romanisation.md

Input Schemes

An input scheme is a way of spelling Manchu in Latin letters. Manju IME, an input method editor (IME) for typing the Manchu script, supports six input schemes: five published ones, and one of its own. In the Latin order of their names:

• Abkai, the transliteration published on the website abkai.net.
• BabelPad, the Manchu input of the BabelPad text editor.
• Hu, the transliteration of the Manchu dictionary edited by Hu Zengyi.
• Möllendorff, the transliteration of Paul Georg von Möllendorff’s Manchu grammar of 1892. It is the default.
• Norman, the transliteration of Jerry Norman’s Manchu dictionary of 2013.
• Refined Romanisation (draft), Manju IME’s own scheme.

Using Manju IME says how to pick a scheme. The tables below show how each scheme spells each letter, and Where the schemes come from gives the source of each.

Letters

Unicode, the standard that numbers every character of every script, gives each Manchu letter a number of its own, its code point, written U+ and four hexadecimal digits. A standard keyboard has no key for ū, š, or ž, and its ' key separates two letters: n'g gives ᠨ and ᡤ, where ng gives the one letter ᠩ. Spellings typed with Shift shows how to type the spellings with a mark or an apostrophe, and Using Manju IME describes the ' key.

Letter	Code points	Abkai	BabelPad	Hu	Möllendorff	Norman	Refined Romanisation (draft)
ᠠ	U+1820	a	a	a	a	a	a
ᡝ	U+185D	e	e	e	e	e	e
ᡳ	U+1873	i	i	i	i	i	i
ᠣ	U+1823	o	o	o	o	o	o
ᡠ	U+1860	u	u	u	u	u	u
ᡡ	U+1861	v	uu	uu	ū	ū	v
ᠨ	U+1828	n	n	n	n	n	n
ᡴ	U+1874	k	k	k	k	k	k
ᡤ	U+1864	g	g	g	g	g	g
ᡥ	U+1865	h	h	h	h	h	h
ᠪ	U+182A	b	b	b	b	b	b
ᡦ	U+1866	p	p	p	p	p	p
ᠰ	U+1830	s	s	s	s	s	s
ᡧ	U+1867	x	x	sh	š	š	sh
ᡨ	U+1868	t	t	t	t	t	t
ᡩ	U+1869	d	d	d	d	d	d
ᠯ	U+182F	l	l	l	l	l	l
ᠮ	U+182E	m	m	m	m	m	m
ᠴ	U+1834	q	c	ch	c	c	ch, tsh
ᠵ	U+1835	j	j	zh	j	j	j, dzh
ᠶ	U+1836	y	y	y	y	y	y
ᡵ	U+1875	r	r	r	r	r	r
ᡶ	U+1876	f	f	f	f	f	f
ᠸ	U+1838	w	w	w	w	w	w
ᠩ	U+1829	ng	ng	ng	ng	ng	ng
ᠺ	U+183A	k'	kh	kk	k'	k'	k'
ᡬ	U+186C	g'	gh	gg	g'	g'	g'
ᡭ	U+186D	h'	hh	hh	h'	h'	h'
ᡮ	U+186E	c	ts	c	ts'	ts	ts
ᡯ	U+186F	z	dz	z	dz	dz	dz
ᡰ	U+1870	r'	z	rr	ž	ž	zh, rh, r'

Syllables

In these syllables a letter takes a form of its own. The last code point of ᡯᡳ᠌, U+180C, is free variation selector 2, which selects another form of the letter before it. An empty cell means that the source of the scheme writes the syllable with its consonant alone, with no vowel letter after it: ᡯᡳ᠌ as dz in BabelPad, Möllendorff, and Norman and as z in Hu, and ᡮᡟ as ts in Norman. A reader tells the syllable from the single letter by its place in the word. The key tables of Manju IME 1.0.0 do not look at the place of a spelling, so in these schemes the spelling types the single letter; to type the syllable, switch to Abkai or Refined Romanisation (draft). ᡧᡳ and ᡰᡳ are the letters ᡧ and ᡰ followed by ᡳ, and every scheme types them as those two letters.

Syllable	Code points	Abkai	BabelPad	Hu	Möllendorff	Norman	Refined Romanisation (draft)
ᡮᡟ	U+186E U+185F	cy'	tsy	cy	ts		tsy
ᠰᡟ	U+1830 U+185F	sy'	sy	sy	sy	sy	sy
ᡱᡳ	U+1871 U+1873	qy'	chi	chy	c'y	cy	chy, tshy
ᡷᡳ	U+1877 U+1873	jy'	zhi	zhy	jy	jy	jy, dzhy
ᡯᡳ᠌	U+186F U+1873 U+180C	zy'					dzy
ᡧᡳ	U+1867 U+1873	xi	xi	shi	ši	ši	shy
ᡰᡳ	U+1870 U+1873	r'i	zi	rri	ži	ži	zhy, rhy, r'y

The picture below shows the seven syllables typed with the Abkai input scheme, in two rows. The table under it has them in the same places, each with its Möllendorff spelling and, in brackets, the Abkai spelling typed.

dz (zy')	ts (cy')	sy (sy')
jy (jy')	c'y (qy')	ši (xi)	ži (r'i)

The picture uses Abkai because Möllendorff writes the syllable ᡯᡳ᠌ as dz, the same as the letter ᡯ, and a reader tells the two apart by their place in the word, which Manju IME 1.0.0 does not look at.

Spellings typed with Shift

These spellings are typed with a tap of Shift in the middle of the word: type the letters up to the mark or the apostrophe, then tap Shift. Using Manju IME describes the tap. Where Abkai writes ʻ, as in its syllable rʻi, Manju IME uses the plain apostrophe, as in r'i, a substitute that the Abkai page allows.

In BabelPad and Hu, letter keys alone type every spelling.

Scheme	Spelling	Manchu	How to type it
Abkai	k'	ᠺ	k, then tap Shift
Abkai	g'	ᡬ	g, then tap Shift
Abkai	h'	ᡭ	h, then tap Shift
Abkai	cy'	ᡮᡟ	c, y, then tap Shift
Abkai	zy'	ᡯᡳ᠌	z, y, then tap Shift
Abkai	r'	ᡰ	r, then tap Shift
Abkai	sy'	ᠰᡟ	s, y, then tap Shift
Abkai	qy'	ᡱᡳ	q, y, then tap Shift
Abkai	jy'	ᡷᡳ	j, y, then tap Shift
Möllendorff	ū	ᡡ	u, then tap Shift
Möllendorff	š	ᡧ	s, then tap Shift
Möllendorff	k'	ᠺ	k, then tap Shift
Möllendorff	g'	ᡬ	g, then tap Shift
Möllendorff	h'	ᡭ	h, then tap Shift
Möllendorff	ts'	ᡮ	t, s, then tap Shift
Möllendorff	ž	ᡰ	z, then tap Shift
Möllendorff	c'y	ᡱᡳ	c, tap Shift, then y
Norman	ū	ᡡ	u, then tap Shift
Norman	š	ᡧ	s, then tap Shift
Norman	k'	ᠺ	k, then tap Shift
Norman	g'	ᡬ	g, then tap Shift
Norman	h'	ᡭ	h, then tap Shift
Norman	ž	ᡰ	z, then tap Shift
Refined Romanisation (draft)	r'	ᡰ	r, then tap Shift
Refined Romanisation (draft)	r'y	ᡰᡳ	r, tap Shift, then y
Refined Romanisation (draft)	k'	ᠺ	k, then tap Shift
Refined Romanisation (draft)	g'	ᡬ	g, then tap Shift
Refined Romanisation (draft)	h'	ᡭ	h, then tap Shift

Letters a scheme does not use

No scheme uses every letter of the keyboard. When you are not in the middle of a word, a letter that the scheme does not use goes into the document as itself, a Latin letter. In the middle of a word, it joins the letters typed and goes into the document as that Latin letter when the word does.

Scheme	Letters it does not use
Abkai	none
BabelPad	q, v
Hu	j, q, v, x
Möllendorff	q, v, x
Norman	q, v, x
Refined Romanisation (draft)	q, x

Letters drawn as one glyph

The picture below shows every pair of letters that Noto Sans Mongolian, the font shipped with Manju IME, draws as one glyph, a single shape for the two letters, typed with the Möllendorff input scheme.

Where the schemes come from

The sections below give the source of each scheme, in the Latin order of their names.

Abkai

Abkai (ᠠᠪᡴᠠᡳ) is the transliteration published on abkai.net, a website that also calls itself Taiqing (太清) and offers Manchu fonts and keyboards. It writes Manchu with the 26 basic Latin letters, the apostrophe, and the hyphen alone.

BabelPad

BabelPad is a free Unicode text editor for Windows by Andrew West, published on the BabelStone website. For Manchu, its romanised input uses a modified Möllendorff transliteration.

Hu

The Hu scheme is the transliteration of Xin Man-Han da cidian, the Manchu dictionary edited by 胡增益 (Hu Zengyi). The scheme has no English name; Manju IME names it after the editor. The dictionary was first published in 1994, and its second edition, revised and enlarged, in Beijing in 2020.

Möllendorff

This transliteration is named after Paul Georg von Möllendorff, and it is the one his A Manchu Grammar, with Analysed Texts, printed in Shanghai in 1892, uses. According to the Wikipedia article Transliterations of Manchu, most recent Western publications on Manchu use it, in the form that Norman’s dictionary gives it. It is Manju IME’s default input scheme.

Norman

Jerry Norman’s A Comprehensive Manchu-English Dictionary, published in 2013, revises his A Concise Manchu-English Lexicon of 1978, which already uses this transliteration. The preface of the 2013 dictionary says that it employs the Möllendorff system of romanisation. Its spellings differ from those of the 1892 grammar in three places: ᡮ is ts where the grammar has ts', ᡱᡳ is cy where the grammar has c'y, and ᡮᡟ, which the grammar spells ts, has no spelling of its own. The Wikipedia article Transliterations of Manchu calls this form the Norman system.

Refined Romanisation (draft)

Refined Romanisation (draft) is Manju IME’s own scheme. It uses plain Latin letters and the apostrophe, and some letters have more than one spelling, such as j and dzh. It is a draft: later versions of Manju IME may change it.

References

• Hu Zengyi, ed. Xin Man-Han da cidian. 2nd ed. Beijing: The Commercial Press, 2020. ISBN 978-7-100-17460-2. Record in CiNii Books.
• Hu Zengyi, ed. Xin Man-Han da cidian. Ürümqi: Xinjiang People’s Publishing House, 1994. ISBN 7-228-02404-4. Record in CiNii Books.
• Möllendorff, Paul Georg von. A Manchu Grammar, with Analysed Texts. Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1892. Scan at the Internet Archive.
• Norman, Jerry. A Concise Manchu-English Lexicon. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978. ISBN 0-295-95574-0. Record in CiNii Books.
• Norman, Jerry, with Keith Dede and David Prager Branner. A Comprehensive Manchu-English Dictionary. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Asia Center, 2013. ISBN 978-0-674-07213-8. The preface names the Möllendorff system on page xii.
• abkai.net: Manchu transliteration, About us, and Copyright.
• BabelStone: BabelPad and BabelPad Features.
• Transliterations of Manchu, Wikipedia.

Acknowledgements

Manju IME thanks the makers of the five published schemes, and their sources:

• Paul Georg von Möllendorff, for the transliteration of his grammar. The scan of the Cornell University Library notes no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text.
• Jerry Norman, for the lexicon of 1978 and the dictionary of 2013, and Keith Dede and David Prager Branner, who assisted with the dictionary.
• Hu Zengyi and the editors of Xin Man-Han da cidian.
• abkai.net, which publishes the Abkai transliteration. Manju IME wrote its own key table and display table for Abkai, following the spelling rules of the transliteration. The fonts and the keyboard software of abkai.net have terms of their own, for personal, non-commercial use only, and are not part of Manju IME.
• Andrew West, for BabelPad, which is free to download and use for personal or commercial purposes.

Licence

This document and the Refined Romanisation (draft) scheme are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0): see LICENSE. The five published schemes belong to their makers, named above.