[KS] Re: Perfect Hangul?

[otfried at cs.ust.hk]

Didier Barbas wrote:
 > >> Close enough, Ross: it's unfriendly to foreigners who don't speak Korean
 > >> (99.99%?). Jongro, as I said before, is I think a good example.
 > 
 > >The proposed system renders M-R Chongno as Jongno.
 > Even worse, they are not consistent with themselves...

It's not the new system that is not consistent.  You are deriding a
new proposed system based on a vague article in a notoriously
unreliable newspaper (others have said far worse about the Chosun
Ilbo).

 > Are you assuming that I have been to the States? 

The English word `you' has meanings that you (= one) might not
imagine. 

 > My main concern with custom officers is to let me in. Korean
 > officers can mispell my address as much as they want...

... and you don't care whether the book you ordered through the
internet ever reaches you.

 > Concerning the umlaut, if I remember correctly, oe and ue are standard and
 > accepted variants for ö and ü. MM. Roeke & Schroeder, here in Seoul, seem
 > quite happy with their respective spelling.

And they will be even happier to see their names spelled correctly
when they are in Germany (unless, of course, their name is actually
spelled with a oe instead of o-umlaut---the process is not
reversible).

Germans outside Germany are (in general) not `happy' with having their
names misspelled, they have simply given up, just like Koreans have
given up on M-R. Germans will do either of two things: Simply drop the
two dots and let U-Umlaut become U, or rewrite it as UE.

Now, if even German, a language that is already written with the Roman
alphabet, needs an `accent'-free transliteration scheme, don't Koreans
deserve one as well?

Of course they already have one. Koreans'll do with M-R what Germans
do with their own language: When they cannot write a breve, they'll
either drop it (like English newspapers in Korea do), or replace o^
and u^ by EO and EU.  Then they'll drop the apostrophe and rely on
context, just as the French scholars I exchange Email with will simply
drop all accents in French Email.  (It doesn't work quite as well in
Korean as in French, as there are far more cases where an apostrophe
makes a difference.)

I'm not a big fan of the new proposed system, but I can see the need
for something like it.  If I was allowed to solve the problem, I would
keep M-R as the official romanization scheme, but allow the
ALTERNATIVE spellings EO and EU for o^ and u^, and the ALTERNATIVE use
of voiced letters in unaspirated, lentis, syllable-initial position.
The money saved from changing road-signs could be used to stamp in
that the apostrophe must not be dropped :-)

 > Well this is a specialists' list. Take your tourists' problems some
 > place else.

I beg your pardon for intruding into the sophisticated objective
discussion of the needs of Koreans and foreigners in Korean
romanization with my admittedly rather unsophisticated and
common-sense notions.

Otfried Cheong




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