romanisation

Scripts become Latin

Romanisation is the conversion of text from another writing system into the Roman (Latin) alphabet.

Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and Russian all have romanisation systems that allow speakers of alphabetic languages to read and pronounce words: The romanisation of Japanese place names helps Western tourists navigate Tokyo.

Also spelled romanization.

The verb is romanise or romanize.

orthography

alphabet

Language's letter system

lettersAlphabetic characters or mail
charactersPersons in a narrative
diacriticsMarks altering letter pronunciation

accents · umlauts · apostrophes · hyphens · spacing · capitalization · spelling · graphemes · notation · IPA

process

transliteration

Cross-script phonetic spelling

transcriptionWritten version of speech
conversionAct of changing states
latinizationAdapting to Roman patterns

anglicization · mapping · standardization · encoding · transformation · rendering · adaptation · representation · digitization · input

systems

pinyin

Chinese-to-alphabet conversion system

ISOGlobal standards body
revisedChanged after reconsideration
passportGovernment-issued travel credential

postal · mandarin

scripts

kana

Japanese phonetic writing system

hiraganaJapanese phonetic alphabet
katakanaJapanese phonetic writing system

pronunciation

phonetics

Study of speech sounds

phonologyScience of language sounds
tonesDistinct sound qualities
vowelsLetters with unblocked airflow

consonants · aspiration · stress · intonation · phonemes · allophones · articulation · syllables · glottal · nasalization

Family

romance, Romanization, Romanize, Roman, romanticize, Romanesque, romanization, romanticise, romanticization

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