[KS] Variable Romanization of 년(年) in McCune-Reischauer

[Otfried Cheong]

On 24/02/14 13:38, Werner Sasse wrote:
> Right you are. Reminds me of Korean scholars in "Germanistik", who try
> to convince me that Korean 외 is identical with German /ö/ : The
> linguist's need or wish to make a rule, which sometimes is overriding
> simple observation, a not uncommon occupational disease amongst us
> scholars (and not only linguists)

I have been wondering about this for a long time.  When I first learnt 
Korean,  I had some tapes that turned out to have been recorded a long 
time ago, possibly in the 1950's (with example sentences like "This 
towel costs 23 Won").

One of the speakers on those tapes systematically pronounced 외 as /ö/ 
and 위 as /ü/.   If I remember right, the textbook explained that this 
pronunciation was a valid variant used by some speakers.

I have met two (unrelated) senior Professor Choi's, who both told me 
that their name is properly pronounced /chö/, even though they did not 
seem to use the /ö/ variant in their own speech.

Samuel Martin's "A reference grammar of Korean" (my copy was published 
in 1992) describes /외/ on page 24 as the front rounded mid vowel, that 
is /ö/.  However, he says that "in standard Seoul speech 외 is not 
distinguished from 웨", and "many speakers tend to pronounce 위 as a 
long monophthong /ü/ rather than the more common diphthong".

I personally do not remember meeting a Korean who used the monophthong 
variants, and when I ask younger Koreans about this, they are completely 
baffled.  They never heard about this variant, and have no idea why 
Goethe is spelled 괴테.

When I point out to them that adding 이 to 아 and 어 moves the vowel 
from the back to the front of the mouth, and that the logical 
generalization would be for 외 and 위 to be fronted 오 and 우's, they 
agree (with surprise) that Hangul is inconsistent - but they still can't 
accept the variant as correct Korean, or think of anyone who speaks like 
that.

When did this variant fall out of usage?  Or has it always been a 
regional variant?  Is it still alive somewhere?

Best wishes,
  Otfried Cheong