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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 202.61.116.130 (talk) at 20:11, 26 January 2005 (→‎[[User:Jiang|Jiang]]'s removals). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

"Non-Roman"

"Non-Roman languages"?? It appears that you mean any language not normally written in the Roman alphabet. Thus Greek, Russian, and Arabic are "non-Roman" languages. Why don't you explain what "non-Roman" means? The term could be misunderstood; people could think that English is a "non-Roman" language since it didn't come from Rome. Michael Hardy 02:56 Jan 27, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out, and thanks to Brion VIBBER for changing it to make it more clear.
-- Wintran 03:20 Jan 27, 2003 (UTC)

Capitalize term or not?

I have been thinking about whether or not we should use a capital "r" when we type "romanization". First, I was certain that "Romanization" was the correct way to write it, but now I have seen the non-capitalized version being used by encyclopedias and dictionaries as well, and I am not quite as certain anymore.

- Wintran 00:42 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

It's incorrect. You "Romanize" when you turn something into Rome; you "romanize" when you apply a method of transcription. Compare with xeroxing, hoovering, and any number of brands and names that have turned into generic words. I've changed the article. Jpatokal 17:04, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Becoming a Roman

How do you call the process of barbarians becoming Romans? -- Error 05:19, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

According to OED, also "Romanization". Defintions 1 is "Assimilation to Roman customs or models." One quote is from 1876. The transliteration meaning came the latest ('tho not that much later): first quote in 1894. --Menchi 05:31, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Other languages

There are several other languages (or groups of languages) that could be covered here:

Why not add norwegian? ø -> oe, å -> aa, æ -> ae.

Norwegian is already written with the Latin alphabet, so simplifying these letters isn't romanization. —Michael Z. 17:24, 2005 Jan 2 (UTC)

Icelandic isn't, though. It still uses an entirely un-Roman letter: the thorn (þ).

The Icelandic, and the Old English, are Latin alphabets that have adopted letter(s) from Runic. One might say that the letter thorn is romanized as th or y—as in "ye olde gray mare"—but I don't know if it's technically correct. There's more fun stuff in category:Uncommon Latin letters —Michael Z. 00:20, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC)


Really, there are romanization systems for just about any non-roman script you can imagine -- while the term may have arisen originally in the context of Asian languages, I'm not sure it's NPOV to imply that that is the central meaning of the term today...

I think the term romanization is more commonly used for oriental languages, because they are not alphabetic. Transliteration is a more specific term, often used to describe the romanization of Cyrillic, and other languages with alphabets, that can have a letter-for-letter correspondence with the Latin alphabet. —Michael Z. 16:42, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)

Transliterating Cyrillic

For anyone interested, here's the Russian example "Tchaikovsy" transliterated according to several different systems, from Russian and Ukrainian. See also Romanization of Ukrainian.

Transliterating "Tchaikovsky"
Russian:
Чайковский 		Ukrainian:
Чайковський
GOST/UN Čajkovskij -
Wikipedia (strict) Chaykovsky -
Wikipedia (allowed exceptions) Tchaikovsy -
Ukrainian National/UN - Chaikovs’kyi
ISO 9 Čajkovskij Čajkovs′kij
ALA/LC Chaĭkovskiĭ Chaĭkovskyĭ
BGN/PCGN Chaykovskiy Chaykovskyy
IPA [tʃʲajkɔvskij] [tʃajkovsʲkɪj]
X-SAMPA /tS'ajkOvskij/ /tSajkovs'kIj/

Methods of romanization

I have taken the liberty of removing the (frankly) nearly incomprehensible paragraphs by the esteemed 63.22.206.187, which also contained a number of outright mistakes (hatsuon means "pronunciation" in Japanese, not any specific character), and rewritten what I hope was the gist of them. Corrections welcome, and I'd like to hear more about "phonemic conversion" (how does this differ from transcription?). Jpatokal 17:41, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm mostly guessing, but there are some hints in this paragraph from International Phonetic Alphabet:
When characters from the IPA phonetic alphabet are embedding in another script they are isolated from the rest of the text with either slashes ("/") or square brackets ("[" and "]"). Linguists use brackets when a narrow phonetic transcription is given, for example the English word "huge" would be [çjudʒ]. Slashes denote a phonological transcription:"huge" would be /hjudʒ/.
I think phonemic conversion (or phonological transcription) is a general indication of a word's pronunciation. You might say that in English "huge" is pronounced /hjudʒ/, and it applies equally to the way you would say it whether you were from Alabama or Jaipur.
Phonetic transcription would be more precise, whereby linguists will use all those fancy IPA characters and modifiers to compare the way a Yorkshireman's pronunciation of "huge" differs from an East Midlander's.
—Michael Z. 19:17, 2004 Dec 15 (UTC)

Page organization

Would anyone object if I reorganized this page by writing system, rather than by language(s)? Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian belong together in a section concerning the Cyrillic alphabet, not in the current "arrangement". —Michael Z. 16:47, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)

Sounds good to me --Arcadian 19:26, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

One more vote in favor. Jpatokal 01:57, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Singapore

Is there any system on how names of Singaporean people and geographical proper nouns are romanised (for those not according to Hanyu Pinyin)? Or is it done arbitarily? Are they mainly romanised according to Hokkien or Teochew dialects of Min Nan language? -- 03:13, January 24, 2005, UTC

Largely arbitrary and quite dependent on the dialect of the person or name in question, although if there are any standards I'd be interested in hearing about it. Most names are Hokkien. Jpatokal 04:42, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Interested to hearing about if there is any standard for Hokkien. -- 15:41, January 24, 2005, UTC

No. On Wikipedia we use Peh-oe-ji, but it's not very common (as far as I know). The Minnan Wikipedia is written in Peh-oe-ji. There are other systems out there too. There is no standard romanization used for names in Singapore. (other than Pinyin of course, but that's for Mandarin only, which occurs here and there in personal and place names.) -- ran (talk) 08:05, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

So in other words names of places in Singapore which are not transcibed based on Mandarin pronunciation are transcibed with an arbitary manner? Or is there any trace-able pattern? -- 09:59, January 26, 2005, UTC

Well, there are obviously patterns, there just isn't any standard. These names were devised in colonial era and they were basically spelled in whichever way sounded about right. I guess you can compare this to Hong Kong place names. -- ran (talk) 13:43, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

Voiced/unvoiced, aspirated/unaspirated

I am interested to know about why the consonants b, g and d of Chinese languages (Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, etc.) as well as Korean are transcribed into p, k and t. Are the pronunciations of b, g and d different from those in European languages? -- 15:45, January 24, 2005, UTC

→ Aspiration (phonetics). Jpatokal 18:38, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

But the Aspiration (phonetics), Voiced, Voiced consonant and Voiceless consonant articles do not provide a good picture to readers who have little knowledge in linguistics. -- 14:22, January 25, 2005, UTC

They don't, which is why Jyutping is better than IPA for giving Cantonese pronunciation. Same goes for Hanyu Pinyin vs IPA for Mandarin.

If what you've suggested is the case then we should go differentiating the p sound in pend and spend, and mark them as ph and p respectively. -- 20:06, January 26, 2005, UTC

The pronunciation of Jyutping / Pinyin "b d g" are indeed different from European languages, or even Japanese. English is not a good example of this, because the English system is very close to the Chinese system (i.e. unvoiced plosives are aspirated, voiced plosives are less voiced); but listen to another language (French, Spanish, Russian, Japanese...) and the difference is very obvious. To a speaker of these languages, Chinese "b d g" do sound like "p t k". (And with good reason; they're not voiced, so in IPA these are indeed /p t k/.) -- ran (talk) 08:01, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

Would German be closed to English? -- 09:56, January 26, 2005, UTC

I'm not sure. But I believe German unvoiced plosives are aspirated, just like English (and unlike French, Spanish, or Russian). -- ran (talk) 13:43, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

The Aspiration (phonetics) article mentions about Icelandic, Danish, Allemannic German and southern varieties of German. For the case of Danish and southern varieties of German the unaspirated p t and k (without the h) are transcribed as b d and g. -- 20:04, January 26, 2005, UTC

So shall we mark the voiced unaspirated g of English differently from the voiced unaspirated g of French, Spanish or Russian in IPA? -- 20:08, January 26, 2005, UTC

Macao

I would also like to know how proper nouns in Macao are transcribed and romanised. Is it based on Portuguese? For instance, San Kio (新橋, Jyutping: san1 kiu4, IPA: sɐn1 kɪʊ4), and Hac Sa (黑沙, Jyutping: haak1 saa1, IPA: hɑk1 sɑ1). Nam Van (南灣, Jyutping: naam4 waan1, IPA: nɑm4 wɑn1) is romanised with a 'v' instead of 'w'. The case of Ka Ho (九澳, Jyutping: gau2 ou3 IPA: gɐʊ2 əʊ3) is more confusing. -- 17:08, January 25, 2005, UTC

The other way round of romanisation

Is there any proper terms for the inversion of romanisation, that is, transcription of words in roman alphabets into Cyrillic, Katakana or Han characters? -- 14:22, January 25, 2005, UTC

Cyrillization, for one. —Michael Z. 2005-01-22 16:54 Z

Jiang's removals

Jiang removed the following romanisation systems with the remark "rm fantasy/fringe systems".

*[[Gwohngdongwaa pengyam]]
*[[Penkyamp]]
*[[Tongwa Lomaji|Tòngwâ Lòmáji]] ([http://www.onlineblast.com/tongwalomaji/ source])

-- 15:05, January 25, 2005, UTC

Exactly. Please stop reinserting articles that have been deleted by consensus. Tongwa Lomaji receives only a few online hits and is therefore a fringe system. Please do not link to articles that should not exist. --Jiang 05:37, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Where was the deletion discussed to achieve consensus? Are they fantasy or fringe—there's a big difference. If they're real romanization systems, then why not include them and mention that they are little-used, or when and where they are/were used? —Michael Z. 2005-01-22 16:54 Z
This guy is simply asserting his own sets of values and his point of view everywhere. I am considering to file a complaint. Btw, how to check if he's an administrator? -- 20:11, January 26, 2005, UTC
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