Belarusian – National transliteration system

Language:
To Cyrillic script To Latin script Copy
Commercial links

Belarusian virtual keyboard

The Belarusian virtual keyboard allows you to enter characters with a click of your mouse. There’s no need to change your keyboard layout anymore. The transliteration of each supported character is displayed on the right side of the character. You can then directly transliterate your text from one script to the other according to the selected transliteration system.

Language overview

Belarusian (Беларуская мова, transliterated as biełaruskaja mova) belongs to the East Slavic group of the Indo-European family. Official language in Belarus, alongside Russian, it counts about 5.1 million speakers. The Belarusian language is written in a variation of the Cyrillic script counting 32 letters.

Transliteration system: national

The Belarusian national transliteration system used for has been adopted by decree of the State Committee on land resources, geodetics and cartography in November, 2000. It is aimed at the romanization of Belarusian Cyrillic text in geographical names. Its official title is “Instruction on transliteration of Belarusian geographical names with letters of Latin script”. The system was modified again in June 2007 to conform with the recommendations of the UN WGRS, which advise avoiding the use of digraphs if possible, and adopted by the UN in version 3.0 of their romanization report, on March 2008.

Specific rules

  • This 2007 version differs from the previous one (2000): ў = ŭ, ь = ´ (acute accent; e.g., дз ь = dź, зь = ź, ль = ĺ, нь = ń, сь = ś, ць = ć).
  • At the beginning of the word, after the vowels, after the apostrophe, after the separating soft sign (′), and after the “short U” (ў/Ў), е/Е = je/Je, ё/Ё = jo/Jo, ю/Ю = ju/Ju, я/Я = ja/Ja.
  • After the consonants, е/Е = ie/Ie, ё/Ё = io/Io, ю/Ю = iu/Iu, я/Я = ia/Ia.
  • The apostrophe (´) is not transliterated.

Other transliteration systems for Belarusian

The other currently supported transliteration systems for Belarusian are: ALA-LC, BGN/PCGN, ISO 9, and scholarly.

Books

Belarusian for beginners: A book in 2 languages Belarusian for beginners: A book in 2 languages
by , editors 50LANGUAGES LLC (2017)
[Amazon.com Amazon.com]

Belarusian Language: The Belarusian Phrasebook Belarusian Language: The Belarusian Phrasebook
by , editors CreateSpace (2016)
[Amazon.com Amazon.com]

Parlons biélorussien : langue et culture Parlons biélorussien : langue et culture
by , editors L’Harmattan (1997)
[Amazon.com Amazon.com]

Belarusian links

Other supported languages

The other supported languages are: Abkhaz, Adyghe, Altai, Armenian (eastern, classical), Armenian (western), Azerbaijani (Azeri), Bashkir, Bulgarian, Carrier, Cherokee, Chuvash, Erzya, Georgian, Greek, Ingush, Inuktitut, Japanese, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Moldovan, Old Church Slavonic, Ossetian, Russian, Serbian, Tamazight, Udmurt, Ukrainian, Vai, and Yakut.