The
romanization used in most recent western publications on Manchu is the one employed by the American sinologist
Jerry Norman in his
Comprehensive Manchu-English Dictionary (2013), a central reference tool in modern Manchu studies. This system, which has become the de facto modern standard in English-language publications, is the most recent incarnation of a system originally designed by the German linguist
Hans Conon von der Gabelentz for his 1864 edition of the Manchu translation of the
Four Books and other Chinese classics. As he explains:"Because Manchu possesses an alphabetic script, it was acceptable, as being without any disadvantage whatsoever, to replace the indigenous Manchu script, the use of which would have made printing much more difficult and expensive, by our alphabet. I started out from the principle of substituting a single symbol for each Manchu letter, while avoiding the addition of diacritical marks as much as possible." With his new system, Gabelentz did away with cumbersome transliterations such as
dch, tch, kh, replacing them with
j, c, h. The result has been described as a "simple and convenient system". Gabelentz also used this transliteration in his Manchu-German dictionary (1864), and the system was adopted unchanged by other German manchurists such as
Erich Hauer for his dictionary (1952–55), and
Erich Haenisch for his grammar (1961). In the 19th century the system was adopted, with minor changes, by the French linguist
Lucien Adam in his grammar (1873), by the Belgian linguist
Charles de Harlez in his handbook (1884), and by the German diplomat and linguist
Paul Georg von Möllendorff. In English-language publications, the latter is often incorrectly credited with being the inventor of the system, probably because his
Manchu Grammar (1892) was the first book in English to use it. Thus Norman himself refers to "the Möllendorff system of romanization". Authors writing in French and German generally recognize Gabelentz as its creator. The system as used by Gabelentz (1864), Möllendorff (1892) and Norman (2013) is set out below, with the older system used by Gabelentz in his grammar (1832) added for comparison. Also in the table are the
Pinyin-based system designed by Hu (1994) which is the standard in Chinese-language publications, and the input system of
BabelPad. The table follows the traditional order of the Manchu alphabet. The standard transliteration system follows the following conventions: • The velar and uvular consonants are not differentiated: and are both transliterated as
k, and are both
g, and and are both
h. In Manchu orthography, the use of either the velars or the uvulars is largely predictable: velars before
e, i, u and uvulars before
a, o, ū. The standard transliteration leaves some ambiguity, as the spelling is not entirely predictable in syllable-final position. For example
teksin "straight" can be written as or as . • The spelling is transliterated as
ng, for example
inenggi "day",
cangkai "only, just",
gung "duke". • The spelling is transliterated as
i, for example
baita "thing",
meihe "snake",
duin "four". In the standard transliteration, the spellings
sh and
th each represent two separate consonants, as in
eshen "uncle",
butha "hunting, fishing". In Hu’s transliteration, separate
s and
h are written as
s’h (
es’hen) to avoid confusion with
sh (Norman
š). Gabelentz (1864) used the transcriptions
sḥ and
tḥ, with a dot under the
h (
esḥen, butḥa). ==Cyrillization==