McCune–Reischauer

thumb|In this 2014 photo of a road sign in [[Suwon, is romanized , using McCune–Reischauer. It would be in Revised Romanization.]]

McCune–Reischauer (MR; ) is a romanization system for the Korean language. It was first published in 1939 by George M. McCune and Edwin O. Reischauer. Significant work on the system was done by Korean linguists Choe Hyeon-bae, , and .

According to Reischauer, McCune "persuaded the American Army Map Service to adopt [the McCune–Reischauer system], and through the Korean War it became the foundation for most current Romanizations of Korean place names."

A variant of McCune–Reischauer is currently used as the official system in North Korea. Another variant is currently used for standard romanization library catalogs in North America. On the other hand, South Korea formerly used yet another variant as its official system from 1984 to 2000, but replaced it with the Revised Romanization of Korean in 2000.

Characteristics

The following are some characteristics of the McCune–Reischauer system:

With a few exceptions, it does not attempt to transliterate Korean hangul but rather represents the phonetic pronunciation.
Example: (pronounced []) (not *tokrip)
The voiceless and voiced allophones of the Korean phonemes //, //, //, and // are transcribed differently.
Examples: , , ,
The apostrophe is used for transcribing strongly aspirated consonants , , , and (, , and respectively), and for distinguishing () from ().
Examples: ; (cf. )
The breve is used for the vowels () and (), and diphthongs containing those sounds ( , ; ).

Use of diacritics and their omission

McCune–Reischauer employs dual use of apostrophes, with the more common being for syllabic boundaries. Therefore, it may take some time for learners to familiarise themselves with the placement of apostrophes to determine how a romanized Korean word is pronounced. For example, → , which consists of the syllables , , , and .

In the early days of the Internet, the apostrophe and breve were even omitted altogether for both technical and practical reasons, which made it impossible to differentiate the strongly aspirated consonants , , and from the unaspirated consonants , , and , and the vowels and from and .

For example, if the diacritics in the MR rendering of the name of South Korean city Ch'ŏngju () are omitted (Chongju), it overlaps with the name of North Korean city Chongju (). There is a claim of uncertain veracity that, during the 1950–1953 Korean War, the US Army accidentally (or almost) bombed the wrong city due to this.

As a result, the South Korean government introduced a revised system of romanization in 2000. However, Korean critics claimed that the Revised System fails to represent and in a way that is easily recognizable and misrepresents the way that the unaspirated consonants are actually pronounced.

Guide

This is a simplified guide for the McCune–Reischauer system.

Vowels

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"

!Hangul

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

!Romanization

|a||ae||ya||yae||ŏ||e||yŏ||ye||o||wa||wae||oe||yo||u||wŏ||we||wi||yu||ŭ||ŭi||i

Consonants

Word-initially and word-finally

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"

! colspan="2" |Hangul

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

! rowspan="2" |Romanization!!Word-initial

| rowspan="2" |k||kk|| rowspan="2" |n|| rowspan="2" |t||tt||r|| rowspan="2" |m|| rowspan="2" |p||pp||s||ss||—||ch||tch||ch'||k'||t'||p'||h

!Word-final

|k||—||l||—||t||—||ng||t||—||t||k||t||p||t

The heterogeneous consonant digraphs (, , , , , , , , , , and ) exist only as syllabic finals and are transcribed by their actual pronunciation.

Word-medially

The following table is sufficient for the transcription of most proper names.

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"

|+ Final consonant of the previous syllable + initial consonant of the next syllable

! colspan="2" rowspan="2" | || colspan="15" | Initial

! —!! k!! kk!! n!! t!! tt!! r!! m!! p!! pp!! s!! ss!! ch!! tch!! h

! rowspan="8" | Final ||

|—||g||kk||n||d||tt||r||m||b||pp||s||ss||j||tch||h

! k

|g||kk||kk||ngn||kt||ktt||ngn||ngm||kp||kpp||ks||kss||kch||ktch||kh

! n

|n||ng||nkk||nn||nd||ntt||ll||nm||nb||npp||ns||nss||nj||ntch||nh

! t

|d||tk||tkk||nn||tt||tt||nn||nm||tp||tpp||ss||ss||tch||tch||th

! l

|r||lg||lkk||ll||||ltt||ll||lm||lb||lpp||ls||lss||||ltch||rh

! m

|m||mg||mkk||mn||md||mtt||mn||mm||mb||mpp||ms||mss||mj||mtch||mh

! p

|b||pk||pkk||mn||pt||ptt||mn||mm||pp||pp||ps||pss||pch||ptch||ph

! ng

|ng||ngg||ngkk||ngn||ngd||ngtt||ngn||ngm||ngb||ngpp||ngs||ngss||ngj||ngtch||ngh

The following subsections are for cases not covered by the table above, or for cases where the result should be different from the table.

Any non- syllabic final + syllabic initial

In this combination, the syllabic final (except , which is always ) is

either directly transferred to the syllabic initial position of the next syllable (i.e. replacing the ),
Examples: [] , [] , [] , [] , [] , []
When the syllabic final or (including ) is followed by , palatalization occurs.
Examples: [] , [] , []
Syllabic final digraphs are split.
Examples: [] , []
or neutralized to one of {ㄱ, ㄴ, ㄷ, ㄹ, ㅁ, ㅂ} first, and then transferred to the syllabic initial position of the next syllable.
Examples: [→] , [→]

Any non- syllabic final + syllabic initial {ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ, ㅈ}

If the syllabic initial is pronounced

{[], [], [], []}, they are romanized {g, d, b, j}. When is preceded by , an apostrophe is added between them (i.e. ).
{[], [], [], []}, they are romanized {k, t, p, ch} (not {kk, tt, pp, tch}).

Examples:

[] vs. []
[] vs. []
[] vs. []
[] vs. () []

Any syllabic final + syllabic initial

Any combination with the syllabic initial is transcribed based on the actual pronunciation, except when the result is [], [], or []; these are treated as (), (), and () respectively.

Examples: [] , [] , []
Examples of exceptions:
([], but treated as [])
([], treated as [])
([], treated as [])

Syllabic final + any syllabic initial

Any combination with the syllabic final (including and ) is transcribed based on the actual pronunciation.

Examples: [] , [] , []

Personal names

The rules stated above are also applied in personal names, except between a surname and a given name. A surname and a given name are separated by a space, but multiple syllables within a surname or within a given name are joined without hyphens or spaces.

The original 1939 paper states the following:

The original paper also gives McCune–Reischauer romanizations for a number of other personal names:

(), (), ()
(; )
(; ), (; )

History

George M. McCune, son of Pyongyang-based missionary George Shannon McCune, was born in Korea in 1905. After attending university in the United States, he returned to Korea (which was then under Japanese rule) in the summer of 1937 to work on his PhD dissertation for the University of California, Berkeley. Around September of that year, Japanologist Edwin O. Reischauer became stranded in Keijō while he was en route to Beijing due to the Second Sino-Japanese War. He also wrote that they designed the system "with only scholars in mind", and that he felt it was too complicated for regular use. The system received pushback from Koreans. It came to be seen as more intuitive for foreigners and less intuitive for Koreans, as it reflected pronunciation changes that most Koreans were not consciously aware of. Fouser argued that another point of contention was related to nationalism; some disliked that the system had been developed by foreigners during the Japanese colonial period, and wanted a natively developed alternative. In 1959, the published a romanization system, which has since been dubbed the Ministry of Education system (MOE). The system was immediately controversial, especially among foreigners. Fouser evaluated the system as prioritizing use for Koreans; it had a one-to-one correspondence from Hangul to Latin script and did not reflect pronunciation changes that Hangul did not. In June 1981, a number of scholars met at the University of Hawaii's Center for Korean Studies and developed a number of proposed changes to MR. The changes were largely based on a draft proposal from the US Library of Congress and were meant to aid use by librarians. For example, it was designed to promote reversibility, which was to the interest of librarians. which were to be held in Seoul. In 1984, a slightly modified version of McCune–Reischauer was adopted. Some South Koreans reportedly had negative reactions to the system, which they viewed as confusing and overly beholden to pronunciation.

With the spread of computers and the Internet in the 1990s, complaints and debate about MR grew. This was primarily related to the system's use of diacritics, which are difficult to access on standard keyboards. In 1997, the South Korean government began moving to revise or switch romanization systems.

In contemporary South Korea, which has since adopted Revised Romanization, MR has left a lasting legacy in a number of cases:

"TK" standing for Daegu and Gyeongbuk (from the MR spellings "Taegu" and "Kyŏngbuk")
First used on December 23, 1987
"PK" standing for Busan and Gyeongnam (from the MR spellings "Pusan" and "Kyŏngnam")

Variants

North Korean variant

A variant of McCune–Reischauer is currently in official use in North Korea. The following are the differences between the original McCune–Reischauer and the North Korean variant:

Aspirated consonants are represented by adding an h instead of an apostrophe.
However, is transcribed as ch, not chh.
is transcribed as j even when it is voiceless.
is transcribed as jj instead of tch.
is transcribed as lr instead of ll.
is transcribed as lh instead of rh.
When is pronounced as , it is still transcribed as r instead of n.
and are differentiated by a hyphen.
But when ng is followed by y or w, a hyphen is not used, like the original system.
In personal names, each syllable in a Sino-Korean given name is separated by a space with the first letter of each syllable capitalized (e.g. An Pok Chŏl). Syllables in a native Korean name are joined without syllabic division (e.g. Kim KKotpuni).
However, it is not really possible to follow this rule. See the section below.

The following table illustrates the differences above.

{| class="wikitable"

! Hangul !! McCune–Reischauer !! North Korean variant !! Meaning

| || || phyŏnji || letter (message)

| || || Juche || Juche

| || || anjjok || inside

| || || ppalri || quickly

| || || Palhae || Balhae

| || || mongran || Magnolia sieboldii

| || || yŏn-gu || research, study

| || || yŏng-ŏ || English language

| || || An Pok Chŏl || personal name (surname , given name )

South Korean variant

A variant of McCune–Reischauer was in official use in South Korea from 1984 to 2000. The following are the differences between the original McCune–Reischauer and the South Korean variant:

was written as shi instead of the original system's . When is followed by , it is realized as (similar to English (sh as in show)) instead of . The original system uses sh only in , as .
was written as wo instead of the original system's . Because the diphthong w ( or as a semivowel) + o () does not exist in Korean phonology, the South Korean government omitted the breve in .
Hyphens were used to distinguish between and , between and , and between and in this variant system, instead of the apostrophes and ë in the original version. Therefore, apostrophes were used only for aspiration marks and ë was not used in the South Korean system.
was written as lh instead of .
Assimilation-induced aspiration by a syllabic initial was indicated. is written as in the original system and as k in the South Korean variant.
In personal names, each syllable in a given name was separated by a hyphen. The consonants , , , and right after a hyphen were transcribed using the voiceless letter (k, t, p, and ch respectively) even when they are voiced (e.g. Namgung Tong-cha). But a hyphen can be omitted in non-Sino-Korean names (e.g. Han Hana).
However, it is not really possible to follow this rule. See the section below.

The following table illustrates the differences above.

{| class="wikitable"

! Hangul !! McCune–Reischauer !! South Korean variant !! Meaning

| || || shijang || market

| || || swipta || easy

| || || sowon || wish

| || || yŏn-gu || research, study

| || || yŏng-ŏ || English language

| || || hoesa-esŏ || at a company

| || || ch'ago-e || in a garage

| || || Palhae || Balhae

| || || nak'asan || parachute

| || || mot'ada || to be poor at

| || || kop'agi || multiplication

| || || Namgung Tong-cha || personal name (surname , given name )

ALA-LC variant

Among the various ALA-LC romanization systems is one for Korean. It is currently used for standard romanization library catalogs in North America. It is based on but deviates from McCune–Reischauer. The following are some differences between the original McCune–Reischauer and the ALA-LC variant:

Unlike the original McCune–Reischauer, it addresses word division in 29 pages of detail.
// + // is written as ts instead of ss.
If a given name is three syllables long but can also be a Sino-Korean name (e.g. 寶濫). In some cases, parents intend a dual meaning: both the meaning from a native Korean word and the meaning from hanja. In fact, ALA-LC admitted that it is not really possible to determine whether a certain given name is Sino-Korean or not.

The following table illustrates the differences above.

{| class="wikitable"

! Hangul !! McCune–Reischauer !! ALA-LC variant !! Meaning

| || || kkot i || flower + (subject marker)

| || || kutseda || strong, firm

| || || Yi Sŏng-min || personal name (surname , given name )

The older (1997) version of the ALA-LC rule used for strongly aspirated consonants and for (e.g. machangaji), even though the original McCune–Reischauer paper uses the shape for both. This distinction in the older ALA-LC rule was removed in the new ALA-LC rule above.

Notes

References

Sources

External links

PDF files of the 1939 paper, and the 1961 paper
A Practical Guide to McCune–Reischauer Romanization: Rules, guidelines, and font
Comparison table of different romanization systems from UN Working Group on Romanization Systems (PDF file)
Online tool for McCune–Reischauer romanization (with BGN modifications)