Forum for Romanization
Regarding: Romanization of Korean in SLII [#64]
This seems like the best place to put this.
How about for SLII we standardize on Revised Romanization (the standard in South Korea since 2002) of Korean?
A standard will give a consistent feel to the SL pages; Revised also doesn't require any knowledge of how Korean is pronounced to transliterate and lacks both diacritical marks and apostrophes.
John F. Disagree. The official standard does NOT apply to personal names, which is probably 90%+ of the use for most go players. You also do not mention the aspect of sound changes or compatibility with other western go sources (GoGoD, GoWorld, etc) or with other western sources such as libraries or dictionaries, or with older western go material.
There is no entirely satisfactory approach for Korean. The case for changing has to be made first. Personal preference is not enough.
By the way, here's the wikipedia article discussing revised Romanization - ![[ext]](images/extlink.gif)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revised_Romanization_of_Korean .
In terms of pro players, it would be good to settle on romanization of family names as well. There are links about that from the article above.
moved from Ja-choong soo
Remillard: Is there a preferred way of romanizing Korean?
nachtrabe: There are many preferred ways, actually. It is something of a pain. McCune-Reischauer is the current standard in North Korea, and "Revised Romanaization" has been the standard in South Korea since 2002. Under Revised this word is romanized "Ja-Chung-Su." SL mostly uses (modified?) !McC-R, but that's partly a function of the slow adoption of Revised and partly the influence of John F. I can't do !McC-R and I can do Revised, so I just stick with that in my own writings. (I also don't know what Ja-Choong-Soo is romanized under off the top of my head).
Dieter: If that is so, then I favour Revised! It's so weird to see those double vowels: they are a long "o" in Dutch. When "oo" occurs in plain English, my brain adapts, but not when reading a Korean name.
A few of the reasons for a switch:
- Formal McC-R uses both apostrophes and diacritical marks, neither of which are desirable and which circumventing can lead to incorrect and/or inconsistent alternate spellings.
- Something that makes no distinction between voiced and unvoiced consonants and that lacks an emphasis on pronunciation is highly desirable in a written medium with people who have a shaky grasp of Korean anyway. This is particularly true when the system for page names cannot take into account the differences between all characters (e.g., the difference between "Ch'" and "Ch" ). Most of us don't need to pronounce it, we need to be able to read it.
- RR's adaptation has been slow, but it is the official standard in South Korea and we can expect to see it more and more frequently now.
- Since we are transitioning to SLII, we have an opportunity for a fresh start. If all of the pages being stuck in reference need to undergo a review, then if we are ever going to have cause to switch to Revised, now is a perfect time. Planning on SLII to be a "final transition," it means that if we can foresee a time when we will prefer Revised (say in 2010), we should be switching now in anticipation.
- Transliterating back-and-forth to-and-from Revised is relatively easy even for someone with a weak grasp of the language. Lists such as the one one at wikisource exist and are easy to understand, allowing rapid transliteration.
- There isn't much consistency between sources that Go players use. Momoyama may not be particularly accurate in its spellings, but it is very commonly used and is a frequent original source for online spellings. GoGoD is a nice reference, but it costs money and many people do not own it or have a way to reference it. Thus it isn't particularly relevant which standard is chosen. The North Koreans don't even use quite the same form of McC-R as the South Koreans. Yale Romanization is also not uncommon.
- The Romanization used by the Hankuk Kiwon is closest to Revised. Anyone who is referencing a page there is going to search for the revised spelling first, and that's at least as likely for many as coming from any kind of scholarly reference.
I've already had a lengthy discussion in the past with John F. regarding this, and eventually capitulated to his wishes, but now that I see other people are advocating Revised, allow me to add my voice to the chorus, for exactly the reasons nachtrabe mentions: easy to transliterate, no apostrophes or diacritical marks, and is the standard in South Korea. As a sub-point of that last, let me add that these days any Westerner learning Korean while in South Korea (many people go there to teach English) is probably going to learn Revised, so we'll see more and more of it and get more people complaining about older and inconsistent romanisation on SL.
For people who think that Revised is misleading as to the pronunciation of a particular word, or are otherwise unhappy with that system of romanisation, they can still add whatever phonetic romanisation they want in parentheses, e.g. "Jachung-su (JAH-ch'oong-soo)"
John F. I personally am not for or against any one system. However, I am against confusion and inconsistency.
The 2002 system is not really a standard. It was designed to boost the tourist trade. The Ministry of Education doesn't like it, the Korean people don't like it, westerners in Korea don't like it, and it specifically excludes names. As we have seen here with ja-choong-soo, most Koreans go their own sweet way in spite of it. The new system is therefore not yet a paradigm for clarity or consistency. And note that in Japanese everyone ignores the official system and uses Hepburn.
Further, the 2002 system is NOT easy for transliteration for the very simple reason it was never intended for that purpose. The Ministry of Culture very clearly said so. They said it was a system of rendering the *sounds* not the letters. It cannot even be used to transliterate. Look at the various hangeul syllables represented by "got", for example. The sound changes in Korean are extremely difficult and context driven. It is dangerous for a non-Korean to pretend to be definitive about this. The 2002 was meant and is most suitable for Koreans rendering their own sounds for the benefit of visiting foreigners, as on road signs.
No-one here has answered my points about the exclusion of names even though these are the only Korean words most go players will see or want. No-one has answered my point about lack of dictionaries in the new system. Or various other points, such as ignoring the work done by standards bodies in the west, libraries and universities.
The font difficulties are non-existent. Apostrophes are not a problem for any computer. Simplifed McR does not uses diacritics (as in "Seoul").
I see no evidence the Hankuk Kiwon (which is NOT Revised) is using the 2002 system in any consistent way.
I find it a very weak argument to say "I can't do McC-R but I can do Revised". If you are offering help in Korean to other go players you are supposed to have some expertise. Familiarity with various romanisation systems is pretty basic expertise for any linguist. It's only 5 minutes work to learn a new one, for heaven's sake.
I find it even odder to recommend a system to a user when none of the dictionaries they will see in the shops use that system. I'm not well up on Korean dictionaries, but I think the only two biggies for westerners are Martin's (using Yale) and the two-volume "Bolshaya" Russian one (which obviously uses a Russian romanisation). The middle-size ones such as the Dong-Ah only seem to come out of Korea and are in hangeul (and Korean alphabetic order). The only two small ones currently in the shops here (and in Europe and USA, AFAIK) are the Langenscheidt which uses McC-R and the NTC Compact, which also uses a McC-R variant. I'm even less well up on text books, but all the ones I've seen recently seen to use Yale or McC-R, except for the very latest which seem to jump straight into Hangeul (I approve of that: Hangeul is another 5-minute job).
For the benefit of new readers, this is what I do: I use a simplified McC-R, which simply accepts the letters for the equivalent Korean letters and transliterates quite literally, making no sound changes. So I write eops-neun instead of eomneun, cheong-lyu instead of cheongnyu, cheong-yuk instead of cheongnyuk, and cheok-na-la-han instead of cheongnarahan. That way a reader can always know what the underlying hangeul is and it is possible to convert mechanically to hangeul or any other romanisation. But I normally use Korean romanisation only for names, and in any case I add (in my Names Dictionary) other bits of information. I provide the characters, the hangeul and the various ways I have seen of rendering that name in English, nearly all provided by Koreans. Half a dozen different variants is not uncommon. This portion of my work I have provided somewhere on this site. One look at it will demonstrate the confusion and inconsistency of native romanised versions.
Names are a special problem in Korean. There is just no way round that. I think, though, that my belt-and-braces method covers most of the issues, is consistent. I think I have made a broad-spectrum case for it, and one not based on personal preference (for the record I think I most prefer Yale and least prefer shibu shohei).
If, however, you want to teach ordinary Korean words to a go player, as in the case of ja-choong-soo, there is a very simple answer. Use hangeul via Unicode. By all means then use Revised to indicate the sound. But (a) make sure you know the sound changes and (b) tell the reader which system you are using. Just remember, you cannot write a word in Revised and expect a westerner to look it up in Korean, because (a) it is not a transliteration and (b) there are no dictionaries.
Agreed the situation will change in time. But you could have made the same arguments about the old Min. of Education system just before 2002 as you are making about Revised - and see how suddenly and drastically it has all changed. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Good intentions alone are not enough to guarantee that Revised, a mere 2.5 years old, will last the course. But if it ever does catch on, it can only really do so if it is applied to names (which is the eventual hope). Then users should be aware that Mr Kim will become Mr Gim, Mr Pak and Mr Park will become Mr Bak, and Mr Lee may well disappear. Is that not a recipe for more confusion?
John F. Alex,I'm sorry but I still can't see how you are making a case for Revised, or a case against any other system. You seem, like nachtrabe, only to be making a case for posting something yourself and using Revised in the process (i.e. it's for your convenience, not the reader's).
But I have already given my view on that above: "If, however, you want to teach ordinary Korean words to a go player, as in the case of ja-choong-soo, there is a very simple answer. Use hangeul via Unicode. By all means then use Revised to indicate the sound."
That still does not stop me from urging you to see the wider picture. You think my apparent wider experience with languages distorts my view. Some might think it helps me see the bigger picture. I've probably been through most of the problems that people who don't yet know foreign languages face. I would like to ask you to consider whether it is not your view that is too narrow. Far from being people who have learnt some Korean in the past couple of years or may learn it in the very near future, and who furthermore have the wealth or good fortune to study it in Korea, I think you'll find that SL readers cover a far wider span - maybe covering 50 years of experience.
It would not surprise me, for example, to hear of someone who learnt some Korean in the army, and wouldn't mind trying to read some go texts - but is stymied because the dictionaries don't have the technical go words. It would not surprise me if someone read one of your Korean word pages and was stimulated to go and have a look at a Korean primer - so he trots along to the library and bookshop and finds nothing but Yale or McC-R, and nothing in Revised. It would not surprise me if someone looked up the words you list just to see if you are telling porkies. I could list many more cases where a reader would not fit your mould.
That is why I think we should eschew talk of standards for SL in the sense of imposing a personal view. Rather, aim for high standards of inclusiveness. My view is that if you start a page on a particular term, you should offer hangeul as the base. Offer Revised, of course, but also (bearing in mind that they cannot deduce or look up other systems from Revised) offer Yale and McC-R for those whose experience or needs differ from your own. You should offer characters for those who may know Japanese and Chinese and might like to make comparisons. And somewhere you should offer a guide to Korean pronunciation. Consider all those people who still say buy-oh-yoh-mee for byoyomi.
Arno has put a lot of work into trying to make SL a receptacle both for those who see SL as a reference medium and for those who would rather just talk about go. My impression is that most people would see a page about a Korean term as either belonging immediately to the reference section or as ending up there after a discussion. Either way, I think it would be good to help establish the character of the reference section in the new SL2 as something that can reliably be referred to by anyone and not just someone who happens to share your experience.
I don't see how having "Mr. I," "Mr. Bak" and "Dae U" is more confusing than adding Ls and Ws to names that don't correspond to any sound in the real word, just so they look more like what a Westerner would identify as a name. You'd think that coming after the word "Mr." would be enough.
Your point about tranliterating things like "got" back and forth is valid - there is no way of knowing whether it's actually "got," more likely "god" or "gos," and possibly "goj" or "goch." However, there is only one way of transliterating a given Korean word, which is the important thing - if you see something spelled similarly, but not identically somewhere else, you know that it isn't the same word. The fact that the transformation is many-to-one and not one-to-one is only a problem when you want to take a romanised Korean word and change it back into Hangeul. As long as we have the Hangeul on the homepage for each word, that's a non-issue.
Theoretical example: say you were transliterating English into a language that had characters corresponding to the sound of S and the sound of H, but also a separate character, say #, for the "sh" sound. Furthermore, say that the sequence "sh" in that language was not pronounced like #, but like, say, "sw" would be in English. Would you want to transliterate "shoot" as "#oot" so it would be pronounced correctly, or as "shoot," so most people would mistakenly say "swoot," but at least if they turned it back into English, they wouldn't wonder if it might not be "choot" or "schoot," borrowed from French or German?
I don't think your argument about dictionaries is particularly convincing. I'm highly opposed to romanised dictionaries - as you say, learning Hangeul is fast and easy, so if you're going to be serious enough about the language to buy a dictionary, you might as well buy one in Hangeul. In any case, the percentage of SL users who own and use Korean-English dictionaries is probably quite small.
In the end, what really matters is consistency, yes, but also ease of understanding for the SL users who DON'T speak any Korean. You and I and anyone else who speaks Korean will understand what is going on regardless of the romanisation system used. For everyone else, what's really important is being able to look at a Korean word and - with the help of a page named something like Pronunciation of Romanised Korean Words? - be able to come close enough to the real sound of the word that they don't sound like a total idiot when they try to use it in conversation. What will accomplish that purpose better: "go-map-seum-ni-da" or "ko-mab-sup-nee-da"?
Obviously, you are the most experienced linguist on SL. Not even considering the other languages you know, your mastery of Korean is enough to see that - you know more of it than me or anyone else here, except for those who are actually Korean. I would defer to you on almost any issue of diction or grammar.
The trouble is that having such great experience with such a wide variety of languages does not give you the best understanding of what is clear and easy for someone who doesn't speak any foreign languages. In fact, it probably gives you a very distorted view thereof. As someone who learned Korean fairly recently, while living in Korea and since the change to Revised, I speak from experience when I say that I really liked Revised, it made learning and pronouncing the language much easier for me, and the use of other romanisation systems was a frequent thorn in my side, since upon seeing something like (random example) "kokiri," I would not be able to tell if that was actually "kokiri" or if it was "gokiri" or "kogiri" or "gogiri," or even "ggokiri," "koggiri" (this is what it actually is), "goggiri," "ggogiri" or "ggoggiri" unless I was already familiar with the word. (Yes, I know that that's why there should be apostrophes after the aspirated Ks, but the trouble with apostrophes is not that they're hard to type or that search engines can't handle them, but that people, particularly Koreans, often leave them out because they don't understand why they're there.)
I am far from an expert on this matter, as i dont speak Korean. But I may be usefull just because I am a layman. What is important for the normal SL user is that he can search easily, that there is consistency all around and that the prononciation of the romanized Korean is as correct as possible.
Especially the last seems important to me. It reallly is frustrating to say a name to a Korean and that he doesn't know who you are talking about or starts correcting you(which is way better then the fisrt option off course).
If different systems are used we should always use one as main page and alias the other.
John F. Regarding names: Precisely! Revised romanisation 2002 specifically excludes names, as I keep pointing out only to keep being ignored. And Koreans don't say Lee Changho either :)
I'm not sure about your search point. If I understand the search function on SL, you can search on anything, so it doesn't matter if you offer variants. In my experience the biggest problem is with alphabetical lists. You look for Pak near the end of the list, unsuspecting it may be under Bak, many lines away.
I like using SL II to romanize Korean, except:
- For North Korea-specific stuff, use McCune-Reischauer
- For names of things and people, use the ad hoc romanization that is usually used in English
Also if there is a term that generally is spelled differently in the Go world, use that method. If a Go term starts to be known by its SLII form, use that.
South Korean cities are now best known by their SLII form.
There is absolutely no reason we have to pay attention to the exception for family names.
Just treat the odd romanized forms as a separate romanization system (i.e., "also spelled"), and present the name as if it were romanized using Revised.
John, you're wrong on several points.
I'm not making a case for posting things myself and doing it the way I like. In fact, I use Japanese and English terms exclusively and haven't touched any Korean page on SL since the last time we talked about this.
I wasn't ignoring your point about names. I just think that they're a separate issue entirely. Philosophically speaking, I think people should be allowed to spell their names however they like, so if one person wants to be Mr. Park and another person with the same family name wants to be Mr. Bak, we should comply with their wishes. Put the hangeul for their names on their pages and maybe the Revised romanisation next to it in parentheses for people who want to know how the Koreans actually pronounce the name, but everywhere else, we should write their names the way they write it, whether it goes by any particular system or is completely arbitrary.
I'm not even talking about what we should put on the main page for each term: of course we should put the hangeul, as you say, and as many different romanisations, aliases and pronunciation hints as people want. I'm talking about the use of Korean terms on other pages; people are not going to bother putting the hangeul Unicode in every time they mention haengma or whatever, so we need to agree on one system to maintain consistency between different pages. If we say jeongseok on one page and jungsuk on another, people may not realise that they're the same term. I guess the point is that having multiple romanisations on the page defining the term makes things less, rather than more confusing, but USING more than one romanisation elsewhere is the problem.
I've already given my reasons for advocating Revised over other systems, so I won't repeat myself. I just wanted to clarify what we're actually arguing about, or at least what I think we're actually arguing about.
John F. I do hope "arguing" is too strong a word for what we are doing :) I think we are coming at this from different directions. My interest and experience focuses on names more than anything else (much more). I believe that applies to most go players. I agree that names are a separate issue, but I disagree that we just leave them as they way they the players do it themselves. The problem there is that we usually don't know the way they do it themselves. I also disagree with nachtrabe that we can just switch over to Revised for names - it ignores the huge legacy of what is in print already and to add yet another variant is asking for trouble.
I'm not sure that I've actively used any Korean non-name word anywhere except for haengma, so I've got no capital invested, so to speak. I would have no problems with an arrangement as you suggest of using Revised for anything but names, though with the caveat that on definition pages it is highly desirable to offer other romanisations.
As I've said many times, I don't really know what the answer is on names, and I'm pretty sure there isn't one yet. But I do feel strongly that adding Revised names versions will just make things worse. If Revised does establish itself, the Koreans themselves will presumably make some dispositions about names. That will be the time to switch over, in my view.
On a more general point, which applies to many topics on SL, there are just two people voicing a preference for Revised, just one voicing caution. If we got ten new users tomorrow all wanting to use Yale, we'd all be looking a bit silly. It would be good if rather more people expressed an opinion.
Bob McGuigan: I really know almost nothing about the Korean language but I think it is worth seconding a comment of John's to the effect that it is important to accomodate the variety of versions a person might use. Otherwise people searching on SL, or using a variant copied from another source, might not be able to find what they are searching for. Jeongseok and Jungsuk both appear in book titles or in catalogs, for example. One is missing from SL there might be a problem.
I also know nothing about Korean. My sole exposure to it is through the names of Korean players and, recently, a few baduk terms. So I take the pragmatic viewpoint that SL is of no value to me if I cannot use the search function to find what I need. I really don't care which version of romanization is the primary one but I do care that any version I might encounter in my reading is readily found. Therefore considerable use of the alias must be made.
On this note, perhaps it would be possible to have a box on the "edit page" page, in which one can enter aliases for a page. The current method of creating aliases is rather inconvenient if you wish to add a Korean name or term, and then alias all the alternative Romanizations.
Perhaps interesting read for some amongst you?
'Die koreanische Schrift und ihre lateinische Umschrift':
http://www.ib.hu-berlin.de/~kumlau/handreichungen/h164/h164.pdf
Die koreanische Schrift und ihre lateinische Umschrift,
HUMBOLDT-UNIVERSITÄT ZU BERLIN,
Cho, Jin-suk
Die lateinische Umschrift des Koreanischen - Transliteration oder Transkription ?:
koreanische und deutsche Umschriftsysteme im Vergleich unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Personennamen und deren praktischen Bearbeitung in deutschen Bibliotheken
von Jin-suk Cho. - Berlin:
Institut für Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2006. - 182 S. -
(Berliner Handreichungen zur Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft ; 164)
ISSN 14 38-76 62
fellow Germans, does this title really comprise a grammar error??
(... deren praktische Bearbeitung ...) tderz
I need to make it clear what I am doing with List of Korean Professionals and other similar lists.
Basically I just want to make a page that list all of Korean pros, active and retired/deceased, along with:
- The popular/accepted romanization of their name. eg Lee Changho instead of I Chang-ho, etc. There could be more than 1 popular romanization.
- RR romanization.
- Modified MR romanization used by List of Korean Names. The version without diatrics used by actual MR.
- The Hangul and Hanja. So people can fix the romanization or links later. I also suspect some of the Korean "Hanja" names in SL are actually their names in Chinese/Japanese characters.
Why I do it:
- So people can fix names/aliases of SL pages more easily.
- So people can google more info or links more easily. With the Hangul or Hanja.
- I want an updated list of Korean pros on SL.
It's WIP. List of Japanese Professionals is the most complete/correct one. I'll deal with List of Korean Professionals last.
After I'm done with List of Chinese Professionals, List of Japanese Professionals and List of Korean Professionals, then I will edit List of Chinese Names, List of Japanese Names and List of Korean Names.
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