[KS] Romanization systems
Stefan Ewing
sa_ewing at hotmail.com
Fri May 27 17:49:56 EDT 2005
*** To the moderator: Sorry, I forgot to include a URL for the article! ***
Hi, everyone:
First of all, to set everyone at ease, this is *not* a request to discuss
the comparative advantages or disadvantages of various romanization systems.
I have spent many years working with two of the most widely used Korean
romanization systems (McCune-Reischauer and the 2000 Revised Romanization of
Korean) and have a love-hate relationship with a third system (Yale
Romanization). I have read a fair amount of original source material on
these and other systems (M's & R's 1939 RASKB paper; the South Korean 1984
and 2000 Romanization of Korean documents; and Samuel E. Martin's discussion
of the Yale system in his _Reference Grammar of Korean_), and have also
pored over the summer 1997 issue of Sae Kugo Saenghwal (the National Academy
of the Korean Language's quarterly journal), which deals extensively with
these matters.
After working with and digesting material on all three systems for quite a
while, I decided to write up what I had learned--in such a manner that it is
accessible to both lay and (hopefully) academic readers--and publish it
online. The result is an article that briefly summarizes the key
characteristics and differences of the the three abovementioned romanization
systems, touches on how they handle quirks of Korean orthography and
pronunciation (though the latter not in the Yale system, of course, except
for the saissori "q"), and includes a table showing all Hangul consonants,
vowels, digraphs, and trigraphs rendered in the three systems, broken down
into initial, medial, and final positions where appropriate.
I humbly request your comments and constructive criticism on the article. I
have the wildly unrealistic hope that this article may be used in the future
as a reliable, quick, online reference to three of the most widely used
Korean romanization systems. I'm sure errors or omissions have crept
in--and I haven't even begun to tackle the way in which McCune-Reischauer
and the Revised system handle consonantal sound changes--but I would be glad
to read anything that any of you can point out or suggest. The article is
at http://21cseonbi.blogspot.com/2005/05/comparing-romanizations.html (yes,
it's a weblog).
Stefan Ewing
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