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Romanization of Korean

Writing Korean using the Latin script From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Romanization of Korean
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For the official system of romanization in North Korea, see Romanization of Korean (North Korean system).

The romanization of Korean is the use of the Latin script to transcribe the Korean language.

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A specimen of the identity information page of a South Korean passport, displaying the romanization of the bearer's name (Lee Suyeon) for international legibility.

There are multiple romanization systems in common use. The two most prominent systems are McCune–Reischauer (MR) and Revised Romanization (RR). MR is almost universally used in academic Korean studies, and a variant of it has been the official system of North Korea since 1992. RR is the official system of South Korea and has been in use since 2000.

The earliest romanization systems for Korean emerged around the mid-19th century. Due to a number of factors, including the properties of the Korean language and alphabet, as well as social and geopolitical issues, a single settled standard did not emerge. By 1934, there were 27 extant romanization systems, and by 1997, there were over 40.

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Major systems

The following systems are currently the most widely used:

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History

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Possibly the earliest romanization system for Korean was an 1832 system by German doctor Philipp Franz von Siebold, who was living in Japan.[4] Another early romanization system was an 1835 unnamed and unpublished system by missionary Walter Henry Medhurst that was used in his translation of a book on the Chinese, Korean, and Japanese languages.[5][a] Medhurst's romanization scheme was otherwise not significantly used.[7] In 1874, the Dallet system was introduced; it was based around French-language phonology. It was the first to use the digraphs eo and eu,[5][8] and the first to use diacritics for Korean romanization; it used the grave and acute accents over the letter "e".[9] The first system to see significant usage was the Ross system, named for John Ross, which was designed in 1882. It saw adoption by missionaries.[7]

In 1897, James Scarth Gale introduced his system in his work A Korean-English Dictionary.[5] This system went on to achieve some adoption; it was reportedly adopted by the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. In spite of this, some scholars found issues with these early systems.[10][5] More systems by Westerners emerged, based on English, French, and German phonology. Japanese scholars also developed their own romanizations for Korean, many of which were built on the work of Siebold and Dallet.[11] In 1933, the first romanization system developed by Koreans, which was appended to the Unified Han'gŭl Orthography System, was promulgated by the Korean Language Society.[12] In 1935, Jeong In-seop [ko] published "The International Phonetic Transcription of Korean Speech Sounds".[5]

Systems continued to be developed to address various perceived shortcomings in other systems. By 1934, according to Japanese linguist Shinpei Ogura's count, there were at least 27 extant systems.[13] Whereas Hepburn romanization had already become the widely accepted standard for the romanization of Japanese by the 1930s, Korean continued to lack such a standard. This led to significant diversity and inconsistencies in romanizations, not only between scholars but reportedly even within the writings of individual authors.[14]

Challenges for developing a standard romanization

The task of developing a standard romanization scheme for Korean was complicated by a number of factors.[10]

Even into the 20th century, there were significant variations in the pronunciation and spelling of the Korean language and Hangul respectively, often due to the dialects of Korean.[15] Attempts were made to standardize the Korean language, but these efforts were made by multiple authorities. Two rivaling societies for standardizing Korean emerged: the Korean Language Society (조선어학회) and the Chŏson Ŏhak Yŏn'guhoe (조선어학연구회); they published separate guidances.[16] Eventually, the Korean Language Society's standard became the basis for the standards of both North and South Korea.[17] Other references for spelling included those used in Gale's dictionary, guidances from the Government-General of Chōsen, and a French dictionary.[18]

Other challenges were fundamental to properties of the Korean language and script, which make the language not easily mappable onto the Latin script. McCune and Reischauer claimed in 1939 that there are eight to ten vowels in Korean (this topic was still debated by that point). As there are only five vowels in the Latin script, the other vowel sounds had to be rendered either using multiple letters in the form of digraphs (e.g. eo for ㅓ) or by using diacritics.[19] Also, in many cases, pronunciation does not exactly match what is written in Hangul; similar phenomena occurs with all other major scripts as well. For example, due to linguistic assimilation, the state Silla is written in Korean as 신라 (sin-la), but pronounced sil-la.[20]

Some challenges were social and geopolitical. Reportedly, early scholars often wrote about Korea from Sinocentric or Japanese perspectives; Korean place names were often rendered using pronunciations from the Chinese or Japanese languages. Furthermore, after Korea went under Japanese rule, the "official" names of many places were considered to be those in the Japanese language.[10] In addition, the Japanese colonial government implemented various restrictions on the use of the Korean language around the mid-1930s; the Korean Language Society was also persecuted in one incident.[12]

Regardless of romanization systems, many Koreans chose and continue to choose to spell their names in Latin script in an ad hoc manner. For example, 이/리 (李) is variously romanized as Lee, Yi, I, or Rhee. In some cases, single families romanized their surnames differently on South Korean passports. For example, within a single 심 family, a father's surname was rendered as "Shim" and the son's as "Sim".[21]

McCune–Reischauer

Main article: McCune–Reischauer

McCune–Reischauer (MR) is a system that was first introduced in 1939, in the journal Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society Korea Branch.[22][23] It is named for George M. McCune and Edwin O. Reischauer; the two developed the system together in consultation with Korean linguists Choe Hyeon-bae, Jeong In-seop [ko], and Kim Seon-gi [ko].[14][5]

The system has proved controversial with especially native Korean speakers. It had been developed mainly for use in Western academia, and reflected pronunciation rules that many Koreans were not consciously aware of, as they are not reflected in Hangul.[24][25][26] Linguist Robert J. Fouser argued that another point of contention was related to nationalism; some disliked that the system had been developed by foreigners during the Japanese colonial period, and wanted a natively developed alternative.[27]

After the liberation and division of Korea

With 1945 came the liberation of Korea, as well as its division. Both Koreas began to develop separate language standards.[28] South Korea adopted MR in 1948.[5][29] According to Reischauer, McCune "persuaded the American Army Map Service to adopt [the McCune–Reischauer system], and through the Korean War it became the foundation for most current Romanizations of Korean place names".[30] Just after the 1950–1953 Korean War, romanization was seen as a minor concern, compared to improving domestic literacy in Hangul.[28] Meanwhile, romanization systems continued to emerge; by 1997, there were more than 40 romanization systems.[31]

In 1956, North Korea became the first of the two Koreas to design a new official romanization system. This system combines features of the Dallet and 1933 Unified systems. It was revised in 1986.[28]

In 1959, the South Korean Ministry of Education [ko] published a romanization system, which has since been dubbed the Ministry of Education system (MOE).[28][32] The system received immediate backlash, mainly from foreigners. Fouser evaluated the system as prioritizing use for Koreans; it had a one-to-one correspondence from Hangul to Latin script, and did not account for the pronunciation changes that Hangul itself did not reflect. The system also tended to produce romanizations that bore superficial resemblance to words in English, some of which were seen as odd or humorous, such as Dogribmun (Korean: 독립문; RR: Dongnimmun; MR: Tongnimmun), which superficially evokes the ribs of dogs.[33][34] The Ministry of Education met in 1978 and 1979 and drafted several alterations to the system, although these did not come to pass allegedly because of political turmoil around that time.[35][29] Eventually, the South Korean government began considering whether to use a more foreigner-friendly system in anticipation of the 1988 Summer Olympics, which were to be held in Seoul.[36][37] Various attempts were made to measure objective and subjective metrics of the various systems, for example how frequently systems deviated from expected pronunciation[38] or which systems produced the most accurate pronunciations by foreigners.[39] In 1984, a slightly revised version of McCune–Reischauer was adopted,[36][37] to pushback from Koreans.[36]

In 1968, Samuel E. Martin introduced a system that has since been dubbed the Yale system. The system became widely adopted by the international academic linguistics community, although few others adopted it. Fouser argues that while the system allowed for reversibility, it is "unsightly", is suited to those who already know Hangul, and does not adequately communicate pronunciation, even in comparison to the MOE system.[3]

Computer age

With the spread of computers and the Internet by the 1980s and 1990s, complaints about MR grew.[40] The breves used in MR are not easily accessible on a standard keyboard. Some took to replacing the breve with alternate characters or simply omitting it altogether; the diversity of practice and ambiguity if breves were not used led to confusion.[40][41] In 1986, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) requested both North and South Korea to work together on developing a standard romanization. The two countries held a series of meetings, during which they failed to reach a consensus.[27]

Some created new systems and others proposed reverting to previous systems.[22][42] In 1991, the South Korean National Academy of the Korean Language (NAKL; 국립국어연구원) proposed its own new system. Concurrently, Bok Moon Kim produced his own romanization system [ko].[42] Despite Kim's advocacy for his system, it never saw widespread adoption; some of the romanizations it produced (e.g. "Dongnipmoon") were mocked in the press for seeming humorous.[43] In 1997, the South Korean government began moving to revise or switch romanization systems. The topic was hotly debated in South Korean press and foreigner communities. One point of concern was on the estimated expenses needed to repaint all road signs with new romanizations.[44]

In 1997, the National Academy of the Korean Language System was proposed.[45] It was jointly proposed by the National Commission of Romanization of Korean and the Academy of Korean Language. The system is transliteral in nature; journalist Choe Yong-shik of The Korea Times alleged that the system was designed without the input of non-Koreans and mostly meant for ease of use for Koreans.[46] Under that system, Tongnimmun is rendered Dogribmun.[47]

Revised Romanization of Korean

Main article: Revised Romanization of Korean

On July 7, 2000, the NAKL and Ministry of Culture and Tourism announced that South Korea would adopt a new system: Revised Romanization (RR).[2] Road signs and textbooks were required to follow these rules as soon as possible, at a cost estimated by the government to be at least US$500–600 million.[48]

In a 2020 book, linguists Sungdai Cho and John Whitman argued that RR's lack of diacritics has "helped it gain widespread acceptance on the Internet".[49]

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List of romanization systems

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  • Siebold romanization (1832)[4]
  • Medhurst romanization (1835)[5]
  • Dallet system (1874)[4][50]
  • Félix-Clair Ridel [fr] dictionary (1880)[51][52]
  • Ross system (1882)[7]
  • Gale system (1897)[5]
  • Eckardt system (1923)[53]
  • Unified Han'gŭl Orthography System appendix (1933)[12]
  • Ogura system (1934)[53]
  • Jung romanization (1935[38] or 1936)[12]
  • McCune–Reischauer (1939)[22]
  • Lukoff romanization (1945), developed by Fred Lukoff[53][55]
  • Ministry of Education system ("MOE-1959"; 1959)[53][54]
  • The Shibu Shohei System (1961)[56]
  • Yale romanization of Korean (1968)[53]
  • Korean Language Society ("KLS-1984"; 1984)[54]
  • Korean Romanization for Data Application (1992)[57]
  • You Mahn-gun's System (1992)[58]
  • Korean romanization of INALCO (1992)[59]
  • Lee Hyun Bok's Computer-Communication System (1994)[60]
  • Bok Moon Kim romanization [ko] (1996)
  • HanSe System (1996)[61]
  • ISO/TR 11941 (1996): This actually is two different standards under one name: one for North Korea (DPRK) and the other for South Korea (ROK).[54] The initial submission to the ISO was based heavily on Yale and was a joint effort between both states, but they could not agree on the final draft.[citation needed] Linguists Sungdai Cho and John Whitman claimed the system was never adopted by any organization or state and never saw significant use.[62]
  • National Academy of the Korean Language System (1997)[45]
  • Revised Romanization of Korean (2000)[63]

Kholodovich romanization

In the 1920s and 1930s various languages of the Soviet Union were switched to the Latin alphabet and it was planned that the language of Koreans of the Far East would be one of them.[64][65] Hanja was deemed too hard to learn, while Hangul was claimed to be inconvenient for typesetting and handwriting. Since removal of Hanja would result in much ambiguity, it was proposed that Chinese words would be replaced by words of Korean origin (compare linguistic purism in Korean). The new alphabet, made by famous Koreanist Aleksandr Kholodovich [ru], who would later make a system of transcribing Korean words into Russian, looked like this:

More information Latin script, a ...

Lowercase ʙ was commonly used in Soviet Roman-derived alphabets due to some alphabets having a letter similar to b with a different purpose. The usage of only lowercase letters was also not unusual, as it was the Latin alphabet of Adyghe language, for example.

Some words written in the Soviet Latin alphabet: gu lli, nongdhion haggio, nong ʙ, zængsan, gugga diaʙondiyi.

The alphabet faced criticism from Koreans and was never put into use.

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Comparison of various systems

More information Hangul, IPA ...
More information Hangul, IPA ...
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Examples

More information English, Hangul ...
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See also

Notes

  1. English title of work was Translation of a comparative Vocabulary of the Chinese, Corean and Japanese, to Which is Added the thousand Character Classic, in Chinese and Corean, the Whole Accompanied by Copious Indexes of All the Chinese and English Words Occurring in the Work. It was a translation of an 18th century text by the Joseon government agency Bureau of Interpreters. Holstein claims this is the first romanization system,[6] but Fouser provides an earlier example.[4]
  2. The first alternative is used before a vowel; the second is used elsewhere.
  3. Nothing in syllable-initial position, ng syllable-finally.
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References

External links

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