ISO 15919 is an international standard for the romanization of Indic scripts. Published in 2001, it is part of a series of romanization standards by the International Organization for Standardization.
Overview
{| class="wikitable sortable collapsible"
|+ ISO 15919 transliterations
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! 7-bit<br />ISO
! Devanagari
! Nastaliq
! Bengali
! Gurmukhi
! Gujarati
! Odia
! Tamil
! Telugu
! Malayalam
! Kannada
! Kurukh
!Kaithi
! Sinhala
!Tibetan
!Thai
!Saurashtra
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| อ
| ꢂ
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|𑂄
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|อา
|ꢃ
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|แอะ
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|อิ
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|𑂆
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|อี
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|𑂇
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|อุ
|ꢆ
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|𑂈
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|อู
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|ฦ
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|𑂉
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|เอ
|ꢍ
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|অ্যা
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|ออ
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|ช
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|ฌ
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|𑂛
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|ฒ
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|𑂝
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|ณ
|ꢠ
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|ฎ
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|𑂞
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|ꢡ
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|𑂟
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|ถ
|ꢢ
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|𑂠
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|𑂡
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|ธ
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|𑂢
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|ด
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|𑂣
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|ป
|ꢦ
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|𑂤
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|ผ
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|𑂥
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|พ
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|𑂦
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|ภ
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|𑂧
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|ม
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|𑂨
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|ย
|ꢫ
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|𑂩
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|ร
|ꢬ
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|𑂪
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|ล
|ꢭ
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|ฬ
|ꢳ
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|𑂫
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|ว
|ꢮ
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|𑂬
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|ศ
|ꢯ
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|𑂭
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|ษ
|ꢰ
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|𑂮
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|ꢱ
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|𑂯
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|ꢲ
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|ฃ
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|ฅ
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|ซ
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|ฝ
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|ฟ
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Relation to other systems
ISO 15919 is an international standard for the romanization of many Brahmic scripts, which was agreed upon in 2001 by a network of the national standards institutes of 157 countries. However, the Hunterian transliteration system is the "national system of romanization in India" and a United Nations expert group noted about ISO 15919 that "there is no evidence of the use of the system either in India or in international cartographic products."
Another standard, United Nations Romanization Systems for Geographical Names (UNRSGN), was developed by the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) and covers many Brahmic scripts.
The ALA-LC romanization was approved by the Library of Congress and the American Library Association and is a US standard. The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is not a standard (as no specification exists for it) but a convention developed in Europe for the transliteration of Sanskrit rather than the transcription of Brahmic scripts.
As a notable difference, both international standards, ISO 15919 and UNRSGN transliterate anusvara as ṁ, while ALA-LC and IAST use ṃ for it. However, ISO 15919 provides guidance towards disambiguating between various anusvara situations (such as labial versus dental nasalizations), which is described in the table below.
Comparison with UNRSGN and IAST
The table below shows the differences between ISO 15919, UNRSGN