Korean government
site on the
Revised Romanization system
The following notes
are from Wikepedia on
Korean
Romanisation.
The Revised
Romanization of Korean is the official Korean language romanisation system in
South Korea. The system was released by South Korean authorities in 2000 and is
the South Korean official replacement for the 1984 McCune-Reischauer based
romanisation system. The new system is similar to the system used before 1984,
except that the old system was said to not faithfully represent consonants
because their pronunciation changes (according to non-Korean sensibility)
depending on position within a word.
The Revised Romanization uses no non-alphabetic symbols (diacritics) except very
limited, often optional, use of the hyphen. It was developed by the National
Academy of the Korean Language from 1995 and was released to the public on July
4, 2000, by South Korea's Ministry of Culture and Tourism, which explained that
the reason for the reduction of special characters was to eliminate difficulty
of entering, or rather the ease of ignoring, diacritics on computers and - more
importantly - rationalize Korean language with the plain ASCII text of internet
domain names.
Features
Notable features of
the Revised Romanization system are:
* 어 and 으 are written as digraphs with two vowel letters: eo and eu,
respectively.
* ㅝ is written as wo and ㅢ is written as ui.
* Unlike McCune-Reischauer, aspirated consonants (ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ, ㅊ) have no
apostrophe: k, t, p, ch. Their unaspirated counterparts (ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ, ㅈ) are written
with letters that are voiced in English: g, d, b, j. However, all consonants
that are pronounced as unreleased stops (which basically means all except ㄴ, ㄹ,
ㅁ, ㅇ that are not followed by a vowel or semivowel) are written as k, t, p, with
no regard to their morphophonemic value: 벽 → byeok, 밖 → bak, 부엌 → bueok (But: 벽에
→ byeoge, 밖에 → bakke, 부엌에 → bueoke)
* ㅅ is always written as s before vowels and semivowels; there is no sh except
when transliterating.
* ㄹ is r before a vowel or a semivowel, and l everywhere else: 리을 → rieul, 철원 →
Cheorwon, 울릉도 → Ulleungdo, 발해 → Balhae. Just like in McCune-Reischauer, ㄴ is
written l whenever pronounced as a lateral rather than a nasal consonant: 전라북도 →
Jeollabuk-do
In addition, there are special provisions for regular phonological rules that
makes exceptions to transliteration (see Korean language#Phonology).
Other rules and recommendations include:
* A hyphen may optionally be used to disambiguate syllables: 장음 → jang-eum
versus 잔금 → jan-geum. However, no official publications seem to make use of this
concession.
* A hyphen must be used in transliterations, where it denotes syllable-initial ㅇ
(except at the beginning of a word): 없었습니다 → eobs-eoss-seubnida, 외국어 → oegug-eo,
애오개 → Ae-ogae
* While "in principle, syllables in [Korean] given names are not separated by
[a] hyphen", the rules permit doing just that. Certain phonological changes that
are otherwise indicated are ignored between the syllables of given names: 강홍립 →
Gang Hongrip or Gang Hong-rip, 한복남 → Han Boknam or Han Bok-nam
* Syllables of Korean administrative units (such as do) are separated from the
place name with a hyphen: 강원도 → Gangwon-do
* One may omit terms “such as 시, 군, 읍”: 평창군 → Pyeongchang-gun or Pyeongchang,
평창읍 → Pyeongchang-eup or Pyeongchang.
* However, names for geographic features and artificial structures are connected
to the place name: 설악산 → Seoraksan 해인사 → Haeinsa
* Capitalize proper nouns.
Usage
The Revised
Romanization is not expected to be adopted as the official romanisation of
Korean family names. For example, the common family name, Lee (이), would be I in
both the Revised Romanization and McCune-Reischauer. Given names and commercial
names are encouraged to change, but it is not necessary. All Korean textbooks
were required to comply with the new system by February 28, 2002.
English-language newspapers in South Korea initially resisted the new system,
citing its flaws, though some later gave in to government pressure. The Korea
Herald currently follows the revised system, while the Korea Times follows the
McCune-Reischauer system, but without breves.
North Korea continues to use a version of the McCune-Reischauer system of
Romanization, which was in official use in South Korea from 1984 to 2002.
Specialists in Korean studies, both in and out of South Korea, tend to use
McCune-Reischauer, although a system developed at Yale University is often used
by linguists.
Criticism
Despite the South
Korean government's intentions to promote the Romanization of Korean words and
place names, the release of the revised system met with considerable opposition
among international residents in Korea, many of whom felt the revised system was
seriously flawed and felt disgruntled that the government failed to consult with
them beforehand, since they are the primary users of Romanized Korean inside
South Korea.
The Ministry of Culture and Tourism responded that the primary purpose of the
new system was not for the sake of foreigners and pointed out that foreign
experts had been consulted, while admitting that the new system did in many
cases fail to reflect correct pronunciation of Korean language. The 1984 M-R
system had addressed that task well, but did not maintain a one-to-one
correspondence between hangeul consonants and the Latin alphabet. Among the
pronunciation problems, many, if not most, were dealt with satisfactorily from
the perspective of pronunciation through compromises in proper names (strict
application of the new system for academic usage has serious pronunciation
issues from the perspective of foreigners, but that problem is moot).
In proper names, only the initial consonants were usually affected. This is
because it is at the beginning of a term that searching for a domain name would
typically go awry. The MoCT pointed out that China underwent a similar upheaval
with the international community decades previous when the Beijing government
enforced its own standardization (Beijing used to be spelled "Peking").
Critics of the Revised Romanisation System say that the one-to-one
correspondence of Korean characters to Roman letters (e.g., usually representing
ㄱ as g) that is the hallmark of the new system is overly simplistic and fails to
represent sound changes that occur naturally when the position of a consonant
changes (e.g., at the beginning of a word, ㄱ is pronounced closer to an
unaspirated k',' rather than as a straight g).
Critics also complain that people unfamiliar with Hangul pronunciation may be
confused by what "eo" and "eu" are intended to represent in the revised system.
With common English words or names such as "geography", "Leonardo", and "neon"
representing a two-syllable sound for eo, a neophyte to Korean words may fail to
recognize that eo is supposed to represent a vowel sound like that of "son" or
"fun". Defenders of the system cite English words such as surgeon as evidence of
the appropriateness of the combination, even though the "eo" in that case is an
unstressed schwa different from the sound represented by "eo." A frequent
complaint of many foreign residents and visitors to South Korea is that both
Romanization systems hinder their ability to come close to an accurate and
comprehensible rendering of Korean pronunciation.
*For more information
and some useful tables containing the pronunciation of all Korean letters in
terms of English approximations see the
Korean
Romanisation section of Wikipedia.
