Wylie

Wylie is a method to transliterate the Tibetan script into Roman script. This transliteration method was refined in 1959 by Turrell Wylie and has subsequently become a standard transliteration scheme in Tibetan studies, especially in the Western world.

Turrell Wylie's original publication can be found here.

Any Tibetan language transliteration method can either seek to accurately reproduce the pronunciation of spoken Tibetan, or to reproduce the spelling of written Tibetan. The two differ widely as Tibetan orthography became fixed in the 11th century, while pronunciation continued to evolve. Wylie does not try to give pronunciation hints and serves only to accurately reproduce written Tibetan.

The original proposal for Wylie did not define how to transliterate Sanskrit transliterations into Tibetan often found within mantras. This was addressed by a proposal for the Extended Wylie Transliteration System proposed by the University of Virginia and the Tibetan and Himalayan Library THL.

Extended Wylie (EWTS) is today's de-facto standard for computer software working with Wylie.

Examples

This section contains Tibetan script. Without proper Tibetan rendering support configured, you may see other symbols instead of Tibetan script.

• The Tibetan expression བོད་སྐད་ is rendered as bod skad in Wylie.
• The mantra ཨོཾ་མ་ཎི་པདྨེ་ཧཱུཾ༔ is rendered as oM ma Ni pad+me hUM in Extended Wylie.

Further Reading

• Hill, Nathan W. "A note on the history and future of the 'Wylie' system" in Revue d'Etudes Tibétaines, Number 23, Avril 2012. pp. 103-105

Internal Links

• Tibetan Grammar - Formation of the Tibetan Syllable
• Rigpa Phonetic Guidelines

External Links

• Teaching THDL Extended Wylie, a PDF reference from THL.
• An online converter between Wylie and Tibetan Unicode script.
• How to configure a web browser for correct display of Tibetan script.