The Revised Romanization of Korean (국어의 로마자 표기법; lit. Roman letter notation of national language) is the official Korean language romanization system in South Korea proclaimed by Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, replacing the older McCune–Reischauer system. The new system eliminates diacritics in favour of digraphs and adheres more closely to Korean phonology than to a suggestive rendition of Korean phonetics for non-native speakers.
The Revised Romanization limits itself to only the English alphabet (apart from limited, often optional use of the hyphen). It was developed by the National Academy of the Korean Language from 1995 and was released to the public on July 7, 2000, by South Korea's Ministry of Culture and Tourism in Proclamation No. 2000-8. The proclamation cites the following reasons for the new system:[1]
Contents |
| Revised Romanization of Korean | |
|---|---|
| Hangul | 국어의 로마자 표기법 |
| Hanja | 國語의 로마字 表記法 |
| Revised Romanization | gugeoui romaja pyogibeop |
| McCune–Reischauer | kugŏŭi romaja p'yogipŏp |
Notable features of the Revised Romanization system are as follows:
In addition, it contains special provisions for regular phonological rules that makes exceptions to transliteration (see Korean language#Phonology).
Other rules and recommendations include the following:
Similarly to several European languages that have undergone spelling simplifications (such as Portuguese or Swedish), 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 it is not required. 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 all later gave in to government pressure. The Korea Times was the last major English newspaper, which switched in May 2006 to the Revised Romanization.
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 2000.
| ㅏ a | ㅐ ae | ㅑ ya | ㅒ yae | ||
| ㅓ eo | ㅔ e | ㅕ yeo | ㅖ ye | ||
| ㅗ o | ㅘ wa | ㅙ wae | ㅚ oe | ㅛ yo | |
| ㅜ u | ㅝ wo | ㅞ we | ㅟ wi | ㅠ yu | |
| ㅡ eu | ㅢ ui | ㅣ i | |||
| ㄱ | ㄲ | ㅋ | ㄷ | ㄸ | ㅌ | ㅂ | ㅃ | ㅍ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| g, k | kk | k | d, t | tt | t | b, p | pp | p | |
| ㅈ | ㅉ | ㅊ | ㅅ | ㅆ | ㅎ | ㄴ | ㅁ | ㅇ | ㄹ |
| j | jj | ch | s | ss | h | n | m | ng | r, l |
The revised romanization transcribes certain phonetic changes that occur with combinations of the final consonant of one character and the initial consonant of the next, for example Hanguk → Hangug-eo:
| initial → | ㅇ | ㄱ | ㄴ | ㄷ | ㄹ | ㅁ | ㅂ | ㅅ | ㅈ | ㅊ | ㅋ | ㅌ | ㅍ | ㅎ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| final ↓ | g | n | d | r | m | b | s | j | ch | k | t | p | h | ||
| ㄱ | k | g | kg | ngn | kd | ngn | ngm | kb | ks | kj | kch | k-k | kt | kp | kh, k |
| ㄴ | n | n | n-g | nn | nd | ll, nn | nm | nb | ns | nj | nch | nk | nt | np | nh |
| ㄷ | t | d, j | tg | nn | td | nn | nm | tb | ts | tj | tch | tk | t-t | tp | th, t, ch |
| ㄹ | l | r | lg | ll, nn | ld | ll | lm | lb | ls | lj | lch | lk | lt | lp | lh |
| ㅁ | m | m | mg | mn | md | mn | mm | mb | ms | mj | mch | mk | mt | mp | mh |
| ㅂ | p | b | pg | mn | pd | mn | mm | pb | ps | pj | pch | pk | pt | p-p | ph, p |
| ㅇ | ng | ng- | ngg | ngn | ngd | ngn | ngm | ngb | ngs | ngj | ngch | ngk | ngt | ngp | ngh |
Despite governmental promotion, the revised system met with considerable opposition among foreign residents in South Korea, many of whom felt the revised system contained serious flaws and felt that the government failed to consult with them beforehand, they being the primary users of Romanized Korean inside South Korea.
Critics of the Revised Romanization System say that the one-to-one correspondence 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 closer to an unaspirated k, rather than as a straight g). A frequent complaint of many foreign residents and visitors to South Korea is that both Romanization systems hinder accurate and comprehensible rendering of Korean pronunciation.
Critics also complain that digraphs such as eo and eu, denoting sounds that differ from conventional European use, confuse those unfamiliar with the language. In English, for instance, eo as found in geography, Leonardo, or neon represents a sequence of two vowels, not the Korean monophthong. Defenders of the system cite English words such as surgeon as evidence of the appropriateness of the combination, even though the sound is not an exact match (the e has the role of softening the g to a j-sound, and is not actually part of the vowel). Other supporters point out that it is a system intended to transliterate into the Roman alphabet, not English. However, other languages with a large inventory of distinct vowel phonemes similar to Korean (such as Turkish, Hungarian, or Swedish) resort to diacritics, with the exception of English, with its notoriously cumbersome orthography. German, for example, usually writes ae, oe, and ue as ä, ö, and ü, with the umlaut originating as a tiny "e" written above the vowel, and only uses digraphs when umlauts are unavailable, or in certain names (such as Goethe). Also, a digraph, namely eu, is used to represent a very short vowel that is often used as an epenthetic vowel for borrowings from English and other languages, leading to situations where the cluster str-, for example, ends up being written as seuteur-.
One motivation for the digraph "eo" appears to be an analogy with the conventional romanization "Seoul" of the South Korean capital. This romanization derives from an old French romanization Séoul in which the two syllables of this name denote "sé" and "oul", reflecting French orthography. The revised romanization instead treats this as a combination of "seo" and "ul", since u normally renders the second vowel (in accord with North European orthography).
The Ministry of Culture & Tourism says that the change was necessary because the McCune-Reischauer system did not adequately reflect important characteristics of the Korean language, making it difficult for native Korean speakers to use. For example, "The difference between some voiced and non-voiced sounds are in Korean little more than allophones, but [the] old system transcribed these as entirely different phonemes."[1]
| “ |
This difficulty contributed to confusion and inconsistency in the Romanizing of Korean. The old system differentiated between voiced and non-voiced consonants, making it very difficult for Koreans to understand and contributing to spellings such as "Kumkang" and "Hankuk" for "금강" and "한국" instead of "Kŭmgang" and "Han'guk," as would have been correct according to the old system. There were contradictions as well. "대구" was written "Taegu," but 동대구, the name of Daegu's largest passenger train terminal, was Romanized "Tongdaegu." And because "ㄷ, ㅂ, and ㅈ" have to be written in a way that a distinction is maintained between "ㅌ, ㅍ, and ㅊ," people rarely wrote "ㄷ, ㅂ, and ㅈ" as "t, p, and ch," even when they were conscious of the fact that this was not correct according to the old system, since they would not want to have words confused with the "t', p', and ch' " that often had the apostrophe omitted. The result was that "ㄷ, ㅂ, and ㅈ" were written "t, p, and ch" on road signs but as "d, b, and j" almost everywhere else, such as personal names and the names of companies and schools. |
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—Ministry of Culture & Tourism, The Revised Romanization of Korean |
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This, however, does not explain why the already existing Yale Romanization was not adopted by the Korean government instead.
Despite criticism by foreigners accustomed to using McCune Reischauer, often people who do not know Korean, many foreign residents and scholars have found the new system simple and logical. While all Romanization schema may be akin to learning a new language, the NGR (New Government Romanization) is applied much more easily after short study. In the past the majority of non-Korean fluent users of Romanization did not understand the purpose of diacritics, hence often omitting them and confusing everyone else.