[KS] The Mystery of the Breve

[Otfried Cheong]

Frank Hoffmann wrote:
> Regarding replacements or left-out of brèves, both has been practiced 
> heavily on this list when using older email software -- leaving them out 
> as well as replacing them by ô, û (included in the ASCII set). 

Neither of which fulfils the requirements we discussed:  no diacritics, 
but no major loss of information either.  The circumflexes _are_ 
diacritics, and _not_ included in the ASCII set (which is a 7-bit 
character set).

The issue is not a particular character set - as I think I have 
demonstrated, there are numerous occasions where you simply must be able 
to restrict yourself to the letters A-Z (capitals only!).

> And I have not seen anyone in Korean Studies who, 
> as you claimed, would have made the argument that replacing brèves with 
> circumflexes would be an unforgivable sin.

I certainly did not claim this - what I said is that many on this list 
considered replacing the breves by the _digraphs_ 'eo' and 'eu' an 
unforgivable sin.

> NORTH Korea: this is an entirely different topic, of course. You wrote:
> 
>>>  As I said earlier, I would have suggested to simply allow
>>>  "eo" and "eu" (...), and to replace the apostrophe by 'h'.
>>>  (...) Is that true?  I've never seen the spelling Phyo˜ngyang
>>>  anywhere.
> 
> (1) As you already pointed out yourself, "eo" and "eu" are used instead 
> of o and u + brève. "Phyo˜ngyang" is therefore no valid example.
> 
> (2) The "h" is indeed used to replace the apostrophe in McC-R for an 
> aspirated t' or p'. For example "thongil" instead of "t'ongil."

This raises an interesting question:  North Korea uses a modified 
version of McC-R that does not need diacritics at all (except for 
hyphens to separate syllables, if necessary).   But apparently the North 
Korean system was not considered as a contender for the new South Korean 
romanization - as far as I can remember, this was not even suggested at 
the time.  Why?

Unification with the Northern system would be the only good reason for 
South Korea to change its official romanization again.  But of course 
that's a hairy issue unless you can work out the differences in Hangul 
spelling in the two Koreas.

Best wishes,
  Otfried