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blaseblasphemener
Joined: 01 Jun 2006
Location: There's a voice, keeps on calling me, down the road, that's where I'll always be
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 Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 8:11 am Post subject: English spelling of Korean words |
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I was just reading a post that said "hakwon"
I've always pronounced it Hog-won.
If it is indeed pronounced hog-won, why do people insist on spelling it
hakwon? Do we really have to bring all of the strange spelling from the English language, and start doing it with Korean? Why can't we spell it phonetically? Kim should be spelt Gim. Park should be spelled Pak (or are there two different names, Park and Pak?) Kyeong Ju should be Gyeong Jew.
How did this creep into the language? I'm aware of the spelling issues like Taegu versus Daegu, but as English teachers, the least we could do is start spelling things phonetically. Would be less confusing for everyone, me thinks. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 9:32 am Post subject: |
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The closest spelling to its actual pronunciation is hagwon.
As for some of the others, the problem is that their pronunciation changes depending on their position in a sentence. Kangnam becomes Gangnam for example, in the same way that the t in water sounds like a d when pronounced by North Americans (and maybe some others).
The biggest problem I have is using si for shi. Sincheon is retarded, only Shincheon makes any sense. Sheenchawn would be the easiest for an English speaker to pronounce correctly though. |
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Qinella
Joined: 25 Feb 2005
Location: the crib
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| Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 9:53 am Post subject: |
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Yeah it really is difficult to transliterate between English and Korean. The Korean government seems to want a strict 1 for 1 system, and it's just not feasible.
As for hagwon, I think even that is not a good transliteration because most English speakers will say it with a short a. Hogwon would really be the best.
Similary, the best translation I've seen for 방 as in PC방 is bahng. |
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jajdude
Joined: 18 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 10:14 am Post subject: |
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If one doesn't read Korean and doesn't know the pronunciation, it's hard to know how to pronounce the Romanization. Hard to spell it too. There are many that don't resemble words we know in English, and English phonics is so irregular with many words that spell alike and don't rhyme.
Phone, gone, done... which rhymes with cheon?
Bun Dang... say those like bun and dang it....
Jam Sill?
Mock Dong?
Anyway, Po Hang in there.... |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 10:37 am Post subject: |
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blaseblasphemener, short answer: your pronunciation sucks.
Have you ever eaten Peking duck? Ever wondered hoe Peking became Beijing?
Main Entry: trans�lit�er�ate
Pronunciation: tran(t)s-'li-t&-"rAt, tranz-
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -at�ed; -at�ing
Etymology: trans- + Latin littera letter
: to represent or spell in the characters of another alphabet
- trans�lit�er�a�tion /(")tran(t)s-"li-t&-'rA-sh&n, (")tranz-/ noun
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revised_romanization_of_Korean |
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kotakji
Joined: 23 Oct 2006
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| Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 10:59 am Post subject: |
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| mithridates wrote: |
The closest spelling to its actual pronunciation is hagwon.
As for some of the others, the problem is that their pronunciation changes depending on their position in a sentence. Kangnam becomes Gangnam for example, in the same way that the t in water sounds like a d when pronounced by North Americans (and maybe some others).
The biggest problem I have is using si for shi. Sincheon is retarded, only Shincheon makes any sense. Sheenchawn would be the easiest for an English speaker to pronounce correctly though. |
I had a long argument with my wife over the spelling of silim station as well. Now granted they at least don't spell it sinlim, but still its probably more correctly spelled as shilim. |
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Qinella
Joined: 25 Feb 2005
Location: the crib
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| Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 11:27 am Post subject: |
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| kotakji wrote: |
| mithridates wrote: |
The closest spelling to its actual pronunciation is hagwon.
As for some of the others, the problem is that their pronunciation changes depending on their position in a sentence. Kangnam becomes Gangnam for example, in the same way that the t in water sounds like a d when pronounced by North Americans (and maybe some others).
The biggest problem I have is using si for shi. Sincheon is retarded, only Shincheon makes any sense. Sheenchawn would be the easiest for an English speaker to pronounce correctly though. |
I had a long argument with my wife over the spelling of silim station as well. Now granted they at least don't spell it sinlim, but still its probably more correctly spelled as shilim. |
Thing is, most native speakers are going to pronounce it with a short i, which is of course nonexistent in Korean.
Sheeleem. There ya go. No mistakes ever. |
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Woland
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 3:55 pm Post subject: |
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Why should the romanization of Korean be designed for English speakers specifically, Q?
Transliteration is really intended to provide a consistent representation of one writing system in another. And a simple one-to-one process does that best. To be able to pronounce from such a system does assume that you know the language that has been transliterated, but I know of no way around that.
Point being: learn a little Korean, folks. And maybe a little bit about the linguistics of transliteration, too. It's all for the good. |
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Novernae
Joined: 02 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 7:34 pm Post subject: |
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| Woland wrote: |
Why should the romanization of Korean be designed for English speakers specifically, Q?
Transliteration is really intended to provide a consistent representation of one writing system in another. And a simple one-to-one process does that best. To be able to pronounce from such a system does assume that you know the language that has been transliterated, but I know of no way around that.
Point being: learn a little Korean, folks. And maybe a little bit about the linguistics of transliteration, too. It's all for the good. |
ditto |
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the_beaver
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 7:36 pm Post subject: |
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| Woland wrote: |
Why should the romanization of Korean be designed for English speakers specifically, Q?
Transliteration is really intended to provide a consistent representation of one writing system in another. And a simple one-to-one process does that best. To be able to pronounce from such a system does assume that you know the language that has been transliterated, but I know of no way around that.
Point being: learn a little Korean, folks. And maybe a little bit about the linguistics of transliteration, too. It's all for the good. |
Doesn't that defeat the purpose? If you know the language to be transliterated why would you transliterate it? |
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Qinella
Joined: 25 Feb 2005
Location: the crib
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| Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 9:33 pm Post subject: |
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| Woland wrote: |
| Why should the romanization of Korean be designed for English speakers specifically, Q?'' |
Because we are English speakers, and we're talking about it?
But really, think about it--why is it not transliterated with Arabic writing? Or perhaps Russian? It's the Latin alphabet, and it uses no accents or squiggly lines like in French and Spanish. Seems common sense that transliteration with the Latin alphabet would be designed with English pronunciation in mind.
| Quote: |
Transliteration is really intended to provide a consistent representation of one writing system in another. And a simple one-to-one process does that best. To be able to pronounce from such a system does assume that you know the language that has been transliterated, but I know of no way around that.
Point being: learn a little Korean, folks. And maybe a little bit about the linguistics of transliteration, too. It's all for the good. |
Well, the whole purpose of transliteration is for people who do not know the language. If you can read Korean, transliteration is obsolete. The purpose would really be for tourists and visitors mostly, I'd imagine. |
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Woland
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 10:54 pm Post subject: |
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| Qinella wrote: |
Because we are English speakers, and we're talking about it?
But really, think about it--why is it not transliterated with Arabic writing? Or perhaps Russian? It's the Latin alphabet, and it uses no accents or squiggly lines like in French and Spanish. Seems common sense that transliteration with the Latin alphabet would be designed with English pronunciation in mind. |
My point was really that use of Roman letters doesn't necessarily imply English orthographic conventions. Lots of other languages make use of Roman letters. If you purpose is to have a transliteration system that represents pronunciation, whose pronunciation are you going to represent? Given greater consistency in phoneme-grapheme relations for most European languages, why not build your transliteration around them in order to serve the widest number of language backgrounds? Even if you claim that the transliteration system should be based on English because the number or English users is greater than any other language backgrounds population, whose English are going to use? The tranliteration 'Park' for the common family name is fine for speakers of r-less dialects of English, but not others. The problem is neverending.
| Qinella wrote: |
| Well, the whole purpose of transliteration is for people who do not know the language. If you can read Korean, transliteration is obsolete. The purpose would really be for tourists and visitors mostly, I'd imagine. |
Actually, I should have said that the most common purpose of transliteration early on was for publishers of scholarly books to represent other languages consistently without having to maintain expensive type sets for languages with different writing systems. In that context, the assumed audience for transliteration did know the language in question to some degree. For other audiences, in a sense, it doesn't matter - whatever pronunciation they construct is likely to be inaccurate. And that's the case for most tourists/visitors.
One solution to the communication problem that doesn't come up here for some reason, is locals learning the languages of the tourists/visitors  or at least learning their likely mispronunciations. (In fact, I think this does happen here, for people who will benefit from doing this.)
Short term tourists will always have problems with representing the language in speech. No transliteration will resolve this. People who are planning to be here longer, I think, can be given the advice I gave above - learn a little Korean, learn the transliteration system as it stands, and maybe a little bit about the linguistics of the whole thing.
Dear Science, I have become an internet pedant!  Only one parenthetical, though, Q; I am getting better. Praise be to Kurt Russell! |
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