What is the difference between the two schemes?

ISO 15919 is the international academic standard and uses diacritics such as ā, ī, ṭ, ṇ, ḻ, and ṟ to mark long vowels and retroflex or special consonants precisely. The Madras University scheme avoids diacritics, approximating sounds in plain ASCII, so it writes zh for ழ and aa for the long a.

How is the inherent vowel handled?

In the Tamil abugida a bare consonant carries the inherent vowel a, so க is romanized ka. When the pulli ் follows, the vowel is removed and க் becomes k. A vowel sign replaces the inherent vowel, so கா becomes kā.

Is this a reversible transliteration?

ISO 15919 is close to reversible because its diacritics distinguish letters that the Madras scheme merges, such as the three l-sounds ல, ள, and ழ. The Madras scheme is easier to type but loses some of those distinctions, so it is not fully reversible.

Does it transliterate Grantha letters for Sanskrit sounds?

Yes. Borrowed Grantha consonants such as ஜ, ஷ, ஸ, and ஹ used in loanwords are included and romanized as j, ṣ, s, and h.

No. The transliteration uses built-in mapping tables and runs entirely in your browser, so the Tamil text you paste is never sent to a server.

Tamil to Latin Transliteration

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Tamil transliteration turns Tamil script into Latin letters so the language can be read, cited, searched, or indexed by people and systems that do not render the script. This free tool offers two well-known schemes: the academic ISO 15919 standard with diacritics, and the ASCII-friendly Madras University style.

How it works

Tamil is an abugida, so the tool cannot map characters one to one. Instead it walks the text and, for each base consonant, looks one position ahead:

If the next character is the pulli ், the consonant is pure and the inherent vowel is dropped — க் becomes k.
If the next character is a dependent vowel sign such as ா or ி, that vowel replaces the inherent one — கா becomes kā and கி becomes ki.
Otherwise the consonant keeps its inherent vowel — க becomes ka.

Independent vowels, the aytam ஃ, spaces, and punctuation are mapped or passed through directly. ISO 15919 emits the diacritic forms, while the Madras scheme substitutes ASCII spellings such as zh, ng, and aa.

Tips and notes

Choose ISO 15919 when accuracy and reversibility matter, such as library catalogues, linguistics, or bibliographies, because its diacritics keep ல, ள, and ழ distinct. Choose the Madras style when you need something easy to type and read on systems without diacritic support, accepting that some sounds are merged.

Remember that no romanization captures Tamil pronunciation perfectly; the same letter can voice differently by position. These schemes transliterate the written form rather than predicting spoken sound.