[KS] RE: Koreanstudies Digest, Vol 24, Issue 4
Roland Wilson
roland_wilson at hotmail.com
Fri Jun 3 06:38:06 EDT 2005
Hello. As the story continues on the romanization of Korean, I have to
comment on Ross King's submission. Sure, when you are dealing with
particulars in a language, such as grammar, I am all for variety as their
needs to be very little prescriptionist demanding their rules on you.
However, I think you are a little too far into the Chomsky/Krashen camp on
this one.
It is not being authoritarian for a government to set a standard on how
"their" language should be romanized or written in English. It is their
choice and a standard is good not just for Koreans trying to write their
words in English for foreigners, but for foreigners trying to read Korean
that is romanized. If there was one standard, foreigners would learn to
read and use that standard as Koreans would and are.
Korean professionals that I work with each day, like I, strive to ensure we
have converted all the words from the old spelling systems to the new one.
Why? Because we love to respell everything! I should say not. It is because
a standard has been set and we as academic leaders should hold ourselves and
our students up to those standards.
Roland Wilson
Seoul, South Korea
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Subject: Koreanstudies Digest, Vol 24, Issue 4
Date: 2 Jun 2005 20:59:34 -0700
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<<------------ KoreanStudies mailing list DIGEST ------------>>
Today's Topics:
1. romanization absolutism (jrpking)
2. Re: romanization absolutism (jrpking)
3. Re: romanization absolutism (Robert Ramsey)
4. Re: romanization absolutism (Cedar Bough Blomberg)
5. Re: Romanisation (rupert)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2005 09:55:06 -0700 (PDT)
From: jrpking <jrpking at interchange.ubc.ca>
Subject: [KS] romanization absolutism
To: Cedar Bough Blomberg <umyang at gmail.com>, Korean Studies Discussion
List <Koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
Message-ID:
<945711.1117731306299.JavaMail.myubc2 at portal9.itservices.ubc.ca>
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There are numerous problems with the points C. B. Blomberg raises, too many
to unpack. But here are a few reactions:
> 1. The majority of people who Romanize Korean words are native
> speakers of Korean, not of English. Therefore, a Romanization system
> which works for them would seem to be most reasonable.
Lots of different people romanize Korean for lots of different purposes.
Each constituency has different needs and purposes, and in ideal
circumstances, one romanization system would meet all needs (Japanese comes
close to this ideal -- in other words, pretty much any way you romanize it,
not much controversy). But with Korean, it is the nature of the beast that
different constituencies will need different systems, and that one system
will never satisfy all constituencies.
For Korean citizens who need to romanize their names for passports and other
such purposes, by all means -- it's their business. But that doesn't mean
all the rest of us should just abandon other systems and flock to whatever
the ROK is doing lately.
> 2. The new system of the Korean gov't is, provided it does not change
> again, the system of the Korean people
Whoa. Did the Koreans vote on it? Does it have some set of vaunted
democratic credentials that I wasn't aware of? Do the Koreans have, say, the
same emotional attachments to it they do to hankul? Do they learn it and
practice it in school? Do they adhere to it in practice in a wide range of
contexts? And what of the DPRK system - is that just chopped liver now?
>and isn't it reasonable for
> them to figure out how to Romanize their own language?
Sure. But equally reasonable for the rest of us to figure out useful ways to
do it, too [what -- is the ability of analyze Korean linguistically and
devise transcription systems for it somehow genetic?], and use them if we
see fit and in contexts that are not subject to Korean law.
> Why do Western
> academics think they have the right to criticize the Korean
> governments language policy?
Academics in general -- whether Western or whatever -- have a right and
obligation to criticize whatever they think needs criticizing (a seniment
that most Korean students and academics would readily agree to, one
assumes). The question for me is: just because the ROK says 'x' do I as a
student of things Korean have to do 'y'?
So, if the ROK government-approved Korean language textbooks for Korean
school children use a particular grammatical term or grammatical analysis,
should I be following that in my Korean language teaching?
> 3. The absolutely most essential thing for Korean Romanization is
> that it be set, fixed and stop changing. The most effective way for
> this to happen is for the Western academic community and every other
> user/consumer of Romanized material to ---support--- the gov't
> efforts.
Absolutely (and send anybody who suggests otherwise to the firing squad or
the gulag!). Come on, all you Western academics, step into line!
> 4. Korean is hard to Romanize... there are no "everyone wins"
> solutions to how to Romanize some syllables.
All the more reason for different systems to just co-exist peacefully. Maybe
someday, when, for the first time ever, there is a unified standardized set
of language norms established for a unified Korea, and that new Korea
devises a more or less sensible romanization system, I might follow it for
certain, less technical purposes.
But otherwise, McCune-Reischauer and Yale work for me, depending on wha I'm
doing, and I resent anybody -- ROK government or romanization absolutists --
telling me otherwise.
Cheers,
--
Ross King
Associate Professor of Korean, University of British Columbia
and
Dean, Korean Language Village, Concordia Language Villages
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2005 14:40:50 -0700 (PDT)
From: jrpking <jrpking at interchange.ubc.ca>
Subject: [KS] Re: romanization absolutism
To: koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws, Cedar Bough Blomberg <umyang at gmail.com>
Message-ID:
<20900068.1117748450743.JavaMail.myubc2 at portal9.itservices.ubc.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Thanks to Cedar Bough Blomberg for responding to my various points.
I wanted just to comment on this:
> However when academics dismiss the efforts of the ROK gov't so
> pervasively, I wonder how many of them have even given the new system
> a chance.
I don't know how 'pervasive' non-Korean academic criticism of the new system
is (and by the way, I am aware of a significant amount of criticism of the
new system from academics and other Koreans in Korea, too), but certainly
there is a widespread sense that the National Academy of the Korean Language
fixed something that wasn't really broken.
The most scathing review I have seen of the new system is by Lev Rafaelovich
Kontsevich of the Russian Academy of Sciences -- as distinguished an expert
on Korean language, linguistics, philology and writing as one will ever
find, and moreover, a scholar steeped in the very significant Soviet
experience and expertise with graphemics, writing system reform,
transcription, "Latinization," you name it. What I have seen is in Russian
from a conference a few years ago in Vladivostok, but is quite damning --
perhaps an English version of it exists somewhere, and if not, it richly
deserves to be translated and brought to the attention of those who care
more than casually about this issue.
Kontsevich's criticisms are all on the technical, writing systems/linguistic
level. But there was also a certain non-technical bloodymindedness that
attended the advocacy of the new system, one that had nothing to do with the
linguistic technicalities of romanization and everything to do with culture,
perceptions of American influence in anything and everything Korean,
politics, you name it, ane one that ignored tradition and history,
purporting (so far as I can ascertain) that McCune-Reischauer was somehow
'not Korean enough'. Peter Schroepfer has pointed out in a recent article in
_Korea Journal_ that McCune-Reischauer might just as well have been called
the "Yonhui romanization," given the significant input of and consultations
with Korean grammarians like Ch'oe Hyonbae and others at the time.
> When asked about his Romanization, one of my very wise professors (a
> Korean, trained at Harvard, and of very advanced years) said of the
> Romanization system "I just use the one I'm used to".
We are all nothing if not creatures of habit. One other major problem (in
light of your challenge to 'give the new system a chance' first) in all of
this is that it appears that the Koreans themselves never gave the old
system a chance -- never taught it in schools, never practiced it, enforced
it, or gave _it_ a chance to become part of their habits.
I _hate_ using McCune-Reischauer because it is so goshdarn awful to
proofread, but use it I feel I must in non-technical-linguistic papers on
Korea.
Cheers,
--
Ross King
Associate Professor of Korean, University of British Columbia
and
Dean, Korean Language Village, Concordia Language Villages
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 18:58:14 -0400
From: "Robert Ramsey" <ramsey at umd.edu>
Subject: Re: [KS] romanization absolutism
To: "Korean Studies Discussion List" <Koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
Cc: "S. Robert Ramsey" <ramsey at umd.edu>
Message-ID: <005f01c567c6$90c82af0$5b680880 at UNIVERSIYLJBI4>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=original
Dear colleagues,
Well, I swore I wouldn't get involved in the conversation this time, but
there are a few things I can't help but add to what's been said about Yale
Romanization. (Sam Martin himself has not responded because he's no longer
a member of the discussion group.)
The first is a word about what Yale is supposed to be used for. I
think
everyone on this list knows by now that Yale was never intended to replace
or displace McR. Martin created Yale Romanization as a linguistic tool; it
was meant to maximize the transparency of Korean phonological and
morphological structure, and for that it has never been equaled, much less
surpassed. For example, word spacing is used liberally to show junctures;
and the /q/ (as in _hanqca_ 'Chinese characters' or _anq pang_ 'inner
room'), which some on this list seem to have found upsetting, is used to
show instances of a phonemic distinction ("glottalization", or
"reinforcement") not always indicated in South Korean Hangul orthography.
(But notice that the distinction Martin writes with a /q/ used to be
indicated in North Korean orthography with an apostrophe.) If you're
writing tourist brochures or even historical treatises, fine: leave them
out. But if you're a linguist, or interested in linguistic matters, you
have to have a representation of these distinctions.
Now, some confusion has been caused by the fact that there are
essentially two versions of Yale Romanization. One is the narrow version
used to represent the contemporary Seoul standard, and the other is a
broader version, which, as Ross King and Gari Ledyard have pointed out, is
necessary to represent (among other things) orthographic distinctions used
before the 1933 Unification of Hangul Orthography. Gari Ledyard prefers the
broader version because, as he says, Yale otherwise loses its advantage in
always enabling the restoration of the Hangul orthography. Perhaps I
shouldn't speak for Sam Martin, but I'm pretty sure he'd agree by now.
The reason there are two versions of Yale is because of Martin's own
research history. The narrow version of Yale was created in the early
1950s; Martin did not use it in his1951 _Language_ article on Korean
phonemics, but he did in his famous 1954 monograph on Korean
morphophonemics. During this early period in Martin's career, the President
of South Korea, Syngman Rhee, invited Martin to Seoul for consultation on
orthographic reform, turning to an outsider for help with complex problems
in Hangul(!) orthography, because Martin was then considered the West's
foremost authority on Korean--even though he was still only thirty years
old! Martin's findings and recommendations were subsequently published, in
1954, in leading Korean dailies in both Korean and English. ("An open
letter to the Minister of Education of the Republic of Korea [regarding
orthographic reform]". English version: _The Korea Times_ 1954:7-8, 9;
Korean version: _Cosen Ilpo_ 1954:7-12.) It's there in that letter that we
find the formation of this first, narrow version of Yale Romanization. This
first version is also the one that appeared later in most of Martin's
reference works, including his famous 1968 Korean-English dictionary, and it
is still the one most commonly used. (An outline of Martin's research
history and a list of his published works can be found in the _Special Issue
In Honor of Samuel E. Martin, Japanese Language and Literature_ 38:2
(October 2004)--for those of you who might not know, by the way, Martin is
as important a figure in the field of Japanese linguistics as he is in
Korean.)
The second, broader version of Yale finds expression in Martin's later
works centered on historical research, especially those on the texts of the
Middle Korean period (15th and 16th centuries). Once Martin had expanded
his research significantly into the philological records, he altered his
Romanization system to reflect Hangul orthographic distinctions more
directly. His 1992 _A Reference Grammar of Korean_ is probably the most
easily available reference work where you can find that system explained.
What's important to note here is, as Ross King has pointed out, there is as
yet no other Romanization system in common use for linguistic writings on
the history of Korean. Yale Romanization is used, for example, in all of
Sohn Ho-min's books and articles, as well as in Lee and Ramsey's _The Korean
Language_.
What I find most surprising about the new, South Korean
government-sponsored Romanization is that it breaks the ties of
correspondence to Hangul orthography, ties which the broader version of Yale
shows most clearly. Sure, charts have been produced showing how modern
Hangul consonants and vowels can be mapped into the consonants and vowels of
the government Romanization; /e/ is written <eo>; /ey/ is <e>; and so on.
But these orthographic decisions have left no way to reflect in a clear and
structured way the phonological changes that the language has undergone, and
that are known principally through the pre-1933 orthography. How did that
happen? Why did the SK government decide to ignore Sejong's writing
system? Many of the discussions leading up to the construction of the
system certainly included Korean linguists who had spent much of their
careers researching the linguistic history of the language and obviously
knew the difficulties the new Romanization would cause. And so, though I do
not personally know much about it, I suspect many dissenting and unhappy
voices were heard along the way in these proceedings.
In any event--and in conclusion--I'd like to ask the advocates of
government Romanization on this discussion list to try and understand why
many of us not only prefer to use Yale in our work; for us, there really is
no choice.
Robert Ramsey
University of Maryland
----- Original Message -----
From: "jrpking" <jrpking at interchange.ubc.ca>
To: "Cedar Bough Blomberg" <umyang at gmail.com>; "Korean Studies Discussion
List" <Koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
Sent: Thursday, June 02, 2005 12:55 PM
Subject: [KS] romanization absolutism
> There are numerous problems with the points C. B. Blomberg raises, too
> many to unpack. But here are a few reactions:
>
>> 1. The majority of people who Romanize Korean words are native
>> speakers of Korean, not of English. Therefore, a Romanization system
>> which works for them would seem to be most reasonable.
>
> Lots of different people romanize Korean for lots of different purposes.
> Each constituency has different needs and purposes, and in ideal
> circumstances, one romanization system would meet all needs (Japanese
> comes close to this ideal -- in other words, pretty much any way you
> romanize it, not much controversy). But with Korean, it is the nature of
> the beast that different constituencies will need different systems, and
> that one system will never satisfy all constituencies.
>
> For Korean citizens who need to romanize their names for passports and
> other such purposes, by all means -- it's their business. But that
doesn't
> mean all the rest of us should just abandon other systems and flock to
> whatever the ROK is doing lately.
>
>> 2. The new system of the Korean gov't is, provided it does not change
>> again, the system of the Korean people
>
> Whoa. Did the Koreans vote on it? Does it have some set of vaunted
> democratic credentials that I wasn't aware of? Do the Koreans have, say,
> the same emotional attachments to it they do to hankul? Do they learn it
> and practice it in school? Do they adhere to it in practice in a wide
> range of contexts? And what of the DPRK system - is that just chopped
> liver now?
>
>>and isn't it reasonable for
>> them to figure out how to Romanize their own language?
>
> Sure. But equally reasonable for the rest of us to figure out useful ways
> to do it, too [what -- is the ability of analyze Korean linguistically
and
> devise transcription systems for it somehow genetic?], and use them if we
> see fit and in contexts that are not subject to Korean law.
>
>> Why do Western
>> academics think they have the right to criticize the Korean
>> governments language policy?
>
> Academics in general -- whether Western or whatever -- have a right and
> obligation to criticize whatever they think needs criticizing (a seniment
> that most Korean students and academics would readily agree to, one
> assumes). The question for me is: just because the ROK says 'x' do I as a
> student of things Korean have to do 'y'?
>
> So, if the ROK government-approved Korean language textbooks for Korean
> school children use a particular grammatical term or grammatical
> analysis, should I be following that in my Korean language teaching?
>
>> 3. The absolutely most essential thing for Korean Romanization is
>> that it be set, fixed and stop changing. The most effective way for
>> this to happen is for the Western academic community and every other
>> user/consumer of Romanized material to ---support--- the gov't
>> efforts.
>
> Absolutely (and send anybody who suggests otherwise to the firing squad
or
> the gulag!). Come on, all you Western academics, step into line!
>
>> 4. Korean is hard to Romanize... there are no "everyone wins"
>> solutions to how to Romanize some syllables.
>
> All the more reason for different systems to just co-exist peacefully.
> Maybe someday, when, for the first time ever, there is a unified
> standardized set of language norms established for a unified Korea, and
> that new Korea devises a more or less sensible romanization system, I
> might follow it for certain, less technical purposes.
>
> But otherwise, McCune-Reischauer and Yale work for me, depending on wha
> I'm doing, and I resent anybody -- ROK government or romanization
> absolutists -- telling me otherwise.
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Ross King
> Associate Professor of Korean, University of British Columbia
> and
> Dean, Korean Language Village, Concordia Language Villages
>
>
>
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2005 05:54:48 +0900
From: Cedar Bough Blomberg <umyang at gmail.com>
Subject: [KS] Re: romanization absolutism
To: jrpking <jrpking at interchange.ubc.ca>, Korean Studies Discussion
List <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
Message-ID: <6b20100a0506021354511c3d16 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Responding to the points raised by Prof. Ross King,
RK> For Korean citizens who need to romanize their names for passports
and other such purposes, by all means -- it's their business. But that
doesn't mean all the rest of us should just abandon other systems and
flock to whatever the ROK is doing lately.
It's not just that Koreans Romanize their own names. The material on
Korea-- the tourist brochures, the pamphlets, the road signs, the
business letters, the press releases sent abroad, etc. These are all
created by Korean users of Romanization and they aren't thinking about
whether a letter is aspirated or not, they are merely trying to get
the job done in a consistent way. Generally on a computer keyboard
that makes MR awkward.
RK> Did the Koreans vote on it? Does it have some set of vaunted
democratic credentials that I wasn't aware of? Do the Koreans have,
say, the same emotional attachments to it they do to hankul? Do they
learn it and practice it in school? Do they adhere to it in practice
in a wide range of contexts? And what of the DPRK system - is that
just chopped liver now?
No, the Koreans neither voted on it, nor are they emotionally attached
to it (most people don't seem to have much of an opinion on it at
all). The new school textbooks of course use the gov't Romanization
when they Romanize. So, in that way at least, you could say that they
are learning it in school. Koreans, in general, seem to find the new
system relatively easy to use, and at this point, a few years into the
new system, people seem to use it comfortably. As for the DPRK's
system, I must admit I don't know.
RK> Academics in general -- whether Western or whatever -- have a
right and obligation to criticize whatever they think needs
criticizing (a seniment that most Korean students and academics would
readily agree to, one assumes). The question for me is: just because
the ROK says 'x' do I as a student of things Korean have to do 'y'?
Well, perhaps I put that badly. Yes, academics should criticize what
needs criticizing. And, no, nothing forces you to obey the ROK.
However when academics dismiss the efforts of the ROK gov't so
pervasively, I wonder how many of them have even given the new system
a chance. If one's mind is so completely made up that nothing can
convince one that there is a different way, then obviously any
potential benefits of other ways are dismissed untried.
When asked about his Romanization, one of my very wise professors (a
Korean, trained at Harvard, and of very advanced years) said of the
Romanization system "I just use the one I'm used to". I really
appreciated his answer. Isn't that the truth, we use what we're used
to, regardless of what may or may not work best.
> > 3. The absolutely most essential thing for Korean Romanization is
> > that it be set, fixed and stop changing. The most effective way for
> > this to happen is for the Western academic community and every other
> > user/consumer of Romanized material to ---support--- the gov't
> > efforts.
>
RK> Absolutely (and send anybody who suggests otherwise to the firing
squad or the gulag!). Come on, all you Western academics, step into
line!
Don't you think that consistency has some value? I wasn't suggesting
sending anyone to the firing squad or the gulag, I guess I don't get
that emotional about this issue. Don't you think the biggest problem
with Romanization of Korean has to do with the fact that you have to
guess all too often what the system the author is using, by scanning
through several Romanized words in the text and looking for signs to
tell you which system is at work?
Cedar
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2005 10:19:07 +0900
From: "rupert" <rupert at aks.ac.kr>
Subject: [KS] Re: Romanisation
To: <Koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
Message-ID: <002301c567da$3d58ac00$400f6b0a at RMJA>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
I have been following the romanisation debate for a while. For the last four
years, one of my first English classes of the semester covers romanisation -
showing Korean students how to write their language in English (it can be
quite fun - honest!). I give them MR, New 2000, and Yale and we go through
them and write various words using each system in turn - thier own names,
place names, whatever. They have to figure it out, which creates a little
natural communication. They are quite keen to do it and regard it as
something they should have known yet canot tell me why they do not know it.
Anyway, as far as I can tell, very few of them have ever done this, except
for their names (which they often find, interestingly, do not conform to any
of the systems). Finally, when put to a vote at the end of the class they
have been 100% unanimous in choosing 'New 2000', the latest system. My guess
is they like it because it is easy, not for any 'Made in Korea' reasons.
Rupert Atkinson
End of Koreanstudies Digest, Vol 24, Issue 4
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