[KS] new romanization: what does it look like?

양상군자 mjm66 at email.byu.edu
Fri Feb 19 22:44:49 EST 1999


>From the Korea Times (whittled down by yours truly):

Easier Romanization to Be Made for Foreign Tourists
02/19(¡¾Y) 17:01   By Choe Yong-shik, Staff Reporter 

Korea's tourism environment will shift into a more favorable stage as the
government is moving to include Chinese characters and use easier-to-read
romanization of the Korean language in traffic and travel information signs. 

...

The romanization principle of the Korean language will soon be finalized in a way
that will benefit ``the everyday life of foreigners,'' said the minister, implying that a
new method will center on expressing the original pronunciation of Korean
words.

Accordingly, the special codes and upper dots referring to specific Korean
vowels in the current McCune-Reischauer system will be eliminated since they
are not reflected in the actual and practical linguistic and phonetic usage.
(original is at http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/14_home/199902/t401116.htm in case you'd like 
to take a gander)

Does anyone have any idea what this new, super-efficient romanization system
will look like?  Just McR sans diacriticals?

Whatever it looks like, it's bound to be wonderful.  I, for one, will be relieved to finally be
able to see the original pronunciation of Korean words when they are written with Latin letters.


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