How do you read the alphabet on street or traffic signs in Korea? Did you have hard time asking directions to Koreans because you read names as they sounded in your language? Where did you first learn the romanization of korean? And do you think it will be helpful for tourists and visitors when there is something that can help them to read the romanization of korean?
hello everyone my name is jin park, and I am doing a research on romanization, particularly on the romanization of Korean. the writing system of Korea is Hangeul, and it is a system which do not use the Roman alphabet, so despite its simplicity and "heavenliness," it has to be represented in the Roman alphabet in order for non-speakers of Korea to pronounce Hangeul.
romanization is a system that represent a word or a language, in this case Hangeul, with the Roman alphabet. One important aspect of romanization is that although the Roman alphabet is used in all romanization, pronunciation is assigned by an adaptor. For instance, the word Uijeongbu will sound differently by different speakers of different languages when they are not familiar with its assigned sound.
Koreans seem to have no trouble pronouncing the Roman alphabet according to the romanization of korean. One reason seems to be that they have been trained when they were young in school, and by frequent usuage they can pronounce it accordingly without too much difficulty. Another reason is that they already know Hangeul. It is as though their brains can function in such a way as to make sense of a korean word which romanization is used to stand for. But what about tourists or visitors of other languages? Is the romanization of Korean as effective or easy as it seems to Koreans?
Speakers, whose writing systems are the Roman alphabet, will tend to read the romanization of Korean as the way it sounds in their languages. Speakers only know thier own writing systems and have no other knowledge of reading the Roman alphabet, unless they have learned some other language. Therefore, it is natural for foreigners to misread the romanization of korean and to think that foreigners will be able to read it, because their writing systems are based on the Roman alphabet, is to ignore one of major problems for foreigners. In order to pronounce the romanization of korean, somewhat correctly, it has to be taught.
I believe that the Korean government has done too little in terms of advertising and informing foreigners about the romanization of Korean. One of my aims is to show why it is necessary to advertise continuously and more effectively. And to do so, I need your help. Please leave any comments or suggestions
I tHANK YOU FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION AND YOUR PARTICIPATION WILL HELP TORUISTS OR VISITORS OF kOREA IN THE FUTURE.
PLEASE SPREAD THIS BLOG
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Hi Jin Park.
One thing the government should do is focus on getting everyone to use the same romanization system everywhere.
It's no good the Korea Herald writing Pusan, while everyone else is calling it Busan.
I understand it took a while to change over to the "new system" released a few years ago, but now you have a system please stick with just the one. Any debate about changing it will just confuse everyone.
Korean is difficult to pronounce because westerners are not familiar with it. The romanization is not the problem, because however we say "Bang" or "Pang" (as in "PC Bang") it never sounds correct to Koreans because the sound of the first syllabale is somewhere between the two.
When I hear some students of Korean mangling the pronunciation of words even when they are learning from Hangul, I think there will always be problems with foreigners pronunciation as you mention in your post.
Frankly, I have more problems trying to understand english words written in Hangul. I really, with that when words are adopted from the English language into Korean that you would base the Hangul spelling on the English spelling rather than on what is (presumably) the American pronunciation. 핫윙스? No, I don't want Hat Wings....
I don't particulary want Hot wings either!
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