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Romanization or Latinization of Ukrainian denotes a system for representing the Ukrainian language in Latin letters. Ukrainian is natively written in its own Ukrainian alphabet, a variation of Cyrillic.

Romanization may be employed to represent Ukrainian text or pronunciation for non-Ukrainian readers, on computer systems that cannot reproduce Cyrillic characters, or for typists who are not familiar with the Ukrainian keyboard layout. Methods of romanization include transliteration, representing written text, and transcription, representing the spoken word.

In contrast to romanization, there have been several historical proposals for a native Ukrainian Latin alphabet, but none has caught on.

Romanization systems

Transliteration

Transliteration is the letter-for-letter representation of text using another writing system. Depending on the purpose of the transliteration, it may be necessary to be able to reconstruct the original text. Or it may be preferable to have a transliteration which sounds like the original language when read aloud.

International scholarly system
Also called scientific transliteration, this system is most often seen in linguistic publications on Slavic languages. It is purely phonemic, meaning each character represents one meaningful unit of sound, and is based on the Croatian Latin alphabet. It was codified in the 1898 Prussian Instructions for libraries, or Preußische Instruktionen (PI).
Representing all of the necessary diacritics on computers requires Unicode, Latin-2, Latin-4, or Latin-7 encoding.

ALA-LC Romanization Tables
American Library Association (1885) and Library of Congress (1905). Used by US and Canadian libraries for representing bibliographic information. The latest 1997 revision is very similar to the 1905 version.
Requires Unicode for connecting diacritics, but these are often omitted in practice.

BGN/PCGN
BGN/PCGN romanization is a series of standards approved by the United States Board on Geographic Names and Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use. Pronunciation is intuitive for English-speakers. Latest revision is from 1965.
Requires only ASCII characters if optional separators are not used.

ISO 9:1995
ISO 9 is a standard from the International Organization for Standardization. It supports most national Cyrillic alphabets in a single transliteration table. Each Cyrillic character is represented by exactly one unique Latin character, so the transliteration is reliably reversible. This was originally derived from the Scholarly system in 1954, and is meant to be usable by readers of most European languages.
The 1995 revision considers only graphemes and disregards phonemic differences. So, for example, г (Ukrainian He or Russian Ge) is always represented by the transliteration g; ґ (Ukrainian letter Ge) is represented by g̀.
Representing all of the necessary diacritics on computers requires Unicode, and a few characters are rarely present in computer fonts, for example g-grave: g̀.

Ukrainian National transliteration
The official system of Ukraine, codified in 1996, also employed by the UN and many countries' foreign services. It is currently widely used to represent Ukrainian geographic names, which were almost exclusively romanized from Russian before Ukrainian independence in 1991. Based on English orthography.
Requires only ASCII characters.

Romanization for other languages
Romanization intended for readers of other languages is usually transcribed phonetically into the familiar orthography. For example, y, kh, ch, sh, shch for anglophones may be transcribed j, ch, tsch, sch, schtch for German readers (for letters й, х, ч, ш, щ). Or it may be rendered in Latin letters according to the normal orthography of another Slavic language, such as Polish or Croatian (as does the established scholarly system, above).

Ad hoc romanization
Users of public-access computers or mobile text messaging services sometimes improvise informal romanization due to limitations in keyboard or character set. These may include both sound-alike and look-alike letter substitutions. Example: YKRAINCbKA ABTORKA for "УКРАЇНСЬКА АВТОРКА". See also Volapuk encoding.
Uses available character set.

Transcription

Transcription is the representation of the spoken word. Phonological, or phonemic, transcription represents the phonemes, or meaningful sounds of a language, and is useful to describe the general pronunciation of a word. Phonetic transcription represents every single sound, or phone, and can be used to compare different dialects of a language. Both methods can use the same sets of symbols, but linguists usually denote phonemic transcriptions by enclosing them in slashes / ... /, while phonetic transcriptions are enclosed in square brackets ... .

IPA
The International Phonetic Alphabet precisely represents pronunciation. Requires a special Unicode font.

Conventional romanization of proper names

In many publications, especially in English-language journalism, it is common to use a simplified system of transliteration, one that strives to be intuitively phonetic for anglophones. Such transcriptions are also used for the surnames of people of Ukrainian ancestry in English-speaking countries (personal names have often been translated to equivalent or similar English names, e.g., "Alexander" for Oleksandr, "Terry" for Taras).

Usually such a semi-formal usage is based on either the ALA-LC system (in America) or BGN/PCGN system (in Britain). Such a simplified system usually omits diacritics and tie-bars, simplifies -yj and -ij word endings to "-y", ignores the Ukrainian soft sign (ь) and apostrophe (’), and typically substitutes ya, ye, yu, yo for ia, ie, iu, io at the beginnings of words. It may also simplify doubled letters.

Conventional transliterations can reflect the history of a person or place. Many well-known spellings are based on transcriptions into another Latin alphabet, such as the German or Polish. Others are transcribed from equivalent names in other languages, for example Ukrainian Pavlo ("Paul") may be called by the Russian equivalent Pavel, Ukrainian Kyiv by the Russian equivalent Kiev.

Treatises on history often use the pedantic transliteration with apostrophe for the name Rus’, even when they drop the apostrophe for all other names and words.

The employment of romanization systems can become complex. For example, the English translation of Kubijovyč's Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopædia uses a modified Library of Congress (ALA-LC) system as outlined above for Ukrainian and Russian names—with the exceptions for endings or doubled consonants applying variously to personal and geographic names. For technical reasons, maps in the Encyclopedia follow different conventions. Names of persons are anglicized in the encyclopedia's text, but also presented in their original form in the index. Various geographic names are presented in their anglicized, Russian, or both Ukrainian and Polish forms, and appear in several forms in the index. Scholarly transliteration is used in linguistics articles. The Encyclopedia's explanation of its transliteration and naming convention occupies 2-1/2 pages.

Table of romanization systems

style="font-weight:bold;" | Common systems for romanizing Ukrainian
Cyrillic Scholarly ALA-LC* BGN/PCGN† ISO 9 National‡ French German
А а a a a a a a a
Б б b b b b b b b
В в v v v v v v w
Г г h h h g h, gh¹ h h
Ґ ґ g g g g̀ g g g
Д д d d d d d d d
Е е e e e e e e e
Є є je ye ê ie, ye² ie je
Ж ж ž zh ž zh j sh
З з z z z z z z s
И и y y y i y y y
І і i i i ì i i i
Ї ї ji ï yi ï i, yi² ï, yi ji
Й й j ĭ y j i, y² i j
К к k k k k k k k
Л л l l l l l l l
М м m m m m m m m
Н н n n n n n n n
О о o o o o o o o
П п p p p p p p p
Р р r r r r r r r
С с s s s s s s s, ss
Т т t t t t t t t
У у u u u u u ou u
Ф ф f f f f f f f
Х х x or ch kh kh h kh kh ch
Ц ц c ts c ts ts z
Ч ч č ch ch č ch tch tsch
Ш ш š sh sh š sh ch sch
Щ щ šč shch shch ŝ sch chtch schtsch
Ю ю ju yu û iu, yu² iou ju
Я я ja ya â ia, ya² ia ja
Ь ь ′ ′ ’ ′ ’ – –
’ - - ” ’ ” – –

* Notes for ALA-LC When applied strictly, ALA-LC requires the use of two-character combining diacritics, but in practice these are often omitted.

† Notes for BGN/PCGN The character sequences зг, кг, сг, тс, and цг may be romanized as z∙h, k∙h, s∙h, t∙s, and ts∙h to differentiate them from the digraphs zh, kh, sh, ts, and the letter sequence tsh, which are used to render the characters ж, х, ш, ц, and the letter sequence тш.

‡ Notes for the Ukrainian National system Transliteration can be rendered in a simplified form:
  • Doubled consonants ж, х, ц, ч, ш are simplified, for example Запоріжжя→Zaporizhia.
  • Apostrophe and soft sign are omitted, except for ьо and ьї which are always rendered as ’o and ’i.
1. gh is used in the romanization of зг (zgh), avoiding confusion with ж (zh). 2. The second variant is used at the beginning of a word.

See also

References

  • Daniels, Peter T., and William Bright, eds. (1996). The World's Writing Systems, pp. 700, 702, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507-993-0.
  • U.S. Board on Geographic Names, Foreign Names Committee Staff (1994). Romanization Systems and Roman-Script Spelling Conventions, p. 105.

External links

Transliteration systems

Romanization | Cyrillic alphabet | Ukrainian language

Transcription de l'ukrainien en français | Romanisering van het Oekraïens

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Romanization of Ukrainian".

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