[KS] -열 / -렬 (question to linguists & Korean native speakers)

[Hang Ryeol Na]

Dear Frank, 
 
I am a Korean native speaker from South Korea, but not a linguist or a Korean language specialist. 
 
First of all, you may already know about ‘initial law (두음법칙)’ in Korean phonology, which is that a consonant, usually ㄴ and ㄹ, at the beginning of a word loses and changes its sound value. For example, a Chinese character 女 (woman) is pronounced 녀 in Korea, but according to the initial law, 女子 is 여자, not 녀자 in Korean, whether it is written or spoken.  But 少女 is 소녀, not 소여, because it is not controlled by the initial law as the consonant is not at the beginning of the word.  This rule applies only to the South Korean standard language, not to North Korean standard language.  It also does not apply to foreign borrowings or Korean transliterations of foreign words. 
 
烈 (hot) in your question is another good example. 烈士 (patriotic martyr) is 열사, but 烈烈 (passionate) is 열렬 in Korean, where the second 烈 is 렬 keeping its sound value.
 
But there are exceptions to the law. In case of 렬 and 률, if they follow ㄴ or a vowel, they still lose their sound value, even though they are not at the beginning of a word. For example, 苛烈 (fervent) is 가열, not 가렬 because the 烈 is right after the vowel ㅏ.  Also, 先烈 (patriotic martyrs) is 선열 because ㄴ is right before the 烈. 
 
This exception should be applied to people’s names too. For example, 宋時烈, a politician and scholar of Chosun in the 17th century, is 송시열. Presumably no one in South Korea will pronounce it 송시렬.  
 
However, in the case of people’s names, I think they are strongly influenced by personal preference or family tradition, in addition to the orthography.  For example, 宣東烈, a famous baseball coach in South Korea, should be 선동렬 according to the orthography, but he himself wants it to be 선동열. My name is 羅恒烈 and it is 나항렬 in most of my personal information because that’s what I want it to be, although it is 나항열 in all the South Korean government-related official documents simply because that’s what my parents wrote when they registered my birth to the government. So I agree with you it is confusing many times, and I think it is getting even more as we use more languages such as English to refer to Korean people’s names.  
 
Sincerely,
 
Hang Ryeol
 



From: werner_sasse at hotmail.com
To: koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2011 11:04:16 +0000
Subject: Re: [KS] -열 / -렬 (question to linguists & Korean native speakers)








Dear Frank, 
I tried to google 김찰열 to see, but it did not work; all entries were corrected to 김창렬 automatically. Anyway, 김창렬 would be the correct 한글 transcription for  金昌烈, as far as I know.
Give Min my regards,
Werner
 

> Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2011 05:06:50 -0500
> From: hoffmann at koreaweb.ws
> To: koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
> Subject: Re: [KS] -열 / -렬 (question to linguists & Korean native speakers)
> 
> This is not a question that relates to transcription ... at least not 
> from Korean to Western lanuages, rather Hanja to Han'gŭl.
> Any orthographic rules for such cases?
> 
> Thanks.
> Frank
> 
> 
 		 	   		  
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