Hunterian transliteration
Encyclopedia
The Hunterian transliteration system is the "national system of romanization in India
" and the one officially adopted by the Government of India
. Hunterian transliteration was sometimes also called the Jonesian transliteration system because it derived closely from a previous transliteration method developed by William Jones
(1746-1794 CE). Upon its establishment, the Sahitya Akademi
(India's National Academy of Letters) also adopted the Hunterian method, with additional adaptations, as its standard method of maintaining its bibliography of Indian-language works.
, who is sometimes called the "father of Devanagari typography" because he was also the creator of the first Devanagari typeface. William Jones, who also founded the Asiatic Society
, further developed the transliteration method. It was given a more complete form in the late nineteenth century by William Wilson Hunter
, then Surveyor General of India. When it was proposed, it immediately met with opposition from supporters of the phonetic Dowler system, which climaxed in a dramatic showdown in an India Council meeting on 28 May 1872 where the new Hunterian method carried the day. The Hunterian method was inherently simpler and extensible to several Indic scripts because it systematized grapheme transliteration, and it came to prevail and gain government and academic acceptance. Opponents of the grapheme transliteration model continued to mount unsuccessful attempts at reversing government policy until the turn of the century, with one critic calling appealing to ""the Indian Government to give up the whole attempt at scientific (i.e. Hunterian) transliteration, and decide once and for all in favour of a return to the old phonetic spelling."
. The Hunterian system was used to establish writing systems that used the Latin alphabet for some Indian languages that were previously not associated with a written script, such as Mizo
. In the case of Mizo, the Hunterian-based writing system "has proved hugely successful." Provisions for schwa deletion in Indo-Aryan languages
were also made where applicable, e.g. the Hindi कानपुर is transliterated as kānpur (and not kānapura) but the Sanskrit क्रम is transliterated as krama (and not kram). The system has undergone some evolution over time. For instance, long vowels were marked with an accent
diacritic
in the original version, but this was later replaced in the 1954 Government of India update with a macron
. Thus, जान (life) was previously romanized as ján but began to be romanized as jān. Additional diacritics have been proposed for various purposes, such as disambiguating letters of PersoArabic that map to a single Devanagari grapheme (e.g. ث, س and ص which all map to स). Some languages of the region are tonal, such as Mizo and Punjabi
, and accent marks over vowels have been repurposed to indicate tone for some of them.
s are denoted by the transliterated schwa vowel in Devanagari, a (अ), and excluded as necessary under schwa deletion rules
. Aspirations are represented by h. Retroflex graphemes are often represented by a diacritic dot under the Latin consonant that represents the equivalent dental graphemes in proposals (some of which predate even the Hunterian method), though this has not officially been accepted by the Indian government. Halants
are indicated by either leaving out a vowel after the transliterated consonant or, in new proposals (not formally approved by the Indian government), with a period after the applicable consonant (e.g. जल्दी - jal.di). Initially, italics were sometimes used to differentiate consonants such as ख ("kh") and ख़ ("kh"), but later macrons and diacritics began to be used more extensively.
With diacritics: maiṅ apne saṃbaṅdhī se kārk͟hāne meṅ milā aur usne mujhe chāy pilāī. vo bārish ke kāraṇ fasloṅ ko hue nuqsān kī vajah se chiṅtit thā. maine use apnī k͟habar sunāyī. k.yoṅki mujhe nikalnā thā, islie kuchh der bād maine kṣhamā māṅgī aur vahāṅ se ravānā huā.
Without any diacritics: main apne sambandhi se karkhane men mila aur usne mujhe chay pilayi. wo barish ke karan faslon ko hue nuqsan ki vajah se chintit tha. maine use apni khabar sunayi. kyonki mujhe nikalna tha, islie kuchh der bad maine kshama mangi aur vahan se ravana hua.
Notes: संबंधी can interchangeably be written several different ways in Hindi: संबंधी, सम्बंधी, संबन्धी or सम्बन्धी.
Example: इस साल ग्रीष्मकालीन वर्षा ज़्यादा होने से अमरुद और बेर की क़िल्लत देखी गयी. मज़े की बात ये है के सेब और ख़ुबानी की क़ीमतें कम हैं क्योंकि उत्तराखण्ड में गोदाम भरें हैं.
With diacritics: is sāl g.rīṣh.mkālīn varṣhā zyādā hone se amrūd aur ber kī qil.lat dekhī gayī. maze kī bāt ye hai ke seb aur k͟hubānī kī qīmteṅ kam haiṅ k.yoṅki ut.tarākhaṇ.ḍ meṅ godām bhareṅ haiṅ.
Without any diacritics: is sal grishmkalin varsha zyada hone se amrud aur ber ki qillat dekhi gayi. maze ki bat ye hai ke seb aur khubani ki qimten kam hain kyonki uttarakhand men godam bharen hain.
and dental consonants (e.g. द and ड are both represented by d) has come in for repeated criticism and inspired several proposed modifications of Hunterian, including using a diacritic below retroflexes (e.g. making द=d and ड=ḍ, which is more readable but requires diacritic printing) or capitalizing them (e.g. making द=d and ड=D, which requires no diacritic printing but is less readable because it mixes small and capital letters in words).
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
" and the one officially adopted by the Government of India
Government of India
The Government of India, officially known as the Union Government, and also known as the Central Government, was established by the Constitution of India, and is the governing authority of the union of 28 states and seven union territories, collectively called the Republic of India...
. Hunterian transliteration was sometimes also called the Jonesian transliteration system because it derived closely from a previous transliteration method developed by William Jones
William Jones (philologist)
Sir William Jones was an English philologist and scholar of ancient India, particularly known for his proposition of the existence of a relationship among Indo-European languages...
(1746-1794 CE). Upon its establishment, the Sahitya Akademi
Sahitya Akademi
The Sahitya Akademi ', India's National Academy of Letters, is an organisation dedicated to the promotion of literature in the languages of India...
(India's National Academy of Letters) also adopted the Hunterian method, with additional adaptations, as its standard method of maintaining its bibliography of Indian-language works.
History
The original precursor to the Hunterian system was a transliteration method developed by Charles WilkinsCharles Wilkins
Sir Charles Wilkins, KH, FRS , was an English typographer and Orientalist, notable as the first translator of Bhagavad Gita into English, and as the creator of the first Devanagari typeface....
, who is sometimes called the "father of Devanagari typography" because he was also the creator of the first Devanagari typeface. William Jones, who also founded the Asiatic Society
Asiatic Society
The Asiatic Society was founded by Sir William Jones on January 15, 1784 in a meeting presided over by Sir Robert Chambers, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court at the Fort William in Calcutta, then capital of the British Raj, to enhance and further the cause of Oriental research. At the time of...
, further developed the transliteration method. It was given a more complete form in the late nineteenth century by William Wilson Hunter
William Wilson Hunter
Sir William Wilson Hunter KCSI CIE was a Scottish historian, statistician, a compiler and a member of the Indian Civil Service, who later became Vice President of Royal Asiatic Society.-Early life and education:...
, then Surveyor General of India. When it was proposed, it immediately met with opposition from supporters of the phonetic Dowler system, which climaxed in a dramatic showdown in an India Council meeting on 28 May 1872 where the new Hunterian method carried the day. The Hunterian method was inherently simpler and extensible to several Indic scripts because it systematized grapheme transliteration, and it came to prevail and gain government and academic acceptance. Opponents of the grapheme transliteration model continued to mount unsuccessful attempts at reversing government policy until the turn of the century, with one critic calling appealing to ""the Indian Government to give up the whole attempt at scientific (i.e. Hunterian) transliteration, and decide once and for all in favour of a return to the old phonetic spelling."
Additional languages and adaptations
Over time, the Hunterian method extended in reach to cover several Indic scripts, including Burmese and TibetanTibetan script
The Tibetan alphabet is an abugida of Indic origin used to write the Tibetan language as well as the Dzongkha language, Denzongkha, Ladakhi language and sometimes the Balti language. The printed form of the alphabet is called uchen script while the hand-written cursive form used in everyday...
. The Hunterian system was used to establish writing systems that used the Latin alphabet for some Indian languages that were previously not associated with a written script, such as Mizo
Mizo language
The Mizo language is natively spoken by Mizo people in Mizoram, a state in the Indian Union; Chin State of Burma and in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. The language is also known as Lushai , as Lusei people are the first clan who have an external exposure...
. In the case of Mizo, the Hunterian-based writing system "has proved hugely successful." Provisions for schwa deletion in Indo-Aryan languages
Schwa deletion in Indo-Aryan languages
The schwa deletion or schwa syncope phenomenon plays a crucial role in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu, Kashmiri, Punjabi, Gujarati, Maithili and several other Indo-Aryan languages, where schwas implicit in the written scripts of those languages are obligatorily deleted for correct pronunciation. Schwa...
were also made where applicable, e.g. the Hindi कानपुर is transliterated as kānpur (and not kānapura) but the Sanskrit क्रम is transliterated as krama (and not kram). The system has undergone some evolution over time. For instance, long vowels were marked with an accent
Acute accent
The acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...
diacritic
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
in the original version, but this was later replaced in the 1954 Government of India update with a macron
Macron
A macron, from the Greek , meaning "long", is a diacritic placed above a vowel . It was originally used to mark a long or heavy syllable in Greco-Roman metrics, but now marks a long vowel...
. Thus, जान (life) was previously romanized as ján but began to be romanized as jān. Additional diacritics have been proposed for various purposes, such as disambiguating letters of PersoArabic that map to a single Devanagari grapheme (e.g. ث, س and ص which all map to स). Some languages of the region are tonal, such as Mizo and Punjabi
Punjabi language
Punjabi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by inhabitants of the historical Punjab region . For Sikhs, the Punjabi language stands as the official language in which all ceremonies take place. In Pakistan, Punjabi is the most widely spoken language...
, and accent marks over vowels have been repurposed to indicate tone for some of them.
Vowels
The main vowels used by Hindi in Devanagari are represented as -| Devanagari Devanagari Devanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal... | Nastaliq Urdu alphabet The Urdu alphabet is the right-to-left alphabet used for the Urdu language. It is a modification of the Persian alphabet, which is itself a derivative of the Arabic alphabet... | Typical IPA | Hunterian | Proposed diacritic forms | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| अ | a | a | a | ||
| आ | aː | ā, a | ā | ||
| इ | ɪ | i | i | ||
| ई | iː | ī, i | ī | ||
| उ | ʊ | u | u | ||
| ऊ | uː | |ū | ū | ||
| ए | eː | e | e | ||
| ऐ | æ | ai | ai | [æ] in Standard Hindi, but dipthongal pronunciation (like the 'i' in bike) in Bihari/Eastern Hindi | |
| ओ | oː | o | o | ||
| औ | ɔː | au | au | pronounced like house in Bihari/Eastern Hindi | |
| अं | ŋ or m | m or n | ṃ or ṅ | Differentiation between labial and dental anusvara | |
| अः | h | h | ḥ | ||
| ऋ | ṛ | ri | ṛĭ | ||
| ॠ | ṝ | ri | ṟĭ | ||
| ऍ | ɛ | ||||
| no Hunterian symbol defined; sound occurs in words such as कह/kɛḥ, but almost never written phonetically in Hindi except for loanwords; more rigorous usage in Nepali | |||||
| ऑ | ɒ | ||||
| no Hunterian symbol defined; sound occurs for words like गौना/gona (engagement), but never written phonetically except for loanwords |
Consonants
In the Hunterian system, implicit schwaSchwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean the following:*An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel...
s are denoted by the transliterated schwa vowel in Devanagari, a (अ), and excluded as necessary under schwa deletion rules
Schwa deletion in Indo-Aryan languages
The schwa deletion or schwa syncope phenomenon plays a crucial role in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu, Kashmiri, Punjabi, Gujarati, Maithili and several other Indo-Aryan languages, where schwas implicit in the written scripts of those languages are obligatorily deleted for correct pronunciation. Schwa...
. Aspirations are represented by h. Retroflex graphemes are often represented by a diacritic dot under the Latin consonant that represents the equivalent dental graphemes in proposals (some of which predate even the Hunterian method), though this has not officially been accepted by the Indian government. Halants
Virama
Virama is a generic term for the diacritic in many Brahmic scripts, including Devanagari and East Nagari, that is used to suppress the inherent vowel that otherwise occurs with every consonant letter. The name is Sanskrit for "cessation, termination, end"...
are indicated by either leaving out a vowel after the transliterated consonant or, in new proposals (not formally approved by the Indian government), with a period after the applicable consonant (e.g. जल्दी - jal.di). Initially, italics were sometimes used to differentiate consonants such as ख ("kh") and ख़ ("kh"), but later macrons and diacritics began to be used more extensively.
| Devanagari Devanagari Devanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal... | Nastaliq Urdu alphabet The Urdu alphabet is the right-to-left alphabet used for the Urdu language. It is a modification of the Persian alphabet, which is itself a derivative of the Arabic alphabet... | Typical IPA | Hunterian | Proposed diacritic forms | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| क | k | k | k | ||
| ख | kʰ | kh | kh | ||
| ग | g | g | g | ||
| घ | ɡʱ | gh | gh | ||
| ङ | ŋ | n | ṅ | ||
| च | tʃ | ch | ch | ||
| छ | tʃʰ | chh | cẖ, čh | ||
| ज | dʒ | j | j | ||
| झ | dʒʱ | jh | jh | ||
| ञ | ɲ | n | ñ | ||
| ट | ʈ | t | ṭ | ||
| ठ | ʈʰ | th | ṭh | ||
| ड | ɖ | d | ḍ | ||
| ढ | ɖʱ | dh | ḍh | ||
| ण | ɳ | n | ṇ | ||
| त | t̪ | t | t | ||
| थ | t̪ʰ | th | th | ||
| द | d̪ | d | d | ||
| ध | d̪ʱ | dh | dh | ||
| न | n | n | n | ||
| प | p | p | p | ||
| फ | pʰ | ph | ph | ||
| ब | b | b | b | ||
| भ | bʱ | bh | bh | ||
| म | m | m | m | ||
| य | j | y | y | ||
| र | r | r | r | ||
| ल | l | l | l | ||
| व | v,ʋ,w | w, v | v | In Marathi, w, except v before i; v,ʋ,w allophony in Hindi | |
| श | ʃ | sh | sh | In Nepali, s or sh can be used | |
| ष | ʃ,ʂ | sh | ṣh | pronounced ʃ or श in Hindi; ʂ in Sanskrit | |
| स | s | s | s | ||
| ह | ɦ | h | h | ||
| क़ | q | q | q | ||
| ख़ | x | kh | ḳh, k͟h | ||
| ग़ | ɣ | gh | g͟h | ||
| ड़ | ɽ | r | ṛ | ||
| ढ़ | ɽʱ | rh | ṛh | ||
| फ़ | f | f | f | ||
| ज़ | z | z | z | ||
| झ़ | ʒ | zh | zh | ||
| क्ष | kʃ,kʂ | ksh | kṣh | ||
| त्र | t̪r | tr | tr | ||
| ज्ञ | gj | gy | gy | jñ for Sanskrit | |
| श्र | ʃr | shr | shr |
Examples
Example: मैं अपने संबंधी से कारख़ाने में मिला और उसने मुझे चाय पिलाई. वो बारिश के कारण फ़सलों को हुए नुक़सान की वजह से चिंतित था. मैंने उसे अपनी ख़बर सुनाई. क्योंकि मुझे निकलना था, इसलिए कुछ देर बाद मैंने क्षमा मांगी और वहाँ से रवाना हुआ.With diacritics: maiṅ apne saṃbaṅdhī se kārk͟hāne meṅ milā aur usne mujhe chāy pilāī. vo bārish ke kāraṇ fasloṅ ko hue nuqsān kī vajah se chiṅtit thā. maine use apnī k͟habar sunāyī. k.yoṅki mujhe nikalnā thā, islie kuchh der bād maine kṣhamā māṅgī aur vahāṅ se ravānā huā.
Without any diacritics: main apne sambandhi se karkhane men mila aur usne mujhe chay pilayi. wo barish ke karan faslon ko hue nuqsan ki vajah se chintit tha. maine use apni khabar sunayi. kyonki mujhe nikalna tha, islie kuchh der bad maine kshama mangi aur vahan se ravana hua.
Notes: संबंधी can interchangeably be written several different ways in Hindi: संबंधी, सम्बंधी, संबन्धी or सम्बन्धी.
Example: इस साल ग्रीष्मकालीन वर्षा ज़्यादा होने से अमरुद और बेर की क़िल्लत देखी गयी. मज़े की बात ये है के सेब और ख़ुबानी की क़ीमतें कम हैं क्योंकि उत्तराखण्ड में गोदाम भरें हैं.
With diacritics: is sāl g.rīṣh.mkālīn varṣhā zyādā hone se amrūd aur ber kī qil.lat dekhī gayī. maze kī bāt ye hai ke seb aur k͟hubānī kī qīmteṅ kam haiṅ k.yoṅki ut.tarākhaṇ.ḍ meṅ godām bhareṅ haiṅ.
Without any diacritics: is sal grishmkalin varsha zyada hone se amrud aur ber ki qillat dekhi gayi. maze ki bat ye hai ke seb aur khubani ki qimten kam hain kyonki uttarakhand men godam bharen hain.
Criticism
The Hunterian system has faced criticism over the years for not producing phonetically-accurate results and being "unashamedly geared towards an English-language receiver audience." Specifically, the lack of differentiation between retroflexRetroflex consonant
A retroflex consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants, especially in Indology...
and dental consonants (e.g. द and ड are both represented by d) has come in for repeated criticism and inspired several proposed modifications of Hunterian, including using a diacritic below retroflexes (e.g. making द=d and ड=ḍ, which is more readable but requires diacritic printing) or capitalizing them (e.g. making द=d and ड=D, which requires no diacritic printing but is less readable because it mixes small and capital letters in words).
See also
- William Wilson HunterWilliam Wilson HunterSir William Wilson Hunter KCSI CIE was a Scottish historian, statistician, a compiler and a member of the Indian Civil Service, who later became Vice President of Royal Asiatic Society.-Early life and education:...
- Devanagari transliterationDevanagari transliterationThere are several methods of transliteration from Devanāgarī to the Roman script, which is a process also known as Romanization in the Indian subcontinent...
- ISO 15919ISO 15919ISO 15919 Transliteration of Devanagari and related Indic scripts into Latin characters is an international standard for the transliteration of Indic scripts to the Latin alphabet formed in 2001...
- International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration
- Mizo language writing system