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last updated 2000.10.3

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This page gives a rule of Extended Wylie Method of the transcription system of Tibetan characters.

1. Chart of Trascrbed Characters

2 Transcription Rules

2.I Character set of transcription

1. Tibetan base characters with vowel "a" are the same as standard Wylie system. Vowels are also same as Wylie system, that is, "a", "i", "u", "e", "o", "ai", "au". Numerals are written by roman numerals.
2. Log-yig (characters for the transcription of Sanskrit retroflex letters) are written by capital letters, that is, "Ta", "THa", "Da", "Na", "SHa". Anusvara is transcribed by "M", visarga by ":". Half vowel ri and li are expressed by "rI" and "lI". Note that "I" represents a reversed gigu. It is noteworthy that capital letters have special meanings in Extended Wylie Method and we must avoid the usage of them for proper names.
3. Transcribe all Tibetan characters as they are. This rule is suited especially for the transcription of Sanskrit words. For example, long vowels in Sanskrit are expressed by achung + vowel in Tibetan, that is, "bh'uta".
4. Exception rule for base character "a". It is expressed only when the initial character is a vowel 'a' and is not followed by any other vowels. Words begining with a vowel other than 'a' must be written without a base charcter 'a'. Ex. "indra", "amrIta". Initial long vowel is expressed by short vowel + apostrophe. Ex. "a'nanda".
5. tseg is not expressed at all.
6. Space, tab and carriage return are neglected in transcribed texts, therefore you can use these letters and format text as you like.
7. Brackets, that is, "[" and "]", are utilized to insert any notes or comments of the scholar. For example, pagination should be written in brackets. 9. Braces, that is, "{" and "}", are utilized to write texts in languages other than Tibetan.
8. Hyphen is used to express that the Tibetan characters should not be stacked vertically, but should be juxtaposed horizontally. For example of the classical Tibetan, "g-yang" which is opposed to "gyang".
9. Plus sign "+" is used to express that the Tibetan characters should be stacked vertically. For example, "s+ha" represents the transcription of Sanskrit word "sha". If the plus sign is not inserted, then it will be misunderstood as one Tibetan character "sha".

3 Explanation

3.1 Usefulness of the standard Wylie system

The so-called "Wylie system" of transcription of Tibetan language was proposed by Prof. T. V. Wylie. In the same year, Prof. H. Kitamura and Prof. T. Nishida also wrote an article on Tibetan language transcription system, in which they proposed the same system of transcription as Prof. Wylie. The special characteristic of this method is that only ascii characters are utilized to transcribe Tibetan characters. For it was designed to type Tibetan language by the normal English keyboard.

This characteristic remains valid for the input of Tibetan language in the computer. In some computers, for example Macintosh, one can input special characters (or characters with diacritical marks).

But if we take into account the portability of texts, we should restrict letters to transcribe Tibetan characters within ascii characters. If the text is expressed in ascii character, then we can reuse it in another way later. This is the greatest advantage of Wylie transcription system.

3.2 Problems of the standard Wylie method

But there are some weak points in the Wylie system. One of them is that the principle to transcribe the transcription of Sanskrit words by Tibetan characters is not defined. For this reason some scholars transcribe them in the ordinary Sanskrit transcription by roman characters with diacritical marks. This means that the one text may include two transcription systems, the transcription system of Sanskrit and that of Tibetan.

If the work is for a publication and its author only takes into account printing it on paper, then a mix of transcription systems is not a problem. But if the author is considering reusing the text in different formats (and this case will become more frequent in the near future), it would be better to adopt a unified transcription system. The propose of such unified system is the main object of the Extended Wylie Transcription System.

Another weak point, I think, is that the Wylie system does not define the usage of punctuations, including several kinds of shad or ornament character and parenthesis, brackets and so on. Each scholar expresses them differently. This makes it difficult for any text-handling programs to analyze Tibetan transcribed texts.

3.3 Rules of Extended Wylie Method

I want to advance one suggestion to improve the Wylie system. I designed it to conform to the Tibetan script system on the Macintosh™ computer.? In fact, it was for convenience of systematic conversion of transcribed texts to Tibetan characters that I defined the rules of the transcription.

These rules are almost compatible with Tibetan script system on the Macintosh, as I wrote above. They are also compatible with transcription system of the Asian Classic Input Project. TibetanConverter can convert these two transcription system and Tibetan script system each other almost perfectly.

These rules can not define all the occurences of Tibetan characters, punctuation or signs. If some difficulties happen, I will append some rules to cope with them.

If you have any question or suggestion, please inform me of it.

Copyright: Yoichi Fukuda, 2002. All rights reserved.