[KS] behind-the-scene stories of Romanization
sangoak at snu.ac.kr
sangoak at snu.ac.kr
Sun Jun 19 07:30:40 EDT 2005
Dear list members:
Here are some behind-the-scene stories of
Romanization
although belated. Unlike
the western hemisphere, we here in
Korea
still wrap
up the last chores of the spring semester till the end of June. I have read
through the long thread of
Romanization
at once only in this
weekend and find some areas where I have to comment since I happen to be the
only one participant in two committees both in 1984 and 2000. I hesitatingly
reveal these stories which might help to understand the background of recent
development and resolve some misconceptions in the thread of
Romanization
.
1)
First of all, I have been an advocate of MR system or equivalent. In 1984 I was
lucky enough to keep this position although I was the only one against two other
senior scholars who favored 1959 MoE system. (In the Blue House, Dr. Sohn,
Presidential Aide in education strongly influenced the committee under the
Academy of Science to
internationalize
[=take foreigners
’
favorite system]
Romanization before the 1986 Asian
Games.)
After the decision to take almost all skeleton from MR system, Prof. Kim
Wanjin, my mentor,
in return
proposed
a modification of
‘
s
’
into
‘
sh
’
before
‘
i
’
(without mentioning the subsequent possible changes
before
‘
y
’
). It could be a sort of saving his face in front of
the former student but I do not think that it was a necessary modification.
There was also another unnecessary, trivial modification of using
hyphens.
2)
Because of continuous appeal to critical weakness in MR system, that is,
diacritical marks, the National Academy of the Korean Language (NAKL) organized
committees two times in 1997 and 1999. The first project was dismissed without
any result due to strong oppositions including an issue against the choice of
‘
e
’
for
ㅓ
.
I
was invited from the second series of ten meetings as one of three scholars.
Their opinions are diversified in the first several meetings but it was very
decisive that the government wanted to get rid of diacritics. Although I again
tried to save basic skeleton of MR system, NAKL was destined to change the 1984
system very visibly. (In the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Mr. Oh who became
the Deputy Minister later was very eager to obtain some new achievement to be
promoted. I later heard this story which was unlucky to advocates of MR system!
However, I would like to point out that there was not any
‘
nationalistic
’
intent to expel MR on purpose as Prof. McCann
suspected.)
Fellow list members, however, please do not get angry
with this silly story. I myself was quite upset but in the last tenth meeting I
proposed to include
“
rule 3.8: transliteration
”
in the 2000 NAKL system. The following table is
presented to understand the merit of my proposal which was a great salvage out
of otherwise another meaningless re-change from
almost
MR (1984) to
quasi-
MoE (2000).
|sound-graph cor.|
’
pronounceability
’
|no
diacritics
|_
transliteration__
|_transcription__|_computerization
1954 Yale system |
O
|
X
|
O
________________|________________|____________|_______________
1959 MoE system |
O
|
X
|
O
________________|________________|____________|_______________
1984 AoS [=MR]
|
X
|
O
|
X
________________|________________|____________|_______________
2000 NAKL system|
O
|
?
|
O
This table shows the evaluation of the NAKL system is not too bad,
mainly because the provision of transliteration is included by me. I realize
this effect more clearly while I draw this
tableau
.
Originally I wanted to use the MR system instead of introducing a new
system. I always believe the Yale system should be used for linguistic
transliteration but it has its defect of awkward spelling even to the Westerners
to be used for ordinary purposes. If any new system would be invented like the
2000 NAKL, it must be the third one (besides Yale and MR) that makes the
situation too crowded. That was my reason to oppose to the draft of the 2000
NAKL system prepared by the ninth meeting.
Along the meetings we had discussed how to write names on the passport.
Unlike totalitarian China we decided to respect the individual writing of their
old
names as used so far especially
for those who had published articles and books. (In line with this treatment
many companies like Samsung, Hyundai, & Daewoo may keep their brand value in
the capitalistic world.) We knew
Korea
is not the same as
China
also in
her enforcing power to the world even in the case of introducing a new
Romanization system. I easily predict the future of using at least three
systems: Yale in linguistics, MR in Koreanology (
at a minimum
of usage to decipher the
previous writings) or more, NAKL in all others. I do not see any wrongdoing in
this situation since we are in the free world but un-unified country. Only the
problem is one has to be clever enough to shift from one system to another
depending on the context.
Sang-Oak Lee
Dep
’
t of Korean
Seoul National Univ.
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