Revised Romanization of Korean
Encyclopedia
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 diacritic
s 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:
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:
or Swedish
), the Revised Romanization is not expected to be adopted as the official romanization of Korean family name
s. 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.
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:
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 digraph
s 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."
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.
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
romanization
Romanization
In linguistics, romanization or latinization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Roman script, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system . Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written...
system in South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
proclaimed by Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, replacing the older McCune–Reischauer system. The new system eliminates diacritic
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
s in favour of digraphs and adheres more closely to Korean phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
than to a suggestive rendition of Korean phonetics
Phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs : their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory...
for non-native speakers.
The Revised Romanization limits itself to only the English alphabet
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...
(apart from limited, often optional use of the hyphen
Hyphen
The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. The hyphen should not be confused with dashes , which are longer and have different uses, or with the minus sign which is also longer...
). 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
Ministry of Culture and Tourism
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism of the Republic of Korea is a central government agency responsible for the areas of tourism, culture, art, religion, and sports. It has two vice ministers, three assistant ministers, one commission, and over 60 divisions...
in Proclamation No. 2000-8. The proclamation cites the following reasons for the new system:
- It promotes consistent romanization by native Korean speakers by better transcribing important language characteristics.
- It reduces the confusion caused by frequent omission of apostrophes and diacriticDiacriticA diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
s. - It rationalizes the Korean language with the plain ASCII text of internet domain names.
Features
Notable features of the Revised Romanization system are as follows:- 어 and 으 are written as digraphDigraph (orthography)A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
s with two vowelVowelIn phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
letters: eo and eu, respectively (replacing the ŏ and ŭ of the McCune-ReischauerMcCune-ReischauerMcCune–Reischauer romanization is one of the two most widely used Korean language romanization systems, along with the Revised Romanization of Korean, which replaced McCune–Reischauer as the official romanization system in South Korea in 2000...
system).- However, ㅝ is written as wo and ㅢ is written as ui.
- Unlike McCune-Reischauer, aspiratedAspiration (phonetics)In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...
consonants (ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ, ㅊ) have no apostrophe: k, t, p, ch. Their unaspirated counterparts (ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ, ㅈ) are written with letters that are voicedVOICEDVirtual Organization for Innovative Conceptual Engineering Design is a virtual organization that promotes innovation in engineering design. This project is the collaborative work of researchers at five universities across the United States, and is funded by the National Science Foundation...
in English: g, d, b, j. However, all consonants that are pronounced as unreleased stops (which basically means all except ㄴ, ㄹ, ㅁ, ㅇ that are not followed by a vowel or semivowelSemivowelIn phonetics and phonology, a semivowel is a sound, such as English or , that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.-Classification:...
) are written as k, t, p, with no regard to their morphophonemic value: 벽 → byeok, 밖 → bak, 부엌 → bueok (But: 벽에 → byeoge, 밖에 → bakke, 부엌에 → bueoke) - ㅅ is always written as s before vowels and semivowels; there is no sh except when transliteratingTransliterationTransliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
. - ㄹ is r before a vowel or a semivowel, and l everywhere else: 리을 → rieul, 철원 → Cheorwon, 울릉도 → UlleungdoUlleungdoUlleungdo is a South Korean island in the Sea of Japan . Formerly known as Dagelet to the Europeans, Ulleungdo is about 120 km east of the Korean Peninsula...
, 발해 → BalhaeBalhaeBalhae was a Manchurian kingdom established after the fall of Goguryeo. After Goguryeo's capital and southern territories fell to Unified Silla, Dae Jo-yeong, a Mohe general, whose father was Dae Jung-sang, established Jin , later called Balhae.Balhae occupied southern parts of Manchuria and...
. Just like in McCune-Reischauer, ㄴ is written l whenever pronounced as a lateralLateral consonantA lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth....
rather than a nasal consonantNasal consonantA nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
: 전라북도 → Jeollabuk-doJeollabuk-doJeollabuk-do is a province in the southwest of South Korea. The province was formed in 1896 from the northern half of the former Jeolla province, and remained a province of Korea until the country's division in 1945, then became part of South Korea...
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:
- A hyphenHyphenThe hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. The hyphen should not be confused with dashes , which are longer and have different uses, or with the minus sign which is also longer...
may optionally disambiguate syllables: 가을 → ga-eul (fall; autumn) versus 개울 → gae-ul (stream). However, few official publications make use of this provision, since actual instances of ambiguity among names are rare.- A hyphen must be used in linguistic transliterations, where it denotes syllable-initial ㅇ (except at the beginning of a word): 없었습니다 → eobs-eoss-seubnida, 외국어 → oegug-eo, 애오개 → Ae-ogaeAeogae StationAeogae is a subway station in Mapo-gu, which is located in Seoul, South Korea. It is served by Seoul Subway Line 5."Aeogae" is one of a very few station names in the Seoul subway system which is not ultimately derived from Chinese...
- A hyphen must be used in linguistic transliterations, where it denotes syllable-initial ㅇ (except at the beginning of a word): 없었습니다 → eobs-eoss-seubnida, 외국어 → oegug-eo, 애오개 → Ae-ogae
- It is permitted to hyphenate syllables in the given nameKorean nameA Korean name consists of a family name followed by a given name, as used by the Korean people in both North Korea and South Korea. In the Korean language, 'ireum' or 'seong-myeong' usually refers to the family name and given name together...
, following common practice. Certain phonological changes, ordinarily indicated in other contexts, are ignored in names, to better disambiguate between names: 강홍립 → Gang Hongrip or Gang Hong-ripGang Hong-ripGang Hong-rip was a Korean general during the Joseon Dynasty.Under repeated requests from Ming China, Gwanghaegun commanded Gang Hong-rip to help Ming forces with ten thousand soldiers against the Manchus in 1619. However, Ming armies were crushed in the Battle of Sarhū. The Korean army under...
, 한복남 → Han Boknam or Han Bok-nam - Administrative units (such as the do) are hyphenated from the placename proper: 강원도 → Gangwon-doGangwon-do (South Korea)Gangwon-do is a province of South Korea, with its capital at Chuncheon. Before the division of Korea in 1945, Gangwon and its North Korean neighbour Kangwŏn formed a single province.-History:...
- One may omit terms “such as 시, 군, 읍”: 평창군 → Pyeongchang-gunPyeongchang CountyPyeongchang is a county in Gangwon province, South Korea located in the Taebaek Mountains region. It is also home to several Buddhist temples, including Woljeongsa. It is located approximately east of Seoul, the capital of South Korea...
or Pyeongchang, 평창읍 → Pyeongchang-eup or Pyeongchang.
- One may omit terms “such as 시, 군, 읍”: 평창군 → Pyeongchang-gun
- However, names for geographic features and artificial structures are not hyphenated: 설악산 → SeoraksanSeoraksanSeoraksan is the highest mountain in the Taebaek mountain range in the Gangwon province in eastern South Korea. It is located in a national park near the city of Sokcho. After the Hallasan volcano on Jeju Island and Jirisan in the south, Seoraksan is the third highest mountain in South Korea. The...
, 해인사 → HaeinsaHaeinsaHaeinsa is a head temple of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism in the Gaya Mountains , South Gyeongsang Province South Korea... - Capitalize proper nounProper nounA proper noun or proper name is a noun representing a unique entity , as distinguished from a common noun, which represents a class of entities —for example, city, planet, person or corporation)...
s.
Usage
Similarly to several European languages that have undergone spelling simplifications (such as PortuguesePortuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
or Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
), the Revised Romanization is not expected to be adopted as the official romanization of Korean family name
Korean name
A Korean name consists of a family name followed by a given name, as used by the Korean people in both North Korea and South Korea. In the Korean language, 'ireum' or 'seong-myeong' usually refers to the family name and given name together...
s. For example, the common family name, Lee (이), would be "I" in both the Revised Romanization and McCune-Reischauer. Given names and commercial
Commerce
While business refers to the value-creating activities of an organization for profit, commerce means the whole system of an economy that constitutes an environment for business. The system includes legal, economic, political, social, cultural, and technological systems that are in operation in any...
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.
Vowel letters
| 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 | |||
Consonant letters
| 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 |
Criticism
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 digraph
Digraph (orthography)
A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
s 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
Voiced postalveolar affricate
The voiced palato-alveolar affricate, also described as voiced domed postalveolar affricate, is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The sound is transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet with ⟨⟩ , and the equivalent X-SAMPA representation is ⟨dZ⟩...
, and is not actually part of the vowel). Other supporters point out that it is a system intended to transliterate into the Roman alphabet
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
, not English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
. However, other languages with a large inventory of distinct vowel phonemes similar to Korean (such as Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
, Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
, or Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
) resort to diacritics, with the exception of English, with its notoriously cumbersome orthography. German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, for example, usually writes ae, oe, and ue as ä, ö, and ü, with the umlaut
Umlaut (diacritic)
The diaeresis and the umlaut are diacritics that consist of two dots placed over a letter, most commonly a vowel. When that letter is an i or a j, the diacritic replaces the tittle: ï....
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
Seoul
Seoul , officially the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea. A megacity with a population of over 10 million, it is the largest city proper in the OECD developed world...
" 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."
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.
External links
- Romanization of Korean from the National Institute of Korean Language
- Online Revised Romanization Input Method Editor