Romanization

A Romanization is a system for representing text in a language that is using a writing system other than the Roman alphabet (e.g. Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK)) into the Roman alphabet. Three methods may be used to carry out Romanization: transliteration, transcription and phonemic conversion. Each Romanization has its own set of rules for pronunciation of the Romanized words.

To Romanize is to transcribe or transliterate a language into the Roman alphabet.

Table of contents

1 Chinese language 1.1 External links 2 Japanese language 3 Korean language

Chinese language

Some languages have more than one system of Romanization; Mandarin, for example, has several, including Wade-Giles, Yale, Postal Pinyin, Tongyong Pinyin, and Hanyu pinyin; and Cantonese has Jyutping, penkyamp, and Yale.

In Mainland China, Hanyu Pinyin has been used officially for decades, primarily as a linguistic tool for teaching the official Mandarin variant of Chinese to student whose mother tongue is not Mandarin. The Roman alphabet is used to commonalise the pronunciation of Mandarin words, since Chinese characters describe only things and concepts, and provide no pronunciation information. China has literally hundreds of distinct dialects, though there is one common written language.

External links

• 拼音查詢 (Pinyin query) (in Traditional Chinese): Type in Chinese character or sentences to receive four Romanizations and Zhuyin

Romanization in Japanese is called "Romaji". Common systems include Hepburn and Kunrei-shiki systems. ISO 3602 is a system approved by ISO.

Korean language

Romanization in the Korean language is called "Romaja". The most common system that was used in South Korea was the McCune-Reischauer system. North Korea continues its usage. Today, South Korea uses the revised version of Romanization that was approved by their government in the year of 2000. Road signs and textbooks are required to follow these rules as soon as possible. Personal names are still left to personal preference, but the government encourages using the new system. A third system--the Yale romanization system--is used mainly in academic literature. During the period of Russian interest in Korea at the beginning of the 20th century, attempts were also made at representing Korean in Cyrillic.