[KS] Romanization systems survey

Werner Sasse werner_sasse at hotmail.com
Sat Sep 12 06:58:35 EDT 2009


Dear Charles,

(and CC  Dear Br. Anthony)

thank you for your mail on the list. As I have stated before, I personally like McR better. BUT that is not the point. In one of my earlier postings I advocated we all switch to the new system. Simply it was my impression that by having been in use for 10 years it had become a standard somehow. But I do not know, really. 

So: maybe it would not be a good idea to ask everyone, which system would be more pleasing. Maybe, rather, there should be some research not on the preferred system, but on to which extend the current system has been accepted already. Like your (charles) letter indicates, it may be too cumbersome to change again.

Writing systems -sorry to repeat myself- are arbitrary, the question ist not "good or bad", or "scientific or not", the question is "accepted or not".

If it turns out that the current system is already accepted more or less, the other questions we should start discussing are how to make the new system more readable (spacing, hyphens, ...), and how we can make the Koreans themselves use it. I mean not ony in official web pages, but in everyday life .(Teach it in school. Use it for passports, name cards, a.s.o.

Anyway, seen all the switches since 1966, I relax...

Best, Werner Sasse

 


 
> Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:06:09 +0900
> From: cmuller-lst at jj.em-net.ne.jp
> To: ansonjae at sogang.ac.kr; Koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws; buswell at humnet.ucla.edu; koreanromanization at gmail.com
> Subject: Re: [KS] Romanization systems survey
> 
> Dear Brother Anthony,
> 
> Thank you for providing us with the opportunity to give our input on 
> this matter of the future of the RR romanization system.
> 
> Since you seem to be directly involved in the meetings with the 
> Competitiveness Committee, I would like to communicate one or two 
> points to you directly.
> 
> Mainly, regardless of the feelings of emotional attachment that anyone 
> might have regarding one system or another, there seems to be a 
> picture being painted on the part of McC-R advocates that virtually no 
> one in the West has adopted the RR system. I would like to point out 
> that this view is inaccurate.
> 
> First, my online dictionaries--most importantly the Digital Dictionary 
> of Buddhism [DDB], which, with almost 50,000 entries, is now a primary 
> reference work in the field of Buddhist Studies (subscribed to by over 
> 25 major university libraries)--has been using the RR system since its 
> implementation in 2000.
> 
> My decision to use RR in the DDB was based on having received a strong 
> request from a number of Korean scholars at SNU and the Academy of 
> Korean Studies who supported the new system to use it in my reference 
> works. Thus, there are a lot of young scholars in the field of East 
> Asian studies who have grown accustomed to RR, and use it regularly.
> 
> Furthermore, the RR system was also embedded as the standard 
> romanization of Korean in all software, as it became part of the 
> government standard for computing. Thus any computer program that 
> generates Korean readings (such as the the Korean readings generated 
> in commercial translation packages, and web software such as Google), 
> has also been using RR for almost a decade.
> 
> If the Korean government suddenly abandons RR, it is going end up 
> being a huge embarrassment for all of us who have supported it for 
> these past ten years. It is also going to be a huge amount of work to 
> retool and convert all web sources to.... to what?
> 
> If RR is withdrawn today, and McR is made to be the standard, how do 
> we know that this policy will not be reversed again in five years?
> 
> Frankly, if the government makes this change at this point, I 
> certainly will not be leaping to return to McCune-Reischauer. Because 
> the real problem here, as it has always been, is the lack of any 
> consistency in adhering to and supporting any kind of system.
> 
> In fact, there is no doubt that the main reason so many scholars were 
> reluctant to accept RR to begin with is not that it was inherently 
> flawed, but because, based on their prior observations of the behavior 
> of the Korean government, they had no confidence that the system would 
> be firmly adhered to. Those who had such fears have seen their 
> concerns materialized.
> 
> Thus, regardless of the technical merits or demerits of any given 
> system, a flip-flop on this matter at this point is certain to 
> obliterate the confidence of another full generation of scholars in 
> any official academic decisions that are made. No one will ever take 
> the gamble to follow a new romanization, no matter how 
> well-constructed it might be.
> 
> I hope that you will convey these sentiments to the appropriate 
> committee members.
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> Charles Muller
> 
> -------------------
> 
> A. Charles Muller
> 
> University of Tokyo
> Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, Faculty of Letters
> Center for Evolving Humanities
> Akamon kenkyū tō #722
> 7-3-1 Hongō, Bunkyō-ku
> Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
> 
> Web Site: Resources for East Asian Language and Thought
> http://www.acmuller.net
> 
> <acmuller[at]jj.em-net.ne.jp>
> 
> Mobile Phone: 090-9310-1787
> 
> 
> 

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