tetrak_translit.hy.western

Western Armenian pronunciation spelling: how diaspora names are written.

Not a standard: the practice. Western Armenian swapped the stops, so the letter բ is pronounced p and պ is pronounced b, գ is k and կ is g, դ is t and տ is d, and the affricates likewise (ձ ts, ծ dz, ջ ch, ճ j). A name spelled by sound in Istanbul, Beirut, Aleppo, Paris or Los Angeles therefore romanises the opposite way from the same name in a Yerevan catalogue: Hagop and Yakob are both Յակոբ; Kevork and Gevorg are both Գէորգ/Գևորգ; Boghosian and Poghosyan are one surname.

The table renders the Western sound values without diacritics, the way the names are actually written: word-initial յ is h, ե and ո take ye and vo at the start of a word, ո after a vowel is vo, and the classical digraphs եա and իւ are ia and iu (Vartanian, Harutiun), which is where -ian comes from. ը is written e; many real spellings omit it altogether (Mkrtich), which no table can predict.

Lossy by nature: it was never meant to be reversed, and a scheme that cannot say whether p is բ or փ is for display and finding only. The fold treats the voiced and voiceless pairs as one, which is what makes the two traditions’ spellings match.