[KS] McCune-Reischauer Romanization System creators

[James Grayson]

6 October, 2018

Dear Richard (and other colleagues),
The M-R system was devised by the then three leading Korean phoneticians -
Ch’oe Hyŏnbae, Chŏng Insŏp, and Kim Sŏn’gi and introduced to the world
by George
M. McCune and Edwin O. Reischauer in their article ‘Romanization of the
Korean Language Based upon its Phonetic Structure’ (*Transactions of the
Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society*, v. 29 (1939),  pp. 1-55).

After the introduction of the Korean Government's current system,  I wrote
an article for the  *Journal of East Asian Libraries '*' The New Government
Romanisation System for Korean: Why Was It Necessary?’ (no. 140 (Oct. 2006),
pp.49 -59) and a subsequent article  ‘Korean Romanisation: A Response to
Chris Doll’,  (*Journal of East Asian Libraries*,  no. 166 (Feb.
2018),  pp.75-79).
In these articles I explained why I thought that the current system used by
the ROK Government is abysmal and that the long overdue recognition of the
actual creators of the system should be given by calling the system CCK (Ch’oe
, Chŏng , and Kim). To my mind, there is no practical alternative for
general purposes of Romanisation than this system.

With best wishes,
James (Grayson)




On Sat, 6 Oct 2018 at 13:06, Richard McBride <rick_mcbride17 at hotmail.com>
wrote:

> Dear Colleagues
>
> I remember that a year or two ago a member of our list posted an
> interesting fact that the McCune-Reischauer Romanization system was
> actually created by a few Korean scholars.  But the two Western scholars'
> names were used to provide "legitimacy" for the system.  Unfortunately I
> did not save that post. Could somebody confirm this story and provide the
> names of the two scholars?
>
> Best
> Rick McBride
>
>
> Richard D. McBride II, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor of Asian and Near Eastern Languages
> Brigham Young University
> 3083 JFSB
> Provo, UT 84604
> office phone: (801) 422-7672
> email:  richard_mcbride at byu.edu
>
>

-- 
Emeritus Professor James H. Grayson
School of East Asian Studies
The University of Sheffield
6/8 Shearwood Road
Sheffield S10 2TD

(tel) 07780 70-1116
(fax) +44 114 222-8432
(email) j.h.grayson at sheffield.ac.uk
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