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. It uses diacritics to map the much larger set of Brahmic consonants and vowels to the Latin script.

Contents

ISO 15919 and other systems

ISO 15919 is an international standard on the romanization of many Indic scripts, which was agreed upon in 2001 by a network of the national standards institutes of 157 countries.[1] However, the Hunterian transliteration system is the "national system of romanization in India" and a United Nations expert group noted about ISO 15919 that "there is no evidence of the use of the system either in India or in international cartographic products."[2][3][4]

Another standard, United Nations Romanization Systems for Geographical Names (UNRSGN), was developed by the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN)[5] and covers many Indic scripts.

ALA-LC was approved by the Library of Congress and the American Library Association and is a US standard. IAST is not a standard as no formally approved document exists for it but a convention developed in Europe for the transliteration of Sanskrit rather than that of Indic scripts.

As a notable difference, both international standards, ISO 15919 and UNRSGN transliterate anusvara as ṁ, while ALA-LC and IAST use ṃ for it. However, ISO 15919 provides guidance towards disambiguating between various anusvara situations (such as labial versus dental nasalizations), which is described in the table below.

Comparison with UNRSGN and IAST

The table below shows the differences between ISO 15919, UNRSGN and IAST for Devanagari transliteration.

Devanagari ISO 15919 UNRSGN IAST Comment
ए /  े ē e e To distinguish between long and short 'e' in Dravidian languages, 'e' now represents ऎ /  ॆ (short). Note that the use of ē is considered optional in ISO 15919, and using e for ए (long) is acceptable for languages that do not distinguish long and short e.
ओ /  ो ō o o To distinguish between long and short 'o' in Dravidian languages, 'o' now represents ऒ /  ॊ (short). Note that the use of ō is considered optional in ISO 15919, and using o for ओ (long) is acceptable for languages that do not distinguish long and short o.
ऋ /  ृ r̥ ṛ ṛ In ISO 15919, ṛ is used to represent ड़.
ॠ /  ॄ r̥̄ ṝ ṝ For consistency with r̥
ऌ /  ॢ l̥ l̤ ḷ In ISO 15919, ḷ is used to represent ळ.
ॡ /  ॣ l̥̄ ḹ For consistency with l̥
 ं ṁ, n, ñ, ṇ, m ṁ, n, ñ, ṇ, m ṃ ṃ is used to specifically represent Gurmukhi Tippi  ੰ. In ISO 15919, n before k, kh, g, gh, ṅ; ñ before c, ch, j, jh, ñ; ṇ before ṭ, ṭh, ḍ, ḍh, ṇ; n before t, th, d, dh, n; m before p, ph, b, bh, m. Vowel nasalization is transliterated as a tilde above the transliterated vowel (over the second vowel in the case of a digraph such as aĩ, aũ).

See also

References

  1. ^ ISO
  2. ^ United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Technical reference manual for the standardization of geographical names, United Nations Publications, 2007, ISBN 9789211615005, http://books.google.com/books?id=mh8u32ANQxAC, "... ISO 15919 ... There is no evidence of the use of the system either in India or in international cartographic products ... The Hunterian system is the actually used national system of romanization in India ..." 
  3. ^ United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations Regional Cartographic Conference for Asia and the Far East, Volume 2, United Nations, 1955, http://books.google.com/books?id=QKsvAAAAYAAJ, "... In India the Hunterian system is used, whereby every sound in the local language is uniformly represented by a certain letter in the Roman alphabet ..." 
  4. ^ National Library (India), Indian scientific & technical publications, exhibition 1960: a bibliography, Council of Scientific & Industrial Research, Government of India, 1960, http://books.google.com/books?id=8VYEAQAAIAAJ, "... The Hunterian system of transliteration, which has international acceptance, has been used ..." 
  5. ^ United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names

External links

History
Proto-Dravidian · Old Tamil · Middle Tamil · Modern Tamil · Manipravalam  · Cankam Tamil (Early Cankam Tamil · Late Cankam Tamil)
Dialects
Indian dialects
Sri Lankan dialects
Sociolects
Brahmin Tamil (Iyer Tamil · Iyengar Tamil)
Literature
Classics
Cankam literature · Tamil books of Law · The Five Great Epics of Tamil Literature · The Five Lesser Epics of Tamil Literature · Ponniyin Celvan
Devotional Literature
Grammars and Dictionaries
Agattiyam · Tolkāppiyam · Tivakāram · Nikantu books · Caturakarāti
Tamil and
other languages
Scripts
Lexis and
grammar
Phonology
Tamil_phonology · Tamil onomatopoeia · Tamil prosody
Transliteration
ISO · Mozhi
Events