UN · 1972

Romanization of Panjabi -- UNGEGN 4.0 (1972)

Authority

un

Year

1972

Source script

Gurmukhi Guru · 310

Destination script

Latin Latn · 215

Language

Panjabi; Punjabi

The United Nations recommended system was approved in 1972 (II/11) and amended in 1977 (III/12), based on a report prepared by D. N. Sharma. The tables and their corrections were published in volume II of the conference reports1,2. There is no evidence of the use of the system either in India or in international cartographic products. Punjabi (Panjābī) in India uses an alphasyllabic script (Gurmukhi) whereby each character represents a syllable rather than one sound. Vowels and diphthongs are marked in two ways: as independent characters (used syllable-initially) and in an abbreviated form, to denote vowels after consonants. The romanization table is unambiguous. The system is mostly reversible but there exist some ambiguities in the romanization of vowels (independent vs. abbreviated characters) and consonants (combinations with subscript consonants vs. character sequences). References Second United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names. London, 10–31 May 1972. Vol. II. Technical papers. United Nations. New York 1974, pp. 136–138. Third United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names. Athens, 17 August – 7 September 1977. Vol. II, Technical papers, pp. 393 etc.

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