There are multiple romanization systems in common use. The two most prominent systems are McCune–Reischauer (MR) and Revised Romanization (RR). MR is almost universally used in academic Korean studies, and a variant of it has been the official system of North Korea since 1992. RR is the official system of South Korea and has been in use since 2000.
The earliest romanization systems for Korean emerged around the mid-19th century. Due to a number of factors, including the properties of the Korean language and alphabet, as well as social and geopolitical issues, a single settled standard did not emerge. By 1934, there were 27 extant romanization systems, and by 1997, there were over 40.
The following systems are currently the most widely used:
McCune–Reischauer ("MR"; 1939): Basis for various romanization systems. Almost universally used by international academic journals on Korean studies.[1] Modified version used for South Korea from 1984 to 2000.[citation needed]
Romanization of Korean (1992): The official romanization in North Korea, with some differences from standard MR.
The ALA-LC / U.S. Library of Congress system is based on but deviates from MR. Unlike in MR, it addresses word division in seven pages of detail. Syllables of given names are always separated with a hyphen, which is expressly never done by MR. Sound changes are ignored more often than in MR.[2]
Possibly the earliest romanization system was an 1832 system by German doctor Philipp Franz von Siebold, who was living in Japan.[5] Another early romanization system was an 1835 unnamed and unpublished system by missionary Walter Henry Medhurst that was used in his translation of a book on the Chinese, Korean, and Japanese languages.[6][a] Medhurst's romanization scheme was otherwise not significantly used.[8] In 1874, the Dallet system was introduced; it was based around French-language phonology. It was the first to use the digraphs eo and eu,[6][9] and the first to use diacritics for Korean romanization; it used the grave and acute accents over the letter "e".[10] The first system to see significant usage was the Ross system, named for John Ross, which was designed in 1882. It saw adoption by missionaries.[8]
In 1897, James Scarth Gale introduced his system in his work A Korean-English Dictionary.[6] This system went on to achieve some adoption; it was reportedly adopted by the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. In spite of this, some scholars found issues with these early systems.[11][6] More systems by Westerners emerged, based on English, French, and German phonology. Japanese scholars also developed their own romanizations for Korean, many of which were built on the work of Siebold and Dallet.[12] In 1933, the first romanization system developed by Koreans, which was appended to the Unified Han'gŭl Orthography System, was promulgated by the Korean Language Society.[13] In 1935, Jeong In-seop[ko] published "The International Phonetic Transcription of Korean Speech Sounds".[6]
Systems continued to be developed to address various perceived shortcomings in other systems. By 1934, according to Japanese linguist Shinpei Ogura's count, there were at least 27 extant systems.[14] Whereas Hepburn romanization had already become the widely accepted standard for the romanization of Japanese by the 1930s, Korean continued to lack such a standard. This led to significant diversity and inconsistencies in romanizations, not only between scholars but reportedly even within the writings of individual authors.[15]
Challenges for developing a standard romanization
The task of developing a standard romanization scheme for Korean was complicated by a number of factors.[11]
Even into the 20th century, there were significant variations in pronunciation and spelling in the Korean language itself, often due to the dialects of Korean.[16] Attempts were made to standardize the Korean language, but these efforts were made by multiple authorities. Two rivaling societies for standardizing Korean emerged: the Korean Language Society (조선어학회) and the Chŏson Ŏhak Yŏn'guhoe (조선어학연구회); they published separate guidances.[17] Eventually, the Korean Language Society's standard became the basis for the standards of both North and South Korea.[18] Other references for spelling included those used in Gale's dictionary, guidances from the Government-General of Chōsen, and a French dictionary.[19]
Other challenges were fundamental to properties of the Korean language and script, which make the language not easily mappable onto the Latin script. McCune and Reischauer claimed in 1939 that there are eight to ten vowels in Korean (this topic was still debated by that point). As there are only five vowels in the Latin script, the other vowel sounds had to be rendered either using multiple letters in the form of digraphs (e.g. eo for ㅓ) or by using diacritics.[20] Also, in many cases, pronunciation does not exactly match what is written in Hangul; similar phenomena occurs with all other major scripts as well. For example, due to linguistic assimilation, the state Silla is written in Korean as 신라 (sin-la), but pronounced sil-la.[21]
Some challenges were social and geopolitical. Reportedly, early scholars often wrote about Korea from Sinocentric or Japanese perspectives; Korean place names were often rendered using pronunciations from the Chinese or Japanese languages. Furthermore, after Korea went under Japanese rule, the "official" names of many places were considered to be those in the Japanese language.[11] In addition, the Japanese colonial government implemented various restrictions on the use of the Korean language around the mid-1930s; the Korean Language Society was also persecuted in one incident.[13]
Regardless of romanization systems, many Koreans chose and continue to choose to spell their names in Latin script in an ad hoc manner. For example, 이/리 (李) is variously romanized as Lee, Yi, I, or Rhee. In some cases, single families romanized their surnames differently on South Korean passports. For example, within a single 심 family, a father's surname was rendered as "Shim" and the son's as "Sim".[22]
In 1956, North Korea became the first of the two Koreas to promulgate an official romanization system. This system combines features of the Dallet and 1933 Unified systems. It was revised in 1986.[25]
In 1959, the South Korean Ministry of Education[ko] published a romanization system, which has since been dubbed the Ministry of Education system (MOE).[25][27] It reportedly quickly proved to be controversial, especially amongst non-Koreans. Fouser evaluated the system as prioritizing use for Koreans; it had a one-to-one correspondence from Hangul to Latin script, and did not account for the pronunciation changes that Hangul itself did not reflect. The system also tended to produce romanizations that bore superficial resemblance to words in English, some of which were seen as odd or humorous.[28]
Eventually, the South Korean government began reevaluating the use of the system in anticipation of the 1988 Summer Olympics, which were to be held in Seoul. In 1984, a slightly revised version of McCune–Reischauer was adopted. Some South Koreans reportedly had negative reactions to the system, which they viewed as confusing and overly beholden to pronunciation.[29]
In 1968, Samuel E. Martin introduced a system that has since been dubbed the Yale system. The system became widely adopted by the international academic linguistics community, although few others adopted it. Fouser argues that while the system allowed for reversibility, it is "unsightly", is suited to those who already know Hangul, and does not adequately communicate pronunciation, even in comparison to the MOE system.[4]
Computer age
With the spread of computers and the Internet by the 1980s and 1990s, complaints about MR reportedly grew.[30] The breves used in MR were not easily accessible on a standard keyboard. Some took to replacing the breve with alternate characters or simply omitting it altogether; the diversity of practice and ambiguity if breves were not used led to confusion.[30][31] In 1986, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) requested both North and South Korea to work together on developing a standard romanization. The two countries held a series of meetings, during which they failed to reach a consensus.[32]
In 1991, the South Korean National Academy of the Korean Language (NAKL; 국립국어연구원) proposed its own new system. Concurrently, Bok Moon Kim produced his own romanization system[ko]. A large debate reportedly emerged, with more systems being proposed and some proposing reverting to previous systems.[33]
On July 7, 2000, the NAKL and Ministry of Culture and Tourism announced that South Korea would adopt a new system: Revised Romanization (RR).[3] Road signs and textbooks were required to follow these rules as soon as possible, at a cost estimated by the government to be at least US$500–600 million.[34]
ISO/TR 11941 (1996): This actually is two different standards under one name: one for North Korea (DPRK) and the other for South Korea (ROK). The initial submission to the ISO was based heavily on Yale and was a joint effort between both states, but they could not agree on the final draft.
National Academy of the Korean Language System (1997)[46]
Lowercase ʙ was commonly used in Soviet Roman-derived alphabets due to some alphabets having a letter similar to b with a different purpose. The usage of only lowercase letters was also not unusual, as it was the Latin alphabet of Adyghe language, for example.
Some words written in the Soviet Latin alphabet: gu lli, nongdhion haggio, nong ʙ, zængsan, gugga diaʙondiyi.
The alphabet faced criticism from Koreans and was never put into use.
↑ English title of work was Translation of a comparative Vocabulary of the Chinese, Corean and Japanese, to Which is Added the thousand Character Classic, in Chinese and Corean, the Whole Accompanied by Copious Indexes of All the Chinese and English Words Occurring in the Work. It was a translation of an 18th century text by the Joseon government agency Bureau of Interpreters. Holstein claims this is the first romanization system,[7] but Fouser provides an earlier example.[5]
1 2 3 4 The first alternative is used before a vowel; the second is used elsewhere.
1 2 3 4 5 6 Nothing in syllable-initial position, ng syllable-finally.
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In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and transcription, for representing the spoken word, and combinations of both. Transcription methods can be subdivided into phonemic transcription, which records the phonemes or units of semantic meaning in speech, and more strict phonetic transcription, which records speech sounds with precision.
McCune–Reischauer romanization is one of the two most widely used Korean-language romanization systems. It was created in 1937 and the ALA-LC variant based on it is currently used for standard romanization library catalogs in North America.
Revised Romanization of Korean is the official Korean language romanization system in South Korea. It was developed by the National Academy of the Korean Language from 1995 and was released to the public on 7 July 2000 by South Korea's Ministry of Culture and Tourism in Proclamation No. 2000-8.
Edwin Oldfather Reischauer was an American diplomat, educator, and professor at Harvard University. Born in Tokyo to American educational missionaries, he became a leading scholar of the history and culture of Japan and East Asia. Together with George M. McCune, a scholar of Korea, in 1939 he developed the McCune–Reischauer romanization of the Korean language.
George McAfee "Mac" McCune was an American scholar of Korea who developed the McCune–Reischauer romanization system of Korean with Edwin O. Reischauer. He taught Korean history and language at Occidental College and the University of California, Berkeley.
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A Korean-English Dictionary is a 1897 dictionary originally compiled by Canadian missionary in Korea James Scarth Gale that described words in the Korean language in English. It was the second ever English-Korean dictionary, and the largest at the time of its publication. The dictionary played a major role in the learning of English in Korea, and reportedly remained significant even until 1968, when a new major dictionary was published. The dictionary also contained one of the earliest major romanization systems for Korean, which achieved some adoption by other missionaries.
↑ 김용 (July 12, 2023). 아버지 성은 'SHIM', 아들은 'SIM'...'헤라클래스' 부자에 무슨 사연이?[Father's surname is Shim, son's is Sim... What is the story behind the "Hercules" father and son?] (in Korean). Sports Chosun. 심정수는 이주 과정에서 여권 신청서를 작성할 때 실수로 아들들의 성을 'SIM'으로 적었다고 한다. 뒤늦게 실수를 알았지만, 다시 이름을 바꾸기는 어려웠다.[When Shim Jeong-soo was applying for his sons' passports to go abroad, he mistakenly wrote their surname as "SIM". He later realized his mistake, but it was too late to change.]
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