Nepal, including Hindi, Marathi, Nepali and Sanskrit. There are several somewhat similar methods of transliteration from Devanagari to the Roman script (a process sometimes ...
*''
Shiva Sutras
The Śiva·sūtras, technically akṣara·samāmnāya, variously called ', ''pratyāhāra·sūtrāṇi'', ''varṇa·samāmnāya'', etc., refer to a set of fourteen aphorisms devised as an arrangement of the sounds of Sanskrit for the purposes ...
''
References
{{Reflist
External links
Typing a macron– page from Penn State University about typing with accents
Hindustani orthography
Sanskrit transliteration
Romanization of Brahmic