BGN/PCGN romanization system for Kazakh is a method for

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, a ...

of Cyrillic Kazakh texts, that is, their

transliteration Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus ''trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or L ...

into the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and th ...

as used in the English language. The BGN/PCGN system for transcribing Kazakh was designed to be relatively intuitive for

anglophones Speakers of English are also known as Anglophones, and the countries where English is natively spoken by the majority of the population are termed the '' Anglosphere''. Over two billion people speak English , making English the largest languag ...

to pronounce. It is part of the larger set of

BGN/PCGN romanization BGN/PCGN romanization are the systems for romanization and Roman-script spelling conventions adopted by the United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN) and the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use (PCGN). The system ...

s, which includes methods for twenty-nine different languages. It was developed by the United States Board on Geographic Names and by the

Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use The Permanent Committee on Geographical Names (PCGN) is an independent inter-departmental body in the United Kingdom established in 1919. Its function is to establish standard names for places outside the UK, for the use of the British governme ...

. This romanization of Kazakh can be rendered using the basic letters and punctuation found on English-language keyboards plus three diacritical marks: an umlaut (¨) to represent front vowels not otherwise represented by a roman character, a macron (ˉ) to represent "

long vowels In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, ...

", and an

overdot When used as a diacritic mark, the term dot is usually reserved for the '' interpunct'' ( · ), or to the glyphs "combining dot above" ( ◌̇ ) and "combining dot below" ( ◌̣ ) which may be combined with some letters of t ...

(˙) to differentiate between two ⟨e⟩s. The interpunct character (·) can also optionally be used to avoid certain ambiguity presented by the use of digraphs (e.g. ⟨ng⟩ represents ⟨ң⟩, and ⟨n·g⟩ may be used to represent ⟨нг⟩). The following table describes the system and provides examples.

Notes

References

U.S. Board on Geographic Names The United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN) is a federal body operating under the United States Secretary of the Interior. The purpose of the board is to establish and maintain uniform usage of geographic names throughout the federal govern ...

Foreign Names Committee Staff, 1994. ''Romanization Systems and Roman-Script Spelling Conventions'', pp. 47–48. Kazakh Kazakh Kazakh language {{CAsia-stub

See also

Notes

References