Scientific transliteration, variously called ''academic'', ''linguistic'', ''international'', or ''scholarly transliteration'', is an international system for

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 ...

of text from the

Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, ...

to the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...

(

romanization 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 ...

). This system is most often seen in

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

publications on

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the Ear ...

. Scientific transliteration of Cyrillic into Latin was first introduced in 1898 as part of the standardization process for the (PI) in 1899.

Details

The scientific transliteration system is roughly as

phonemic In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...

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

Gaj's Latin alphabet Gaj's Latin alphabet ( sh-Latn-Cyrl, Gajeva latinica, separator=" / ", Гајева латиница}, ), also known as ( sh-Cyrl, абецеда, ) or ( sh-Cyrl, гајица, link=no, ), is the form of the Latin script used for writing Serb ...

used in

Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian () – also called Serbo-Croat (), Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and ...

, in which each letter corresponds directly to a Cyrillic letter in Bosnian, Montenegrin and Serbian official standards, and was heavily based on the earlier Czech alphabet. The Cyrillic letter х, representing the sound as in ''Bach'', was romanized ''h'' in Serbo-Croatian, but in German-speaking countries the native digraph ''ch'' was used instead. It was codified in the 1898 ''Prussian Instructions'' for libraries, or ''Preußische Instruktionen'' (PI), which were adopted in Central Europe and Scandinavia. Scientific transliteration can also be used to romanize the early

Glagolitic alphabet The Glagolitic script (, , ''glagolitsa'') is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed to have been created in the 9th century by Saint Cyril, a monk from Thessalonica. He and his brother Saint Methodius were sent by the Byzan ...

, which has a close correspondence to Cyrillic. Scientific transliteration is often adapted to serve as a phonetic alphabet.Timberlake 2004, p 24. Scientific transliteration was the basis for the

ISO 9 ISO 9 is an international standard establishing a system for the transliteration into Latin characters of Cyrillic characters constituting the alphabets of many Slavic and non-Slavic languages. Published on February 23, 1995 by the Internatio ...

transliteration standard. While linguistic transliteration tries to preserve the original language's

pronunciation Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or language in a specific dialect ("correct pronunciation") or simply the way a particular ...

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 (russian: ГОСТ 16876-71) is a romanization system (for transliteration of Russian Cyrillic alphabet texts into the Latin alphabet) devised by the National Administration for Geodesy and Cartography of the Soviet Union. It is based ...

, is also based on scientific transliteration but used Latin ''h'' for Cyrillic х instead of Latin ''x'' or ''ssh'' and ''sth'' for Cyrillic Щ, and had a number of other differences. Most countries using Cyrillic script now have adopted

GOST 7.79 GOST 7.79-2000 (Система стандартов по информации, библиотечному и издательскому делу. Правила транслитерации кирилловского письма латинским ...

instead, which is not the same as ISO 9 but close to it. Representing all of the necessary diacritics on computers requires

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 ...

, Latin-2, Latin-4, or Latin-7 encoding.

Table

( ) Letters in parentheses are older or alternative 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. Prussian Instructions and ISO 9:1995 are provided for comparison. Unicode encoding is: * for the Cyrillic apostrophe * to transliterate the soft signThe templates and may be used for the proper character. * to transliterate the hard sign

Notes

References

* (Winter 2003) "Transliteration", in ''

Slavic and East European Journal The ''Slavic and East European Journal'' (SEEJ) is a major peer-reviewed academic journal publishing original research and review essays in the areas of Slavic and East European languages, literatures, cultures, linguistics, methodology and peda ...

'', 47 (4):backmatter—every issue of this journal has a transliteration reference in the back, including a table labelled “ISO Transliteration System”, although it is different from the latest version of ISO 9:1995. * IDS (Informationsverbund Deutschschweiz, 2001) ''Katalogisierungsregeln IDS (KIDS), Anhänge, �
IDS G.4: Transliteration der slavischen kyrillischen Alphabete
��''
Archive
.

Universität Zürich The University of Zürich (UZH, german: Universität Zürich) is a public university, public research university located in the city of Zürich, Switzerland. It is the largest university in Switzerland, with its 28,000 enrolled students. It wa ...

. URL accessed on 2009-05-27 (PDF format, in German)—ISO/R 9 1968 standardization of scientific transliteration * Timberlake, Alan (2004), ''A Reference Grammar of Russian'',

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII of England, King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press A university press is an academic publishing hou ...

, .

External links

Transliteration history
��history of the transliteration of Slavic languages into Latin alphabets *
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) {{Cyrillization * Slavic languages

Details

Table

See also

Notes

References

External links