Learn about the different types of Korean romanization
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| Michael: What types of Korean romanization are there? |
| Kyejin: And which one is most common? |
| Michael: At KoreanClass101.com, we hear these questions often including "How should I write my name and write it using the revised romanization of Korean." Consider the following situation. In-cheol Im wants to order something from overseas. For this reason, he needs to write his personal information romanized, and he asks his friend for help |
| "How should I write my name?" |
| 임인철: 제 이름을 어떻게 써요? (Je ireumeul eotteoke sseoyo?) |
| Dialogue |
| 임인철: 제 이름을 어떻게 써요? (Je ireumeul eotteoke sseoyo?) |
| 워싱턴윌: "국어의 로마자 표기법"을 사용해서 써 봐요. ("Gugeoui romaja pyogibeop"eul sayonghaeseo sseo bwayo.) |
| Michael: Once more with the English translation. |
| 임인철: 제 이름을 어떻게 써요? (Je ireumeul eotteoke sseoyo?) |
| Michael: "How should I write my name?" |
| 워싱턴윌: "국어의 로마자 표기법"을 사용해서 써 봐요. ("Gugeoui romaja pyogibeop"eul sayonghaeseo sseo bwayo.) |
| Michael: "Write it using the "Revised Romanization of Korean."" |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Michael: As you may know, the Latin alphabet, or |
| Kyejin: 로마자 (romaja), |
| Michael: serves as a base for most of the writing systems on earth, but not all writing systems are based on the Latin alphabet, and some languages like Greek, Russian, Japanese or Thai use alphabets based on other unique scripts. |
| When it comes to Korean, previously it used to utilize |
| Kyejin: 한자 (hanja) |
| Michael: or Chinese characters for the written language, but, around the 15th century, the reigning king, King |
| Kyejin: 세종 (sejong), |
| Michael: ordered the development of a new Korean script called |
| Kyejin: 한글 (hangul), |
| Michael: which has been used up to this day. |
| However, if we have multiple alphabets, then naturally people from various countries won't be able to read all of them. Luckily, the Latin alphabet provides us with a way to be able to at least read languages that use various scripts. |
| For example, imagine that someone from the US is going to Korea, without knowing how to read the Korean alphabet, and they are at the airport and want to get to the heart of Seoul. In a different scenario, imagine someone from Korea is in America and has to write down his name, which is traditionally written in hangul—or imagine you would have to learn the Korean and you have no way of double-checking how to pronounce the words. |
| To make our lives easier, we employ a system that makes it possible to decipher non-Latin alphabets. We call it romanization. |
| Kyejin: 로마자 표기법 (romaja pyogibeop). |
| The name romanization comes from the Roman alphabet, which is a different way to call the Latin alphabet, and is a practice which allows for transcribing non-Latin scripts into a Latin alphabet. Since a unification of the romanization is needed to avoid confusion, several sets of rules have been established to make the transcribed words understandable for everyone. |
| In this lesson, we will have a look at the three most common ways to romanize the Korean alphabet. |
| The first way is called |
| Kyejin: 매큔-라이샤워 표기법 (maekyun-raisyawo pyogibeop) |
| Michael: or McCune–Reischauer Romanization. This is the oldest ruleset for the romanization of the Korean language that we will talk about in this lesson. It was developed by the name giving scholars Goerge M. McCune and Edwin O. Reischauer in 1937. This ruleset was the leading one for decades. |
| Other than the following forms of romanization, this one is more of a phonetic transcription of the Korean language than the transliteration of the Korean alphabet. It also brought many issues with it. For example, under the McCune-Reischauer Romanization Korean |
| Kyejin: 매큔-라이샤워 표기법 (maekyun-raisyawo pyogibeop), |
| Michael: aspirated consonants were marked by an apostrophe to distinguish them from the unaspirated ones. This led to much confusion, since an apostrophe can also be understood as a separation between two syllables. |
| The most critical issue, however, became a problem after personal computers became more popular. Due to missing symbols on the Korean keyboard, distinguishing between aspirated and unaspirated consonants became impossible. This is also the reason why the National Academy of the Korean Language decided in 1995 to develop the |
| Kyejin: 국어의 로마자 표기법 (gugeoui romaja pyogibeop) |
| Michael: or the Revised Romanization of Korean. This romanization system was released in 2000 and became the official way of transliterating the Korean alphabet. While developing this ruleset for romanization, all previously discussed issues of the McCune–Reischauer romanization have been eliminated. Today, all street signs, subway stations or anything related to the government is romanized using the Revised Romanization of Korean. However, the Revised Romanization of Korean didn't become the only active romanization just because it's official. The McCune–Reischauer romanization is still widely used, as well as the |
| Kyejin: 예일 로마자 표기법 (yeil romaja pyogibeop) |
| Michael: or Yale Romanization. This kind of romanization was developed by scholars of Yale University and is used for all academic purposes. The biggest advantage of this romanization system for linguistics is that it shows the morphophonemic structure of the words. This means that the Yale romanization shows, for example, how |
| Kyejin: ㄱ (gieok) |
| Michael: changes its pronunciation to |
| Kyejin: ㅇ (ieung) |
| Michael: if it stands in front of |
| Kyejin: ㄴ (nieun). |
| Michael: As previously mentioned, there is no right or wrong way to transcribe the Korean alphabet, and, in the end, it's up to the person who romanizes a piece of writing which system he or she prefers.Though, for KoreanClass101.com, we are using the Revised Romanization of Korean. |
| [Summary] |
| Michael: In this lesson, we learned that Korean can be romanized in several ways, and three of them are the McCune–Reischauer Romanization, the Revised Romanization of Korean, and the Yale romanization. All three of them romanize the Korean alphabet in a slightly different way. To picture the differences, let's have a look at some Korean words, and how to transcribe them in each of these three ways. The first is |
| Kyejin: 그렇다, |
| Michael: which means "to be." In the Revised Romanization of Korean, it is romanized as "geureota," in the McCune–Reischauer Romanization, it is romanized as "kŭrŏt'a" with an apostrophe before the "a," |
| and, in the Yale romanization, it is "kulehta" written with an k in the beginning, and an h before the "t." |
| Michael: Another word is |
| Kyejin: 토끼, |
| Michael: which means "rabbit." In the Revised Romanization of Korean, it is romanized as "tokki" while In the McCune–Reischauer Romanization, it is romanized with an apostrophe after the "t" - "t'okki" and, in the Yale romanization, it is "thokki" written with an "h" after the t. |
| Expansion/Contrast |
| Michael: We looked at the romanization of Hangul in South Korea. But, did you know that things are romanized differently in its northern counterpart, North Korea? |
| North Korea has used the ‘Romanization of Korean' as the official romanization since 1992. Prior to this, the McCune–Reischauer romanization was the official romanization system for the North Korean variant of the language. |
| Let's have a look at some differences between the southern "Revised Romanization" and the northern "Romanization of Korean." First, the vowel |
| Kyejin:ㅓ(eo), |
| Michael: is written as e-o in South Korea, and, in North Korea, it's written as an o with a breve [ŏ]. |
| Next, |
| Kyejin: ㅔ (e) |
| Michael: is written as an e with an asterisk [e*] in the North Korean system, or |
| Kyejin: ㅕ (yeo) |
| Michael: is romanized as y and an o with a breve [yŏ] in North Korea, while it's written as y-e-o in South Korea. |
| For consonants, the consonant |
| Kyejin: ㄱ(gieok), |
| Michael: which is romanized as g in South Korea, is romanized as ‘k' in North Korea, or |
| Kyejin: ㅋ (k) is romanized k in South Korean, while it's k-h in North Korea. |
| Cultural Insight/Expansion |
| Michael: Previously, we covered some systems known as romanizations, but what if we'd like to transcribe the Korean language into a different writing system? |
| Well, there is another official way for transcribing the Korean language called |
| Kyejin: 콘체비치 체계 (konchebichi chyegye) |
| Michael: or the Kontsevich system. It's a cyrillization system, which means that hangul is transcribed and transliterated into the cyrilic alphabet used, inter alia, by Russian or Bulgarian languages. |
| The system was developed by the Soviet scholar Lev Kontsevich in the 1950s. |
| Similar to some romanization systems, this one is also based on the phonetics of Korean words. |
Outro |
| Michael: Do you have any more questions? We're here to answer them! |
| Kyejin: 안녕히 계세요 (annyeonghi gyeseyo) |
| Michael: See you soon! |
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