Talk:Revised Romanization of Korean

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What is an apostrophe as described in article? Goodralph 05:43, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Explained in article. --Menchi 05:55, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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From article:

Although the common English name George uses "eo" to represent a single sound.

Well, the first 'e' merely 'softens' the preceding 'g' and does not have a vowel value of its own; 'o' is the vowel sound, not 'eo'. I'll take it out, but I cannot think of any "eo" combination that actually represents a single sound. --Iceager 06:54, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You are correct in that the "e" converts a "hard g" into a "soft g." I was just trying to make the point that the "eo" combination is not absolutely foreign to English, although I know from personal experience that non-Korean speakers do struggle with the monophthong.... BTW, the "eo" in "people" is another example of the two vowels together, though of course the pronunciation (이) is completely different from the 어 that we are talking about.... -Sewing - talk 15:38, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Contents 1 Role of Hyphen 2 POV? 3 Just a note about the Revised Romanization 4 More neutral revision needed 5 Too confusing and a lot of pronunciation to be revised. 6 Spelling 7 Transliteration vs. Transcription 8 Discussion with-out illustration! 9 Automated conversion? 10 Moved comments 10.1 Add English and Chinese characters to all examples 10.2 Add English and Chinese characters to all examples 11 Page move proposal 12 Requested move 12.1 Survey 12.2 Discussion 13 Messy sentences 14 List please!

[edit] Role of Hyphen

There's been a bit of an edit conflict in both the Hangul and Korean language articles over the role of the hyphen. The Korean govt. site is rather sloppy: it's to be used "to avoid ambiguity", but not further standardized. This is a subjective call, and so different people revert each other's use of hyphens in the articles. For example, I've seen 한국어 as both Hangug-eo and Han-gugeo, each claiming to be "official".

According the gov. site, when the Romanization is intended to be back-transliterated into Hangul, the hyphen is used to represent silent ieung (except at the beginning of a word, of course). Should we adopt this as the standard for Wikipedia transliterations, to avoid future disagreements? Should we maybe vote on this?

(Another difference between the two systems is that 한국 Hanguk would instead be Hangug, but that's another issue.) 66.27.205.12 19:57, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

By which system would it be Hangug? Certainly not by RR or MR. --Wikipeditor 06:09, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Ah, you mean RR transliteration. I don't think I've ever seen a term in RR transliteration except for the examples in the MC's RR guidelines.—Wikipeditor

I don't think there's any need for a vote here. Wikipedia works by consensus, wherever possible. See Wikipedia:Survey policy. As for the basic issue, it seems to me that the arguments for Han-gugeo are the strongest, since in RR "ng" is ambiguous between ㄴㄱ and ㅇ. ... although in the end it doesn't matter that much. We're getting to a point where an MoS for Korea-related topics would come in handy.-- Visviva 03:18, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] POV?

After an anonymous user has given this article a POV tag, I take this opportunity to express my agreement. I think the article has been very unbalanced and does not do its subject justice. While I have hesitated to edit against what appeared to be a majority opinion, it seems I might not be the only one who thinks this article has contained more than a bit of emotional RR bashing. – Wikipeditor 12:49, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Just a note about the Revised Romanization

I've been a professional Korean to English translator for KBS, MBC, Vivendi, and other media companies for many years now and it is to my opinion that any attempt of romanization of Korean using a system of only 26 Alphabet characters with 44 phonemes is bound to be inadequate. However, Revised Romanization seems to have been created around the regular English Qwerty keyboard layout, which in turn, is more apt for Internet--for the usage of the masses. As someone else has already commented above, McCune-Reischauer and Yale system could be used for more technical linguists who are more concerned about being exact using inexact tools.

I've been using R.R. for many of dramas and movies I translate for last 2 years now and I haven't received any complaints about it. But many of other translators I know aren't even aware of R.R. yet. When I do introduce it, they've been pushing it away for now. It seems like only technical few like myself are willing to take a serious look at this and take the risk to change it. I think this makes more sense than McCune-Reischauer system when it comes to romanizing Korean for Internet and the mass-media.

Hanguk vs. Hangug and other issues are really non-issues when you consider the fact that most of vowels ("a" and "u" in this case) are pronounced without understanding basic rules by a neophyte. From my POV, the pronunciation of "g" or "k" in Hangug and Hanguk makes such a slight difference compare to the pronunciation of vowels by a neophyte that any discussion involving such matters deserve a tautological DoS. Of course, no one would prefer that we start writing Haangook, but we do need to deal with some bigger issues here and stop griping about such trivial matters.

And yes, most of so-called standards this Korean and many previous administrations have proposed have been sloppy. So it's not any news we're dealing with here. I think the populous would prefer that we just create a detail Wiki-standard for Korean Romanization and have the rest follow slowly. We can even use my connections in media industry to start lobbying the Korean gov't for the second draft. Shall we start with Haan-gook-uh?

Another angle to this discussion is the fact that Korean is very easy to read. Most of English-speaking people I've taught in last 10 years have been able to read most of Korean language in less than 6 hours of lesson time. It's that easy to learn. Some students were able to master reading it less than 3 hours. So, if someone's really serious about going to Korea and they care to know little bit of its language, I think it's much faster to just learn how to read Korean instead of learning the Romanization system. I hypothesize that this may be the reason why there hasn't been any major revisions for such a long time, despite the fact it's been commonly used without any vowel points. But since we're discussing this R.R., I'd only say that this is more for the mass usage rather than technical. --xclay 21:07, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] More neutral revision needed

I think we need to quickly revise the article for more neutrality by simply presenting what Revised Romanization that Korean gov't has proposed is, and then move some controversial issues pointed out by the previous editors under the subsection called Controversy or alike. But I'd prefer to get some of your inputs first. --xclay 13:17, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

I added a Criticism header and moved the first long, critical paragraph to below the Features and Usage sections. IMO that improves the overall tone of the article but some more defenses to the critisisms would make it more npov.--JackSeoul 02:17, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Too confusing and a lot of pronunciation to be revised.

What is the purpose of the new system.I think it is only to sound like a western word of some sort in Korean language.pardon my opinion.

Just like this.

Pusan = Busan

POOSAN = BOOSAN

What is the sense?

I don't understand. Are you suggesting changes in the article, or voicing your opinion on the RR? Please type ~~~~ to show your name and the time of your post like this: Wikipeditor 04:42, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Spelling

To §: I think both Rs should be R, not r. It's a name, after all. – Wikipeditor

I agree. The Korean government officially capitalizes both Rs, so the official title is "Revised Romanization..." --Akira123323 09:55, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Misspellings abound in Korean government publications, we must not turn to them for guidance. – Wikipeditor

[edit] Transliteration vs. Transcription

Let us not neglect the differences between a transliteration (or romanization) and a (phonetic/phonemic) transcription. If there is any need of a revised romanization, it should be 100% straightforward and ignore any and all pronunciation peculiarities. Whereby 㘟 would be x-litʼd (transliterated) as "dŭlm", since ㄷ = "d", ㅡ = "ŭ", ㄹ = "l" or "r", and ㅁ = "m". That would be its x-litʼn. It would, of course, be different from its transcription/pronunciation but it would be an accurate romanization. This way if one were given the syllable "dŭlm" to x-lit into Hangul there would be no doubt as to what each element stood for. I have devised and continuously use this system since it is essentially foolproof. I think that all transliteration systems ought to be reciprocal and have a 1-to-1 graphemic correspondence. As I aforestated, this wouldn't necessarily correspond to the pronunciation of the word, &c., but it would allow for interchangability and leave no room for ambiguity. The need for such elemental accuracy is attested in x-litʼns of such arcane writing systems as Egyptian hieroglyphics, which rendered its words almost unpronounceable unless gratuitously laden with e vowels (a vowel which has eluded many writing systems throughout history) to "aid/assist pronunciation". Who the hell would recognise "KISRS" as representing the name "Caesar"? Well, Champollion, for one. Aye, those were the days… At any rate, we mustnʼt confuse romanizations with pronunciations. McCune-Reischauer, &c., are good systems when it comes to traditional romanization. And by "traditional" I mean transliteration which is designed to be pronounced as it is written. But, IMNSHO, there should be two systems at work here; viz 1.) transliteration for reading/writing and 2.) transcription for listening/speaking.—Strabismus 01:39, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

An official transliteration system already exists within RR: [1] (bottom). Not to mention Yale.—Wikipeditor 10:35, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion with-out illustration!

This article does not have a table showing how EACH Korean letter gets transcribed. There is discussion and comparison (narrative, not tabular) to RM. Please, some-body put a table in. One of the main uses of an encyclopedia is to be a quick, user-friendly how-to source. (Links that might or might not be usable are no substitute.)
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kdammers (talk • contribs) 2006-01-25

A table has been deleted from (at least the Korean) WP to avoid possible copyright infringement. This page lacks any copyright notice, but I doubt this means we can just copy parts of it. I don't know to what extent copyright applies to official publications of South Korea in general and to romanisation schemes intended for general use and/or tables illustrating their use in particular. Outbound links are probably better than nothing. We also still have Korean romanization#Examples as sort of a quick reference, which does not show romanisations for each letter either. Wikipeditor 09:25, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Automated conversion?

Anybody have a link to a decent hangul<->RR<->hangul converter? The best I've found is this but it doesn't do syllable endings properly. Jpatokal 02:06, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Have a look at Wikipedia:Korea-related topics notice board#Utility pages and keep in mind that automatic conversion programs will never be perfect, as there are a few ambiguities (kk may represent -[vowel]ㄲ-, -ㄲㅇ-, -ㄱㅋ-, -ㄲㅋ- or -ㅋㅋ-) inherent in the RR rules, as well as badly documented grey areas. Wikipeditor

[edit] Moved comments

These comments are from a stray version of this talk page. --Kjoonlee 08:53, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Add English and Chinese characters to all examples

Also, "encouraged to change, but not necessary.": bad English. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 210.201.31.246 (talk • contribs).

[edit] Add English and Chinese characters to all examples

Also, "encouraged to change, but not necessary.": bad English. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 210.200.105.226 (talk • contribs).

[edit] Page move proposal

[edit] Requested move

Talk:Revised romanization of Korean → Talk:Revised Romanization of Korean – To match capitalization of article --Kjoonlee 09:02, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Survey

Add "* Support" or "* Oppose" followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

[edit] Discussion

• The request was speedied. --Dijxtra 10:22, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Messy sentences

Hi, I'm not korean, and try to understand this page. And I wonder what is ment by the two following sentences:

"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."

1. What is a "proper name"? 2. What is a "domain name? 2. What does "awry" mean?

Another thing, "this because it is" should probably be written "this is because it is" to make it grammatically correct. But the whole sentence probably needs to be rewritten instead.

[edit] List please!

Can anyone please put down a list of transliteration between Hangul and English for this system? Similar to the one in McCune-R. Thanks! --Edmundkh 16:18, 11 December 2006 (UTC)