Roman Dzongkha

Roman Dzongkha[] is the official romanization of Dzongkha, the national language of Bhutan. It was developed by the Dzongkha Development Commission in 1991 and represents modern Dzongkha pronunciation as spoken in Thimphu and Punakha.

Consonants

Roman Dzongkha uses the following consonant 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.

Vowels

Roman Dzongkha uses the following vowel symbols:
Note: vowels are always long before ng, so â, ê, î and û do not occur in that position.

Tones

Standard Dzongkha is a tonal language with two tones. As mentioned in #Consonants, certain consonants are always followed by either a high 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 vowel, voiced nasal or a glide.

The low tone is always unmarked.
The high tone is indicated by an apostrophe immediately preceding the word: 'a, 'n, 'y, etc.
The rising and falling tones of the central Dzongkha dialects are not indicated in Roman Dzongkha.

Examples

Tibetan Script	Wylie	Roman Dzongkha	Meaning	Notes
	sa khra	sapthra	map	In Roman Dzongkha, p sometimes appears at the end of a syllable, even though it is not present in Tibetan script.
	char gzhi	char'zhi	governmental	Syllable-final r only occurs in literary words and names borrowed from Classical Tibetan. It's always dropped in native Dzongkha words.
	lto tshang	totsha	friend	Syllable-final ng is sometimes dropped in Roman Dzongkha. This is not predictable.
	blta shig	tash	look	Syllable-final sh corresponds to the particle shig in Tibetan script.

The lyrics to the national anthem of Bhutan :

Dzongkha original	Roman Dzongkha	IPA	Official English translation
འབྲུག་ཙན་དན་བཀོད་པའི་རྒྱལ་ཁབ་ནང་༎ དཔལ་ལུགས་གཉིས་བསྟན་སྲིད་?སྐྱོང་བའི་མགོན་?༎ འབྲུག་རྒྱལ་པོ་མངའ་བདག་རིན་པོ་ཆེ་༎ སྐུ་འགྱུར་མེད་བརྟན་ཅིང་?ཆབ་སྲིད་འཕེལ་?༎ ཆོས་སངས་རྒྱས་བསྟན་པ་དར་ཞིང་རྒྱས་༎ འབངས་བདེ་སྐྱིད་ཉི་མ་?ཤར་བར་ཤོག་?༎			In the Kingdom of Bhutan adorned with cypress trees, The Protector who reigns over the realm of spiritual and secular traditions, He is the King of Bhutan, the precious sovereign. May His being remain unchanging, and the Kingdom prosper, May the teachings of the Enlightened One flourish, May the sun of peace and happiness shine over all people.