Talk:Romanization#Definition

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"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)

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)

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)

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)

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 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.61.115.185 (talk)

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 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.61.114.20 (talk)

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 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.61.116.247 (talk)

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)

There might be no standard, as what has been suggested earlier. People's names usually are romanized based on the dialect group they belong to, and romanization of Chinese dialects dosent seem to follow a standard of any kind.

This ambiguity is not just confined to Chinese dialects. Even Malay words, which would have been assumed to be less of an issue since the language itself has already been romanised, do sugger from a few instances of inconsistencies. A good example is how "Punggol" ends up being spelt as "Ponggol" too as well...both road names appear in the same locality, and are actually refering to the same word.

I am not too sure about Indian translations thou, because I would think it follows romnisation standards adobted in India itself?--Huaiwei 18:13, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Same names in Hong Kong were later changed, for instance, Un Long to Yuen Long, and Shaukiwan to Shau Kei Wan. In other words there was certain moves towards standardisation. Are there any similar pattern for the case of Singapore? -- 10:04, January 27, 2005, UTC — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.61.117.251 (talk)

I can only think of one example, "Nee Soon" (probably Minnan) is becoming less popular compared to "Yishun" (Mandarin). That's the only example I can think of though, so I'd say there's no such trend in general. -- ran (talk) 13:34, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

Hmm....the Yishun/Nee Soon thingy may not be a suitable example in this case, because it is more of switching from one dialect spelling to another. Should all "Ponggol" road names be amended to "Punggol", then we might have a comparative example.

There might be such amendements somewhere down the dusty paths of history...if I can find any examples of this, I will notify here.--Huaiwei 18:13, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Oops, I think I misread what the Anon meant... in terms of standardization (not switching from one language or dialect to another), I honestly can't think of any examples. -- ran (talk) 18:23, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

Yepp I mean for the same sound of a language, say Hokkien, is it very often transcribed and romanised in the same way? -- 18:27, January 27, 2005, UTC — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.61.114.214 (talk)

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 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.61.114.20 (talk)

→ 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. -- 14:35, January 25, 2005, UTC — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.61.117.90 (talk)

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

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)

If what you've suggested is the case then we should go differentiating the p sound in pend and spend, and mark them as p^h and p respectively. -- 20:06, January 26, 2005, UTC — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.61.116.130 (talk)

Would German be closed to English? -- 09:56, January 26, 2005, UTC — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.61.116.247 (talk)

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 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.61.116.130 (talk)

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 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.61.116.130 (talk)

Well, tradition is another factor. If Danish were a language spoken by a lost tribe somewhere and discovered only yesterday, its /b d g/ would probably be transcribed into IPA (rightly) as /p t k/. But Danish has connections with other European languages, and those languages pronounce these as [b d g], so by pure tradition, Danish also uses /b d g/. Another good example is English /æ/, as in bank. Most American accents don't pronounce this strictly as [æ], but the phoneme is written with that symbol nonetheless, due to tradition.

Chinese, on the other hand, is the precise opposite case. Chinese plosives are famously distinguished by aspiration; it has been this way historically and it is still this way today. This is why Postal System Pinyin and Wade Giles (as well as the romanizations of Hong Kong and Singapore) use "p t k" and left "b d g" unused. Gwoyeu Romatzyh and Hanyu Pinyin decided to use "b d g" in addition to "p t k" simply because they wanted to maximize the usage of all the letters of the Roman alphabet. (Hanyu Pinyin also uses "j q x" in rather weird ways, for example.) But that doesn't change the fact that these sounds continue to be recognized as [p t k] and [p^h t^h k^h] and therefore written (accurately) as the phonemes /p t k/ and /p^h t^h k^h/ in IPA by most linguistic literature. (Of course there are also books that try to argue that these are actually underlying /b d g/ and /p t k/, but these are the minority and we probably shouldn't be going into such deep level and controversial phonemic analysis at this stage.)

As for English: I don't understand your question, really. You described the g of English and the g of French in exactly the same way. In this case, of course they should be marked in the same way. -- ran (talk) 20:24, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

So should the Danish b be marked /p/ in IPA, and p be marked /p^h/?

You mentioned the English g and French g are not the same. Should they be marked differently in IPA, to reflect the fact that their degrees of voiced are not the same? -- 21:06, January 26, 2005, UTC — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.61.116.130 (talk)

Sure, but it's not really necessary. There's no more voiced /g/ or less voiced /g/ to distinguish in English.

As for Danish: I've explained alreadly. -- ran (talk) 21:09, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

So there are traditionally not differentiated in IPA is that right?

For Danish, you've answered on transcription, but not on marking by IPA. -- 21:54, January 26, 2005, UTC — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.61.116.130 (talk)

What's the difference? I answered for the transcription of Danish into IPA.

As for English: no, in English these are not traditionally differentiated. -- ran (talk) 21:57, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

Ah I got it. So in Danish it's tradition which made the different.... i.e. the same unvoiced unaspirated b is marked as /b/ for Danish and /p/ for Cantonese. I got it.

I mean the difference between the more voiced French/Spanish/Russian /g/ and the less voiced English/German /g/. -- 22:15, January 26, 2005, UTC — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.61.116.130 (talk)

One more question: should the English p sound in pend and spend be marked as p^h and p respectively? -- 22:17, January 26, 2005, UTC — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.61.116.130 (talk)

Only in a phonetic transcription. In English, aspirated and unaspirated /p/ are the same phoneme, so they don't show up in a phonemic transcription, only a phonetic transcription. In Chinese, however, they are different phonemes, so they show up in phonemic transcriptions.

By the way, how about getting a user name? It's hard to make proposals and give opinions if you're an Anon, since people can't even keep track of you. -- ran (talk) 22:20, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

What about the French/Spanish/Russian /g/ versus the English/German /g/? -- 10:02, January 27, 2005, UTC — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.61.117.251 (talk)

What about them? They wouldn't be marked in a phonemic transcription because none of these languages distinguish more than one type of /g/. -- ran (talk) 13:34, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

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 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.61.114.20 (talk)

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 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.61.117.90 (talk)

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

Please see the new page at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Cyrillic), aimed at

1. Documenting the use of Cyrillic and its transliteration in Wikipedia
2. Discussing potential revision of current practices

—Michael Z. 2005-12-9 20:38 Z

New article: Scientific transliteration. —Michael Z. 2006-02-07 06:00 Z

I doubt the first sentence of the lead's definition. Imo romanization is not strictly about converting other writing systems to Latin; it's about rendering any language that typically does not use the Latin script into Latin.

E.g. if a language has historically never had a script, and some decide to write words of that language using Latin, that's romanization, despite there being no writing system to convert from.

For evidence of the above, Merriam-Webster's definition seems to align with mine: [1]. But Cambridge seems to align with the current article's: [2].

Also, maybe I'm wrong on this, but pinyin doesn't involve script conversion, does it? It's phonetic; it transcribes the sounds of Chinese. Yet everyone comfortably considers it a romanization system. grapesurgeon (talk) 17:39, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]