[KS] Re: Letter to the KH on Romanization Wars

[John Woo]

><snip>If we apply the Korean rule that a lax stop or affricate is voiced
>after a voiced sound, then Busan is phonetically right on in "I live in
>Busan," more so than in "Busan is where I live," because of that n in "in,"
>which is voiced. <snip>
Why would you do that? Taking into account a Korean phonological rule while 
speaking English is a wee bit too context-sensitive, isn't it?
The aspirated rendering in English of unvoiced stops notwithstanding, I 
can't see why you have to put what became an English word through the 
phonological mill of another language... If I follow your idea to its end, 
would you then transcribe Pusan as Ppusan, and Taegu as Ttaegu in a sentence 
like :
"This is not Pusan, but Taegu",
because of the preceding stop? Sounds weird, at best, to me...

I have another somewhat-related question, but on hangulization of English? 
Why are words like "dot-com" (a word we read everyday in the newspaper) 
transcribed as /tas.k'Om/? Both "o"s are pronounced the same way in English, 
and the transcription should read /tOs.k'Om/. Any idea?

J.W. Woo
________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com



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