Trisha Shetty (Editor)

Romanization of Telugu

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There are several systems for romanization of the Telugu script.

Contents

Irregular Consonants

Note: శ్ర(śra) and త్ర(tra) occurs by combining consonants in Telugu script unlike other Indic scripts.

Other diacritics

  • Virama (్) mutes the vowel of a consonant, so that only the consonant is pronounced. Example: క + ్ → క్    or [ka] + [∅] → [k].
  • Anusvara (ం) nasalize the vowels or syllables to which they are attached. Example: క + ం → కం or [ka] + [m] → [kaṁ]
  • Candrabindu (ఁ) also nasalize the vowels or syllables to which they are attached. Example: క + ఁ → కఁ or [ka] + [n] → [kan̆].
  • Visarga (ః) adds a voiceless breath after the vowel or syllable it is attached to. Example: క + ః → కః or [ka] + [h] → [kaḥ]

    • UN romanization for geographical names

    The United Nations romanization systems for geographical names (approved 1972, I1/11; amended in 1977 IH/12) was based on a report prepared by D. N. Sharma.

    The UN romanization uses macrons for long vowels ā ī ū, a dot under ṛ for vocalic r, and caron on ĕ and ŏ.

    ka kā ki kī ku kū kṛ kĕ ke kai kŏ ko kau

    ISO

    There are differences between the UN system and the ISO transliteration standard ISO 15919: 2001

    ITRANS

    ITRANS also has transliteration for Telugu.

    RTS

    Used in Vemuri Rao's English-Telugu Dictionary (2002) Rice University's Reverse Transliteration System (RTS) (created by Ramarao Kanneganti and Ananda Kishore) can be used for the transliteration of Telugu into Roman script as an alternative to phonetic alphabet.

  • RTS represents short vowels by the lower case English character and long vowels by the corresponding upper case character: అ = a, ఆ = A; etc.
  • Unaspirated consonant-vowel pairs are represented by a lower case letter followed by a suitable vowel.

    • The result is a phonetic representation mostly suitable for dictionaries and computer input methods. Examples:

  • vaiDUryaM
  • gOmEdhikaM

    • References

    Romanization of Telugu Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA


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