CJKV Information Processing, 2nd Edition

Latin Characters, Transliteration, and Romanization

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combining consonants and vowels that exceptions and special cases become an issue. In

fact, a common exception is the transliteration of the hangul used for the Korean surname

“Lee.” I suggest that you try Younghong Cho’s Korean Transliteration Tools.

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Vietnamese Romanization Methods

Writing Vietnamese using Latin characters—called Quốc ngữ (國語)—is considered the

most acceptable method for expressing Vietnamese today. As a result, Quc ng is not

considered a transliteration method. As with using Latin characters to represent Chinese,

Japanese, and Korean text, it is the currently acceptable means to express Vietnamese in

writing. Quc ng is thus a Romanization system.

is writing system is based on Latin script, but is decorated with additional characters

and many diacritic marks. is complexity serves to account for the very rich Vietnamese

sound system, complete with tones.

In addition to the upper- and lowercase English alphabet, Quc ng requires two addi-

tional consonants and 12 additional base characters (that is, characters that do not indi-

cate tone), as shown in Table 2-12.

Additional Quốc ngữ consonants and base charactersTable 2-12.

Character class Consonants Base characters

Lowercase

đ ăâêôơư

Uppercase

Đ ĂÂÊÔƠƯ

e modiers that are used for the base vowels, in the order shown in Table 2-12, are

called breve or shor