Revised Romanization of Korean

The Revised Romanization of Korean is the official Korean language romanization system in South Korea. The system was released by South Korean authorities in 2000 and is the South Korean official replacement for the 1984 McCune-Reischauer–based romanization system. The new system is similar to the system used before 1984, except that the old system was said to not faithfully represent consonants because their pronunciation changes (according to non-Korean sensibility) depending on position within a word.

The Revised Romanization uses no non-alphabetic symbols (diacritics) except very limited, often optional, use of the hyphen. It was developed by the National Academy of the Korean Language starting in 1995 and was released to the public on July 4 2000, by South Korea's Ministry of Culture and Tourism, which explained that the reason for the reduction of special characters was to eliminate difficulty of entering, or rather the ease of ignoring, diacritics on computers and – more importantly – rationalize Korean language with the plain ASCII text of internet domain names.

Features

Notable features of the Revised Romanization system are:

어 and 으 are written as digraphs with two vowel letters: eo and eu, respectively.
ㅝ is written as wo and ㅢ is written as ui.
Unlike McCune-Reischauer, aspirated consonants (ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ, ㅊ) have no apostrophe: k, t, p, ch. Their unaspirated counterparts (ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ, ㅈ) are written with letters that are voiced in English: g, d, b, j. However, all consonants that are pronounced as unreleased stops (which basically means all except ㄴ, ㄹ, ㅁ, ㅇ that are not followed by a vowel or semivowel) are written as k, t, p, with no regard to their morphophonemic value: 벽 → byeok, 밖 → bak, 부엌 → bueok (But: 벽에 → byeoge, 밖에 → bakke, 부엌에 → bueoke)
ㅅ is always written as s before vowels and semivowels; there is no sh except when transliterating.
ㄹ is r before a vowel, a semivowel or another ㄹ, and l everywhere else: 리을 → rieul, 철원 → Cheorwon, 울릉도 → Ulleungdo, 발해 → Balhae. Just like in McCune-Reischauer, ㄴ is written l whenever pronounced as a lateral rather than a nasal consonant: 전라북도 → Jeollabuk-do

In addition, there are special provisions for regular phonological rules that makes exceptions to transliteration (see Korean language#Phonology).

Other rules and recommendations include:

A hyphen may optionally be used to disambiguate syllables: 장음 → jang-eum versus 잔금 → jan-geum. However, no official publications seem to make use of this concession.
- A hyphen must be used in transliterations, where it denotes syllable-initial ㅇ (except at the beginning of a word): 없었습니다 → eobs-eoss-seubnida, 외국어 → oegug-eo, 애오개 → Ae-ogae
While "in principle, syllables in given names are not separated by [a hyphen", the rules permit doing just that. Certain phonological changes that are otherwise indicated are ignored between the syllables of given names: 강홍립 → Gang Hongrip or Gang Hong-rip, 한복남 → Han Boknam or Han Bok-nam
Syllables of Korean administrative units (such as do) are separated from the placename with a hyphen: 강원도 → Gangwon-do
- One may omit terms “such as 시, 군, 읍”: 평창군 → Pyeongchang-gun or Pyeongchang, 평창읍 → Pyeongchang-eup or Pyeongchang.
However, names for geographic features and artificial structures are connected to the placename: 설악산 → Seoraksan 해인사 → Haeinsa
Capitalize proper nouns.

Usage

The Revised Romanization is not expected to be adopted as the official romanization of Korean family names. For example, the common family name, Lee (이), would be I in both the Revised Romanization and McCune-Reischauer. Given names and commercial names are encouraged to change, but not necessary. All Korean textbooks were required to comply with the new system by February 28, 2002. English-language newspapers in South Korea initially resisted the new system, citing its flaws, though some later gave in to government pressure. The Korea Herald currently follows the revised system, while the Korea Times follows the McCune-Reischauer system, but without breves.

North Korea continues to use a version of the McCune-Reischauer system of Romanization, which was in official use in South Korea from 1984 to 2002. Specialists in Korean studies, both in and out of South Korea, tend to use McCune-Reischauer, although a system developed at Yale University is often used by linguists.

Criticism

Despite the South Korean government's intentions to promote the Romanization of Korean words and place names, the release of the revised system met with considerable opposition among international residents in Korea, many of whom felt the revised system was seriously flawed and felt disgruntled that the government failed to consult with them beforehand, since they are the primary users of Romanized Korean inside South Korea.

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism responded that the primary purpose of the new system was not for the sake of foreigners and pointed out that foreign experts had been consulted, while admitting that the new system did in many cases fail to reflect correct pronunciation of Korean language. That task the 1984 M-R system had addressed well, but in so doing did not maintain a one-to-one correspondence between hangul consonants and the Latin alphabet. Among the pronunciation problems, many if not most were dealt with satisfactorily from the perspective of pronunciation, through compromises in proper names (strict application of the new system for academic usage has serious pronunciation issues from the perspective of foreigners, but that problem is moot).

In proper names, only the initial consonants were usually affected. This because it is at the beginning of a term that searching for a domain name would typically go awry. The MoCT pointed out that China underwent a similar upheaval with the international community decades previous when the Beijing government enforced its own standardization (Beijing used to be spelled "Peking").

Critics of the Revised Romanization System say that the one-to-one correpondence of Korean characters to Roman letters (e.g., usually representing ㄱ as g) that is the hallmark of the new system is overly simplistic and fails to represent sound changes that occur naturally when the position of a consonant changes (e.g., at the beginning of a word, ㄱ is pronounced halfway between an unaspirated k and a g, rather than as a straight g).

Critics also complain that people unfamiliar with Hangul pronunciation may be confused by what "eo" and "eu" are intended to represent in the revised system. With common English words or names such as "geography", "Leonardo", and "neon" representing a two-syllable sound for eo, a neophyte to Korean words may fail to recognize that eo is supposed to represent a vowel sound like that of "son" or "fun". Defenders of the system cite English words such as surgeon as evidence of the appropriateness of the combination. A frequent complaint of many foreign residents and visitors to South Korea is that both Romanization systems hinder their ability to come close to an accurate and comprehensible rendering of Korean pronunciation.

External links

Official introductions
- Mirror site from Office of the President; change encoding to EUC-KR manually
  - Simplified table of final-initial pairs for a quick overview; change encoding to EUC-KR manually
National Academy of the Korean Language (without the simplified table )

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Revised Romanization of Korean

Features

Usage

Criticism

External links

See also