Wylie transliteration

Prof. Turrell Wylie in in 1979 at the University of Washington, Department of Asian Languages and Literature.

Wylie transliteration is a way to write Tibetan script using English letters found on a standard typewriter. Turrell V. Wylie, an American scholar, created this system, and he introduced it in a 1959 article in the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. It has since become a widely used method in Tibetan studies, especially in the United States.

When creating a Romanization for the Tibetan language, there's a challenge: whether to accurately represent the sounds of spoken Tibetan or the spelling of written Tibetan. These can be quite different, similar to the difference between English and French orthography, which reflects the pronunciation from the Late Medieval period.

Earlier transcription systems tried to compromise between these two goals, but they didn't do either perfectly. Wylie transliteration aims to precisely transcribe Tibetan script as it is written, making it widely accepted in academic and historical studies. It's important to note that Wylie is not meant to reflect the pronunciation of Tibetan words.

Consonants

This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without the correct software, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

The Wylie method transliterates the Tibetan characters as follows:

T	W	IPA	T	W	IPA	T	W	IPA	T	W	IPA
ཀ	ka	[ká]	ཁ	kha	[↘︎kʰá]	ག	ga	[ɡà/↗︎kʰà]	ང	nga	[ŋà]
ཅ	ca	[tɕá]	ཆ	cha	[↘︎tɕʰá]	ཇ	ja	[dʑà/↗︎tɕʰà]	ཉ	nya	[ɲà]
ཏ	ta	[tá]	ཐ	tha	[↘︎tʰá]	ད	da	[dà/↗︎tʰà]	ན	na	[nà]
པ	pa	[pá]	ཕ	pha	[↘︎pʰá]	བ	ba	[bà/↗︎pʰà]	མ	ma	[mà]
ཙ	tsa	[tsá]	ཚ	tsha	[↘︎tsʰá]	ཛ	dza	[dzà/↗︎tsʰà]	ཝ	wa	[wà]
ཞ	zha	[ʑà/↗︎ɕà]	ཟ	za	[zà/↗︎sà]	འ	'a	[ɦà/↗︎ʔà]	ཡ	ya	[jà]
ར	ra	[rà]	ལ	la	[là]	ཤ	sha	[↘︎ɕá]	ས	sa	[↘︎sá]
ཧ	ha	[há]	ཨ	a	[↘︎ʔá]

Vowels

The four vowel marks in Wylie are transliterated as:

ཨི  i

ཨུ  u

ཨེ  e

ཨོ  o

When a syllable doesn't have a written vowel, the letter 'a' is used to show the default vowel "a."

Wylie Transliteration Media

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  Wylie transliteration of Tibetan script