Wylie

"Wylie Transliteration" is a specific transliteration scheme that has become a standard scheme and is used on this website in its "extended" form developed at the University of Virginia. Some other related schemes are still used at the Library of Congress and in some European publications, which can cause problems for searches and cataloging so it is good to be aware that some other systems do still persist.

Here is an instruction manual for teaching Wylie from the University of Virginia: http://www.thlib.org/reference/transliteration/teachingewts.pdf

Here is an automated converter from Tibetan script to Wylie or vice versa: http://www.thlib.org/reference/transliteration/wyconverter.php

The original system was developed in this paper: Wylie, Turrell. 1959. "A Standard System of Tibetan Transcription". Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, pp. 261-267.

Interesting Note:

Extended Wylie Rules For Transliteration

To transliterate Tibetan using extended Wylie please follow these rules:

• Rule 1:
  • Transliterate Tibetan characters in a syllable from left to right and in stacks from top to bottom with the vowel being transliterated after the final consonant of the root letter or stack. Equivalents for characters are in the charts below.

Example: བསྒྲིབགས་ becomes bsgribs

• Rule 2:
  • If there is no explicit vowel mark, the implicit vowel is transliterated as “a” and placed after the final consonant of the root letter or stack.

Example: མཁན་ becomes mkhan

• Rule 3:
  • Use the period to horizontally display two consonants that would normally be stacked.

Example: གྱོན་ becomes gyon but གཡོན་ becomes g.yon

• Rule 4:
  • The use of the plus-sign (“+”) is required between consonants in a non-standard Tibetan stack. (View list of Standard Tibetan Stacks.)

Example: སཏྟྭ་ becomes sat+t+wa

• Rule 5:
• Use the plus-sign (“+”) between transliteration equivalents for multiple vowel signs above and/or below the same Tibetan stack. In such cases, the vowels should be transliterated from bottom to top even though this may contradict the logical order of the expanded phrase.

Example: ::bru+e:: becomes bru+e, and ::rdo+e::, which is short for ::rdo rje::, becomes rdo+e.

• Rule 6:
  • The transliteration of a standard Tibetan stack that uses the plus-sign (“+”) is equivalent to the transliteration that does not.

Example: For ::rt::, the transliterations rta and r+ta are equivalent, though the former is preferable.

• Rule 7:
  • For Tibetan transliterations of multi-syllable Sanskrit words that fall within a single tsheg bar (Tibetan “syllable”), the implicit vowel, “a,” should be inserted after each cluster consonant without an explicit vowel mark except when the virama (Tib., srog med) is subscribed to that cluster. If the word ends in an anusvara (“M” ::M::) or a visarga (“H” ::H::) the final “a” is inserted before their transliteration.

Example: ::sarba mang+galaM:: becomes sarba mang+galaM.

• Rule 8:
  • When the a-chen (“big a”) is found at the beginning of a word and lacks a vowel sign, it is transliterated as “a.” Otherwise, it is transliterated according to the vowel sign attached to it. If it is found in the middle of a stack, transliterate it as “+a”; if it is found in the middle of a syllable (tsheg bar), transliterate it as “.a”.

Example: ::a khu :: becomes a khu, but ::ug pa :: becomes ug pa. Also, ::aM:: becomes aM.

• Rule 9:
  • Capitals are used to denote the following Sanskrit-based Tibetan characters: the long vowels – A, I, U, -I; the anusvara – M; the visarga – H; the retroflex letters – T, Th, D, D+h, N, and Sh.

Example: ::mA:: becomes mA (Diacritic transliteration is mā). ::duH:: becomes duH (duḥ). ::phaT:: becomes phaT (phaṭ).

• Rule 10:
  • Capital R is used to indicate the full-form of ra when it is the top letter of a non-standard Tibetan stack.

Example: ::R+na:: becomes R+na. ::R+Ya:: becomes R+Ya, while ::R+ya:: becomes R+ya.

• Rule 11:
  • The full-formed ra in the standard Tibetan stacks—rnya, rla, and rwa—is transliterated as the lower-case “r”.

• Rule 12:
  • Capital W, Y, and R are used to transliterate the full form of wa, ya, and ra respectively, when they are in any position except the top-most.

• Rule 13:
  • In non-standard Tibetan stacks, the lower-case r, y, and w are used to represent the superscribed ra (ra mgo), the subscribed ra (ra btags), the subscribed ya (ya btags), and the subscribe wa (wa zur) respectively.

SOURCE: http://leannenorthrop.github.io/classical-tibetan/help/extended-wylie.html