Tibetan romanization table

by The Library of Congress

Tibetan

ALA-LC romanization of Tibetan letters follows the principles of the Wylie transliteration system, as described by Turrell Wylie (1959). Diacritical marks are used for those letters representing Indic or other non-Tibetan languages, and parallel the use of these marks when transcribing their counterpart letters in Sanskrit. These are applied for the sake of consistency, and to reflect international publishing standards. Accordingly, romanize words of non-Tibetan origin systematically (following this table) in all cases, even though the word may derive from Sanskrit or another language. When Tibetan is written in another script (e.g., ʼPhags-pa) the corresponding letters in that script are also romanized according to this table.

Consonants (see Notes 1-3)

Vernacular	Romanization	Vernacular	Romanization	Vernacular	Romanization
ཀ་	ka	ད་	da	ཞ་	zha
ཁ་	kha	ན་	na	ཟ་	za
ག་	ga	པ་	pa	འ་	'a
ང་	nga	ཕ	pha	ཡ་	ya
ཅ་	ca	བ་	ba	ར་	ra
ཆ་	cha	མ་	ma	ལ་	la
ཇ་	ja	ཙ་	tsa	ཤ་	sha
ཉ་	nya	ཚ་	tsha	ས་	sa
ཏ་	ta	ཛ་	dza	ཧ་	ha
ཐ་	tha	ཝ་	wa	ཨ་	a
Vowels and Diphthongs (see Notes 4 and 5)
ཨི་	i	ཨཱུ་	ī	རྀ་	r̥
ཨུ་	u	ཨཱུ་	ū	རཱྀ་	r̥̄
ཨེ་	e	ཨཻ་	ai	ལྀ་	l̥
ཨོ	o	ཨཽ་	au	ལཱྀ	l̥̄
ཨཱ་	ā

Other Letters or Diacritical Marks Used in Words of Non-Tibetan Origin (see Notes 6 and 7)

ཊ་	ṭa	གྷ་	gha	ཾ anusvāra	ṃ
ཋ་	ṭha	དྷ་	dha	ཾ anunāsika	m̐
ཌ་	ḍa	བྷ་	bha	ཾ visarga	ḥ
ན་	ṇa	ཛྷ་	dzha	྅ avagraha	` grave accent
ཎ་	ṣa	ཌྷ་	ḍha

Consonant Clusters with Non-joiner to Disambiguate (see Notes 8 and 9)

གཡ་

gʹya

ཏྶ་

tʹsa

ནྱ་

nʹya

Notes

1. Internal capitalization of base consonants is not to be followed.

2. The vowel a is implicit after all consonants in independent form and is supplied in romanization, unless another vowel is indicated by its appropriate sign.

3. The ’a chung ( འ་ ) is represented by an alif ( ʼ ) unless marked with a vowel marker, in which case it is represented by the alif plus the appropriate vowel. When the ʼa chung is written below any letter representing vocalic length, it is romanized according to the vowel table.

4. Only the vowel forms that appear at the beginning of a syllable are listed. A syllable is defined as a graph or group of graphs followed by a tsheg ( ་ ). The forms used for vowels following a consonant can be found in grammars.

5. The reversed form of the letter i ( ྀ ) that appears in Old Tibetan documents is transcribed in the same way as the more normative form ཨི་ ( i ) , since it is a variation in script and does not carry any unique semantic or phonetic value.

6. The reverse-d ( ཌ་ ) is rendered as ḍ when it appears in Tibetanized Sanskrit words. However, when the reverse-d appears at the end of a Tibetan syllable as scribal shorthand for གས , then it is romanized as gs.

7. Transcribe the avagraha, which marks an elided vowel in Sanskrit clusters, with a spacing grave accent ( ` ).

ཤུདྡྷོ྅ཧshuddho`haṃ

8. When ཡ་ is preceded by ག་, it is romanized gʹya to distinguish it from གྱ་, which is romanized gya. This diacritical mark is the “modified letter prime”. Note that the Wylie transliteration schema uses the period as a non-joiner (g.ya), but this can cause searching difficulties in local systems because it is read as a space.

9. When two full forms of letters are stacked, as in Sanskritized Tibetan, there is no need to indicate the stacking. However, in the two cases noted here a modified letter prime should be inserted between the two consonants for the purpose of disambiguation.

ཏྶ་

tʹsa

ཙ་

tsa

ནྱ་

n'ya

ཉ་

nya

10. Tibetan numerals are ༠ (0), ༡ (1), ༢ (2), ༣ (3), ༤ (4), ༥ (5), ༦ (6), ༧ (7), ༨ (8), and ༩ (9).

Punctuation

1. Tsheg ( ་ ), the syllabic boundary marker, is represented by a hyphen in proper names and by a space in other words.

2. Transcribe a centered point (・) indicating a space with a space.

འབའ・བསྡྷོད་བྷས་བརྩམས།ʼBaʼ Bsod-bhas brtsams

3. Transcribe angle brackets (guillemets) (《 ... 》) used in the manner of quotation marks (“ ... ”) as quotation marks. Angle brackets are most typically used for indicating the titles of works.