SKATS

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SKATS stands for Standard Korean Alphabet Transliteration System. It is also known as Korean Morse equivalents. Despite the name, SKATS is not a true transliteration system. [1] SKATS maps the Hangul characters through Korean Morse code to the same codes in Morse code and back to their equivalents in the Latin script. The first version of the Korean Morse code was developed independently from the Latin-script Morse code, so any phonetic correspondence between the Korean and Roman letters was purely coincidental. The second version of the Korean Morse code (and therefore SKATS), adopted in 2024, is mostly based of phonetic similarity of Korean and Roman letters.

Contents

SKATS v. 1.0
ConsonantsVowels
HangulCodeIn LatinHangulCodeIn Latin
.-..L.E
..-.F..I
-...B-T
...-V...S
--M.-A
.--W-.N
--.G....H
-.-K.-.R
.--.P-..D
-.-.C..-U
-..-X-.--Y
--..Z--.-Q
---O... ..-SU
.---J.. ..-IU
SKATS 2.0
ConsonantsVowels
HangulCodeIn LatinHangulCodeIn Latin
--.G.-A
-.N.-..L
-..D...-V
.-.R--..Z
--M---O
-...B.--W
...S..-U
--.-Q-..-X
.---J-.--Y
-.-.C..I
-.-K.E
-T..-.F
.--.P--.. ..ZI
....H.-.. ..LI

If a Korean Morse code operator were to transmit a Korean message in Morse, and an English-speaking Morse code operator heard the message, what they would write down is SKATS. The advantage of SKATS is the letter-perfect accuracy in conveying the Korean message, something that would be lost with romanisations such as RR or McCune-Reischauer used. SKATS dates back to the days before Korean keyboards gained widespread acceptance, so it was a way for Westerners who knew Korean to accurately produce the Korean language on a typewriter or keyboard. The primary users of SKATS are government departments who are interested in letter-to-letter accuracy.

SKATS is not a cipher. When using SKATS it is important to remember not to read the letters as they sound in English, but to read them as its original sound in SKATS.

The letters are written left to right as in standard written English. The correct form is to put one space between syllables and two spaces between words, but this often varies from one user to another. Without the double spaces between words, word breaks are ambiguous. If the rules are strictly observed, a Korean text written in SKATS could be perfectly recovered.

Double consonants and double or triple vowels are written the same way – each letter in the same order as if it were written in Hangul.

Sample sentence

Morse:

.-.. ..- -- -.-. ..- .-.. .    -- . --. -.- ..- --. --. -... .

SKATS v. 1.0:

LUM CU LE  MEG KUGG BE

SKATS v. 2.0:

GIM CI GA  MAS QISS DA

Letter-by-letter equivalent:

ㄱㅣㅁ ㅊㅣ ㄱㅏ ㅁㅏㅅ ㅇㅣㅅㅅ ㄷㅏ

Hangul:

김치가 맛있다

Revised romanisation: Kimchiga masitta.

English: The kimchi is delicious.

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References

  1. Weisgerber, John; Yang, Jin; Fisher, Pete (2000). "Pacific Rim Portable Translator". Envisioning Machine Translation in the Information Future. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 1934. Springer: 196–201. doi:10.1007/3-540-39965-8_21. ISBN   978-3-540-41117-8. S2CID   36571004.

http://www.mykit.com/kor/ele/morse.htm