Roman Dzongkha is the official

romanization In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Latin script, Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and tra ...

Dzongkha Dzongkha (; ) is a Tibeto-Burman languages, Tibeto-Burman language that is the official and national language of Bhutan. It is written using the Tibetan script. The word means "the language of the fortress", from ' "fortress" and ' "language ...

, the national language of

Bhutan Bhutan, officially the Kingdom of Bhutan, is a landlocked country in South Asia, in the Eastern Himalayas between China to the north and northwest and India to the south and southeast. With a population of over 727,145 and a territory of , ...

. It was developed by the Dzongkha Development Commission in 1991 and represents modern

pronunciation as spoken in

Thimphu Thimphu (; ) is the capital and largest city of Bhutan. It is situated in the western central part of Bhutan, and the surrounding valley is one of Bhutan's '' dzongkhags'', the Thimphu District. The ancient capital city of Punakha was replac ...

and

Punakha Punakha () is the administrative centre of Punakha dzongkhag, one of the 20 districts of Bhutan. Punakha was the capital of Bhutan and the seat of government until 1955, when the capital was moved to Thimphu. It is about 72 km away from Thim ...

Consonants

Roman Dzongkha uses the following

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

symbols: * Consonants in green are always followed by a high tone vowel. * Consonants in purple are always followed by a low tone vowel. * Consonants in pink follow a low tone vowel by default, but can also be followed by a high tone vowel (see #Tones).

Vowels

Roman Dzongkha uses the following

vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

symbols: Note: vowels are always long before ''ng'', so ''â'', ''ê'', ''î'' and ''û'' do not occur in that position.

Tones

Standard

is a

tonal language Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All oral languages use pitch to express emotional and other para-linguistic information and to convey emphasi ...

with two tones. As mentioned in #Consonants, certain consonants are always followed by either a

high High may refer to: Science and technology * Height * High (atmospheric), a high-pressure area * High (computability), a quality of a Turing degree, in computability theory * High (tectonics), in geology an area where relative tectonic uplift t ...

or low tone, making the tone predictable for words starting with those consonants. In Roman Dzongkha, tone is only indicated when it is unpredictable, that is, when a word starts with a

voiced Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refe ...

nasal Nasal is an adjective referring to the nose, part of human or animal anatomy. It may also be shorthand for the following uses in combination: * With reference to the human nose: ** Nasal administration, a method of pharmaceutical drug delivery * ...

or a glide. * The low tone is always unmarked. * The high tone is indicated by an

apostrophe The apostrophe (, ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes: * The marking of the omission of one o ...

immediately preceding the word: '' 'a'', '' 'n'', '' 'y'', etc. * The rising and falling tones of the central

dialects are not indicated in Roman Dzongkha.

Examples

The lyrics to the national anthem of Bhutan (

Druk Tsenden "Druk Tsenden" (, ; "The Thunder Dragon Kingdom") is the national anthem of Bhutan. Adopted in 1953, the lyrics were written by Dolop Droep Namgay and possibly translated into English by Dasho Gyaldun Thinley. The accompanying music was composed ...

Notes

References