Romanization of Persian

Transliteration

Transliteration (in the strict sense) attempts to be a complete representation of the original writing, so that an informed reader should be able to reconstruct the original spelling of unknown transliterated words. Transliterations of Persian are used to represent individual Persian words or short quotations, in scholarly texts in English or other languages that do not use the Arabic alphabet.

A transliteration will still have separate representations for different consonants of the Persian alphabet that are pronounced identically in Persian. Therefore transliterations of Persian are often based on transliterations of Arabic. Persian-alphabet vowel representation is also complex, and transliterations are based on the written form.

Transliterations commonly used in the English-speaking world include BGN/PCGN romanization and ALA-LC Romanization.

Non-academic English-language quotation of Persian words usually uses a simplification of one of the strict transliteration schemes (typically omitting diacritical marks) and/or unsystematic choices of spellings meant to guide English speakers using English spelling rules towards an approximation of the Persian sounds.

Transcription

Transcriptions of Persian attempt to straightforwardly represent Persian phonology in the Roman alphabet, without requiring a close or reversible correspondence with the Perso-Arabic script, and also without requiring a close correspondence to English-language phonetic values of Roman letters; for example, letters such as X, Q, C may be reusedfor Persian-language phonemes that are not present in English phonology or do not have a consistent or single-letter English spelling.

Proposed Roman-alphabet scripts intended to be a primary representation of Persian, for use by Persian speakers as an alternative to the Perso-Arabic script, fall into this category. Some of these proposed scripts are described at [http://www.omniglot.com/writing/persian.htm Omniglot] .

Comparison of proposed Persian and neighboring Latin-based scripts

Tajik latin alphabet

The Tajik language is closely related to Persian. It was written in Tajik SSR in a standardized Latin script from 1926 until late 1930s, when the script was officially changed to Cyrillic. However, Tajik phonology differs slightly from that of Persian in Iran; see Persian phonology#Historical shifts.

References

ee also

* Fingilish (Persian chat alphabet )
* Persian alphabet
* Persian phonology
* Romanization
* Transliteration
* Romanization of Arabic

External links

* [http://transliteration.eki.ee/pdf/Persian.pdf Comparison of DMG, UN, ALA-LC, BGN/PCGN, EI, ISO 233-3 transliterations]
* [http://www.eki.ee/wgrs/rom1_fa.htm UN Romanization of Persian for Geographical Names]
* [http://www.lib.umich.edu/area/Near.East/persianrom.pdf Library of Congress/American Library Association Romanization of Persian]
* [http://books.google.com/books?id=6u18PtO0BoQC&pg=PA137 Cataloguing Issues and Problems]
* [http://www.unipers.com UniPers homepage]
* [http://www.eurofarsi.com/ Eurofarsi]
* [http://www.eiktub.com eiktub:] web-based Arabic transliteration pad, with support for Persian characters