Wylie Transliteration Scheme

We will use Extended Wylie Transliteration Scheme (EWTS) in order to provide exact transliteration of Tibetan script for all our projects. Wylie transliteration was designed to precisely transcribe Tibetan script as written, which led to its acceptance in academic and historical studies. It is not intended to represent the pronunciation of Tibetan words.

This transliteration method was refined in 1959 by Turrell Wylie at University of Washington. It has subsequently become a standard transliteration scheme of Tibetan studies, especially in the Western world due to its simplicity (it is using only simple unaccented Roman letters available on a typical English language typewriter) and at the same time, its reliability. It is unambiguous, so that given transliterated letter and/or word cannot be contextually reconstructed back to the original language in two alternative ways.

Wylie's original scheme is not capable of transliterating all Tibetan-script texts. In particular, it has no correspondences for most Tibetan punctuation symbols, and lacks the ability to represent non-Tibetan words written in Tibetan script (Sanskrit and phonetic Chinese are the most common cases). The Tibetan and Himalayan Library at the University of Virginia (Nathaniel Garson and David Germano's "Extended Wylie Trans-literation Scheme" (January 31, 2003 update) developed a standard, Extended Wylie Tibetan System or EWTS, that resolves this problem. It uses capital letters and Latin punctuation to represent the missing characters.

Below one can find the basic principles by which it is easy to convert any Tibetan word into its transliteration and vice versa. For the convenience of readers will be given schemas transliteration by T. Wiley (in bold) and B.-D. Badaraev (in italics). Transliteration by B.-D. Badaraev is based on the same principles as the Wiley transliteration, but using Cyrillic.

The Tibetan Alphabet

kakhaganga
какхаганга

cachajanya
чачхаджанйа

tathadana
татхадана

paphabama
папхабама

tsatshadzawa
цацхадзава

zhaza‘aya
жаfor‘aйа

ralashasa
ралашаса

haa
хаа

Vowels

ཨི

ཨུ

ཨེ

ཨོ

a
i
u
e
o
а
and
у
э
о

Thirty letters of the alphabet can be combined in different ways, forming a composite Tibetan syllable. In writing, each syllable ends with a point called tsheg (tsheg), which function is separation of syllables. In transliteration by B.-D. Badaraev tsheg replaced by a hyphen icon, and in the transliteration by Wiley it replaced by space.

Examples of simple combinations.

ལོ

བུ

རེ་བ

མི

lo
bu
re ba
mi
ло
бу
рэ-ба
ми

ཇོ་བོ

དེ

སུ

འོ་མ

jo bo
de
su
'o ma
джо-бо
дэ
су
'о-ма


Syllable

The entire Tibetan syllable is based on the letter which is called the root letter (ming gzhi). It can be surrounded by other letters. Some of them are written before, above or below, and others after the root letter. Here is an example of a Tibetan syllable contain-ing all possible elements:

https://tanaduk108.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/scheme-ru-858x422.png
https://tanaduk108.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/scheme-en-858x448.png
Below one can find all possible superscribed (ra mgo, la mgo, and sa mgo) or subscribed (ya rtags, ra rtags , or la rtags, and wa rtags)combinations. Triple super , or subscribed combinations will not be cited here. Nevertheless, the reader, undoubtedly, will easily understand the transliteration of these cases, since the general principles are the same.
There are 12 subscribed combinations with wa (wa zur can gyi yi ge)

ཀྭ

ཁྭ

གྭ

ཉྭ

ཏྭ

དྭ

kwa
khwagwanywatwadwa
квакхвагванйва
твадва

ཚྭ

ཞྭ

ཟྭ

རྭ

ལྭ

ཤྭ

tshwazhwazwarwalwashwa
цхвадвазварвалвашва

There are 14 subscribed combinations with ra (ra btags can gyi yi ge)

ཀྲ

ཁྲ

གྲ

ཏྲ

ཐྲ

དྲ

ནྲ

krakhragratrathradranra
кракхрагратратхрадранра

པྲ

ཕྲ

བྲ

མྲ

ཤྲ

སྲ

ཧྲ

praphrabramrashrasrahra
прапхрабрамрашрасрахра

There are 7 subscribed combinations with ya (ya btags can gyi yi ge)

ཀྱ

ཁྱ

གྱ

པྱ

ཕྱ

བྱ

མྱ

kya
khya
gya
pya
phya
bya
mya
кйа
кхйа
гйа
пйа
пхйа
бйа
мйа

There are 6 subscribed combinations with la (la btags can gyi yi ge)

ཀླ

གླ

བླ

ཟླ

རླ

སླ

klaglablazlarlasla
клаглаблазларласла

There are 12 superscribed combinations with ra (ra mgo can gyi yi ge)

རྐ

རྒ

རྔ

རྗ

རྙ

རྟ

rkargarngarjarnyarta
ркаргарнгарджагнйарта

རྡ

རྣ

རྦ

རྨ

རྩ

རྫ

rdarnarbarmartsardza
рдарнарбармарцардза

There are 10 superscribed combinations with la (la mgo can gyi yi ge)

ལྐ

ལྒ

ལྔ

ལྕ

ལྗ

lka
lga
lnga
lca
lja
лка
лга
лнга
лча
лжда

ལྟ

ལྡ

ལྤ

ལྦ

ལྷ

lta
lda
lpa
lba
lha
лта
лда
лпа
лба
лха

There are 11 superscribed combinations with sa (sa mgo can gyi yi ge)

སྐ

སྒ

སྔ

སྙ

སྟ

སྡ

ska
sga
snga
snya
sta
sda
ска
сга
снга
снйа
ста
сда

སྣ

སྤ

སྦ

སྨ

སྩ

sna
spa
sba
sma
stsa
сна
спа
сба
сма
сца

The Wylie system does not normally distinguish these prefix, superscripted or subscripted letters as in practice no ambiguity is possible under the rules of Tibetan spelling. The exception is the sequence "gy", which may be written either with a prefix "g" or a suffix "y". In the Wylie system, these are distinguished by inserting a period between a prefix "g" and initial "y". E.g. གྱང "wall" is gyang, while གཡང་ "chasm" is g.yang.


Examples

གཡུ

གཡག

གཡེང

གཡང

g.yu
g.yag
g.yeng
g.yang
г.йу
г.йаг
г.йэнг
г.уанг

རྒྱུད

གྱག

གྱེན

གྱང

rgyud
gyag
gyen
gyang
ргйуд
гйаг
гйэн
гйанг


Words examples

རེད

རུས་སྦལ

སྐྱེ

བརྒྱང

སྤྱི

redrus sbalskyebrgyangspyi
рэдрус-сбалскйэбргйангспйи

གྲྭ་པ

གཡུང

རྡེའུ

བྱུ་རུའང

ཁྱོའི

grwa pag.yungrde'ubyu ru'angkhyo'i
грва-паг.йунгрдэ'убйу-ру'ангкхйо'и

Sanskrit

There are several inverted letters used for transliteration of Sanskrit loan words by means of Tibetan script. It is due to the fact that in the alphabet, which Sanskrit is writ-ten, there are some letters that are not in Tibetan. They are transmitted by capital letters in the extended Wylie transliteration system. Long vowels, indicative of Sanskrit words or other foreign influences, are transliterated using the capitals of the respective vow-els. Long vowels are indicated in Tibetan by the presence of a small ‘a (‘a chung), below the root letter stack.

Examples

ཨཱི

ཨཽ

ཀརྨ་པ

ལོ་ཙཱ་བ

དྷརྨ་ཀཱིརྟི

I
au
karma pa
lo tsA ba
dharma kIrti

ཨཱུ

ཨཱཿ

ཨུཏྤལ

པཎ་ཌི་ཏ

པདྨ

U
AH
utpal
paN Di ta
Padma

ཨཻ

ཧཱུྃ

ཀྵ་ཡ

ཤམྦྷལ

ཏདྱཐཱ

Ai
hUM
kSha ya
Shambhala
tadyathA

Comments are closed.

en_US