[KS] RE: Perfect Hangul?

[Joshua Margolis]

Somebody needs to brush up on their Yale romanization rules. I know I do.
Anyway, I believe the correct Yale romanization is /Seycong/, not
/Sey.cwong/. The vowel /o/ is just 'o' (unless you're specifically
romanizing Middle Korean, in which case it's 'wo' and 'alay a' (not 'aray'
since Yale romanization doesn't use 'r') is 'o'). In addition, it's
unnecessary to separate every syllable with a dot. In the case of /Secong/,
that would only be necessary if his name were /Seyc.ong/. I don't believe
/seyc/ is even a valid syllable in Korean. My point isn't to nitpick
details, but rather to point out the irony (?) that even we linguists have
trouble using our own preferred system.

Given that most Korean words are not of Korean origin, I'm not so sure
Sejong would be all that terribly upset about some English borrowings, but
then who knows? Of course, most English words aren't of Germanic origin,
either.

True enough that Korean pronunciation of Sino-Korean words doesn't sound a
whole lot like Chinese IF by "Chinese" you mean Mandarin. But then of all
the major Sinitic languages, Mandarin may be the one that's changed the most
over time. And let's not forget that most Sino-Korean morphemes did not
enter the language when everyone was speaking Mandarin. If you compare the
Korean pronunciation to Cantonese, Taiwanese, Hakka (Kejia), etc., you'll
find a much closer correlation in pronunciation.



Josh

> transcribing the pronounciation of /han.ca/ and writing Korean. I am not
> sure Sey.cwong would be very happy about the introduction of
> English words,
> but then, the Korean pronounciation of /han.ca/ and 'konglish' are very
> alike: /han.ca.um/ sounds somehow like Chinese, but is definitely NOT
> Chinese, and 'konglish' has a vague taste of English (sometimes
> of japlish),
>
> in /hon.kul/ (read a.ray han.kul)? The most conservative, nationalistic,



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