romanizations

Latin alphabet renderings

Romanizations are representations of non-Roman scripts using the Roman alphabet.

Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and Russian each have systems for converting their characters into letters familiar to Western readers: Pinyin is the standard romanization of Mandarin Chinese.

Different romanization schemes for the same language can produce variant spellings—Peking versus Beijing, Mao Tse-tung versus Mao Zedong.

systems

pinyin

Chinese-to-alphabet conversion system

romajiJapanese in Latin letters
YaleIvy League institution

linguistic

transcription

Written version of speech

orthographyStandard writing conventions
phonemesMinimal sound distinctions
graphemesUnits of writing systems

diacritics · syllabification · pronunciation · vowels · consonants · umlauts · apostrophes · digraphs · aspiration · IPA

scripts

transliteration

Cross-script phonetic spelling

kanaJapanese phonetic writing system
hiraganaJapanese phonetic alphabet
katakanaJapanese phonetic writing system

kanji · hanzi

applications

standardization

Implementing uniform technical specifications

catalogingSystematic organization into records
signagePosted public displays
passportsGovernment-issued travel identification

maps · databases · keyboards · search engines · indexing · place names · personal names · bibliographies · gazetteers · subtitles

Opposites

script type

romanizationsChinese characters

Logographic writing system

kanji · hanzi · syllabaries · Arabic script · Hebrew script

transliteration vs. semantic conversion

romanizationstranslations

Converted linguistic texts

interpretations · glosses · renderings · paraphrases · localizations

script preservation vs. conversion

romanizationsoriginal scripts

First handwritten or typed versions

Family

romanization

Familiarity: Top 1,000,000
Profile: Used worldwide · Timeless · Abstract · Rated G