Wylie transliteration
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The Wylie transliteration scheme is a method for transliterating the Tibetan alphabet using the keys on a typical English language typewriter. The scheme was refined by Turrell Wylie in 1959 and bears his name, subsequently it has become a standard transliteration scheme in Tibetan studies, especially in the United States.
The Wylie scheme transliterates the Tibetan characters as follows k, kh, g, ng, c, ch, j, ny, t, th, d, n, p, ph, b, m, ts, tsh, dz, w, zh, z, ', y, r, l, sh, s, h. The final letter of the alphabet is not tranliterated.
The Wylie system is based on the system used by David Snellgrove but specifies that 'root letters' are not to be capitalized, and instead the first letter of a word is capitalized. Thus a particular Tibetan Buddhist sect is spelled Bka' rgyud and not bKa' rgyud.
Due to language evolution, in some Tibetan dialects, in particular the Lhasa dialect, pronunciation diverges widely from spelling.
External Links
(Both require downloading of Tibetan fonts to work properly)
- The Wylie Translation Table at Nitartha International (http://www.nitartha.org/wylie_tables.html)
- THDL Extended Wylie Transliteration Scheme (http://iris.lib.virginia.edu/tibet/collections/langling/ewts/ewts.php?m=intro)(A project of the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library (http://www.thdl.org) to expand and adapt the Wylie transliteration system for computer use.)
See also
References
- Wylie, Turrell (1959). A Standard System of Tibetan Transcription. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, p. 261-267