[KS] Re: romanization '99

sangoak sangoak at snu.ac.kr
Fri May 21 06:23:38 EDT 1999


Dear  Colleagues,

Profs. Fouser and Hoffmann have discussed some interesting aspects of
the issue.
Although Prof. Fouser recommended the circumflex, it seems that the
acute
is easier to punch in based on the table of keys nicely arranged by Dr.
Hoffmann.
For 'circumflex' we have to type four numbers just like 'breve' on IBM.
For the sake of economy, I prefer either 'acute' or simply 'apostrophe'
on the next space.

For those who consider a digraph 'eo' for '¤Ã',  how about replacing it
with 'au'
to avoid a notorious 'geo-bug...'(turtle) which is not 'earthworm' at
all?
I know it end up with 'Sauul' instead of  'Seoul' but we have to admit
some conventional
uses of proper names in anyway and compile a lexicon for those
exceptions.

As for proper names, since Dr. Hoffmann asked me to explain the case
that one needs
one-to-one conversion,  I have heard claims to have a transliteration
system which can
clearly differentiate 'Kim Sang-man' from 'Kim Sak-man', for instance.
In MR without
special provisions, both are written as 'Sangman'. They fear to cause
serious troubles in
issuing passports for Koreans out of many possible situations.*  Besides
this, among
Korean linguists who usually convert a corpus of Korean texts between
Han'gu'l and
Roman alphabets to investigate quantitative results, the necessity of
unified transliteration
sytem for exchanging their data has increased recently. Because of this
recent development
we cannot advocate that the romanization is mainly for foreigners as I
myself claimed
in the special issue of the "Korea Journal" (vol. 22. no. 8) that I
edited in 1982 including
my article "The Second Best Compromise: The NAS Proposal on Romanization
of
Korean." (By the way, it will take quite long time to post this article
on our list since
our scanner has faithfully demounted all the breves and destructed all
nice charts. So
sorry to Henny who wanted to have its access through our computer.)

As Profs. Fouser and Muller (in the communication with Mr. Pavel)
mentioned, I also
believe a usage guide should be published. I will also try to include
even two systems,
a phonetic transcription and a transliteration, in school teaching.

*'hangmun' can be read as 'hak-mun'(learning) and 'hang-mun'(the anus).
Thus, we
Koreans say that "we widen(no'lp'igo), make efforts/try hard(himssu'go)
and finally
polish(takknu'nda--with 'learning' it means 'pursue') HANGMUN." :-])

Yours,

Sang-Oak Lee

@fas.harvard.edu wrote:

> Robert and others, just a short comment to your first point (copy
> below).
> If the problem is computers and the fact that none of the standard
> fonts
> include the brèves, and that we won't be able to convince the big
> movers in
> the game to include such characters (*technically* seen we need 6 more
>
> characters, not just one diacritical mark), then why not going easy
> here:
> Let's continue to use McCune-Reischauer, but allow the use of a
> substitute
> diacritical mark. To me this seems much better than an add-on letter,
> because we do not need to make any changes (just think of all the
> library
> catalogues, etc.).
>
> These characters are included in all standard Macintosh and
> IBM/Windows fonts:
>
>                        (Mac/U.S. keyboard*)    (IBM/U.S.-Intern. k.)
>
> ô (o-circumflex)         --> Alt+I, then O        --> Alt+0244
> ó (o-acute)              --> Alt+E, then O        --> Ctrl+Alt+O
> ò (o-grave)              --> Alt+`, then O        --> Alt+0242
> ö (o-umlaut)             --> Alt+U, then O        --> Ctrl+Alt+P
>
> û (u-circumflex)         --> Alt+I, then U        --> Alt+0251
> ú (u-acute)              --> Alt+E, then U        --> Ctrl+Alt+U
> ù (u-grave)              --> Alt+`, then U        --> Alt+0249
> ü (u-umlaut)             --> Alt+U, then U        --> Ctrl+Alt+Y
>
> Ô (capital O-circumflex) --> Shift+Alt+J          --> Alt+0212
> Ó (capital O-acute)      --> Shift+Alt+H       --> Shift+Ctrl+Alt+O
> Ò (capital O-grave)      --> Shift+Alt+L          --> Alt+0210
> Ö (capital O-umlaut)    --> Alt+U, then Shift+O -> Shift+Ctrl+Alt+P
>
> Û (capital U-circumflex) --> Alt+I, then Shift+U  --> Alt+0219
> Ú (capital U-acute)      --> Alt+Shift+;       --> Shift+Ctrl+Alt+U
> Ù (capital U-grave)      --> Alt+`, then Shift+U  --> Alt+0217
> Ü (capital U-umlaut)    --> Alt+U, then Shift+U -> Shift+Ctrl+Alt+Y
>
> *) The input method varies depending on the active keyboard driver.
>
> As for the conversion FROM Korean TO McCune-Reischauer, every
> programmer
> can write a program that automates such a conversion. This could be
> perfectionized by including a dictionary with exceptional terms --
> e.g.,
> "Seoul" and other geographical names. It's a simple task. (The other
> way
> around, I agree, won't work -- but who would need that?)  The fact
> that I
> have not seen such a program (have you?), however, makes me think that
>
> there might not be any need for it. Is it just an argument that comes
> in
> handy? If not, if there really is a need for this one-to-one
> conversion,
> maybe Professor Lee or someone else on this list can explain this, and
> give
> a concrete example? Again, the automated conversion from Korean to
> McCune-Reischauer is technically no problem. I'd like to understand
> who
> needs the ability to convert transcribed text to Han'gul?
>
> Just my two cents worth ...
>
> Frank
>
> >1. Keep the McCune-Reischauer (MR) system for proper nouns and other
> >general/popular uses, but adopt two of the modifications considered
> in a
> >symposium on romanization held at the University of Hawaii in 1980:
> changing
> >the breve over "O" and "U" to an additional letter ("e" or "w") or to
> a more
> >commonly used diacritic mark (I recommend the circumflex) and
> replacing the
> >apostrophe for aspirated consonants with an "h" (Austerlitz, Robert,
> et al.
> >(1980) "Report on Workshop Conference on Korean Romanization," Korean
>
> >Studies 4: 111-126).  These two changes will go along way to removing
>
> >complaints about MR being difficult to use on computers without
> compromising
> >the phonetic and aesthetic principles of the system that have made it
>
> >popular for 60 years.  Use of the circumflex in place of the breve is
>
> >already widespread as is use of "e" with "O" and "U."
>
>        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Frank Hoffmann * 1961 Columbia Pike #42 * Arlington, VA 22204 * USA
> E-MAIL: hoffmann at fas.harvard.edu
> W W W : http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hoffmann/





%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%





More information about the Koreanstudies mailing list