Item in this morning’s paper:
“SEOUL - This nation’s newly elected president - Roh Moo Hyun, 56, whose name is pronounced ‘‘No’’ - has a nontraditional background for a senior political leader.”
Why don’t we just spell his name the way it sounds, and avoid the confusion?
Chances are the spelling is based on the conventional English rendering of the way the name was represented in Kanji. A Korean named Im once tried to explain to me that is name might or might not be the same as that of a Korean named Rim, since different people with the same name in Korean may have used different Kanji. Since the Koreans have reverted to Hangul, a true alphabet, this makes no sense. He added that his name could also be rendered Lim. Meantime, his name was really Im and pronounced that way.
Some years ago, I read an item in the newspaper that China, Japan, and Korea had finally agreed that from now on, their diplomats would refer to each other by their actual names. In trying to find out what that meant, I found out that they used some standard pronunciation of the Kanji version of the name.
Why don’t the Chumleys and Marchbanks spell their name the way they are pronounced?
Thanks for your reply, Hari.
Yes, it’s true that plenty of English words and names (like Chumley and Marchbank) aren’t pronounced as they are spelled. But this is different case. This is a name that didn’t have any spelling in Roman letters until someone assigned one. So why not assign letters that correspond to the sounds?
Hari, what is Kanji? Is that the Japanese word for Chinese Characters?
In Korean they are called Hanja.
However, the case with Roh Moo Hyun is much more complex because it has to do with hangeul writing and nothing to do with hanja.
It may be something that only a native korean can understand, because my korean wife tried to explain it to me and I didn’t quite understand. It has something to do with the way the surname “No”/“Roh” is written in hangeul and how it “looks stupid” or “just isn’t done” so it was changed. Thats not much of an explanation, but thats how it was explained to me.
I suspect it has something to do with how it looks in english. When Koreans transliterate things into english they often prefer a more aesthetically pleasing “word” rather than something more phonetically accurate. For instance:
Daewoo is really “Dae-u” there is no “w” sound in the hangeul rendering of Daewoo.
Hyundai is Hyundae. But its Hyun-DAY as opposed to Hyun-DIE as its somethimes pronounced in western countries.
The surnames are also a good example. The three most popular family names in Korea are Kim, Park and Lee. However, a true transliteration would have them written as follows:
Kim = Gim
Park = Bak
Lee = Ee (just say the letter ‘e’)
But as you can see, Kim, Park and Lee are much more aesthetically pleasing than the true transliterations. However, there is a growing trend among some koreans to transliterate their names correctly, especially if they are famous. The golfer “Si Ri Bak” comes immediately to mind. So it may be that when “No” was transliterated they found it more pleasing to spell it “Roh” rather than “No.”
My wife is away on business and I asked her about this just the other day on the phone, when she gets back I’ll ask her again and she can show me in writing what she actually meant. Since I can read and write hangeul myself.
Let me help you out, Nemo. The Hangul letter for “R” is pronounced in Korean either as “R” or “L” or “N” depending on its phonetic environment. A short rule of thumb (there are other strictures, but this seems to work fairly well) is that it’s pronounced “R” when it falls between two vowels, “N” when it begins a word, and “L” in most other situations. I think there’s one or two environments where it’s pronounced “ng” but I can’t recall so disregard that for now. FWIW, the Hangul “N” isn’t always pronounced “N” either. The exceptions to the named pronunciation (when the letter is pronounced the same as its common [as opposed to its actual] name) are completely regular. Here’s another example: In Hangul Mount Sinla is pronounced “Silla.”
I know a guy who sells Hundai autos and he used to pronounce it “hundie” around me until I told him that I’d never buy something from someone who couldn’t pronounce the name of his own product.
An earlier thread on this subject:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=57051
You’re not really helping me out Monty, since what you say is a bit of a misnomer. The hangul symbol for R/L has one distinct sound and its positioning is irrelevant. The problem lies in the fact that its a very difficult sound to replicate for native english speakers. On occasion it can sound like “n” to a non-native speaker but it is never pronounced as such because hangul has a definitive n sound on its own. Its whats being heard that differs, not the pronunciation.
Anyhow, the thread Mjollnir linked to has a better explanation than I could give by Astroboy.
Additionally, you won’t see Mount Sinla called such in modern brochures or documents or such… at least you shouldn’t. The Korean Government has standardized hangeul transliteration into english. And its not pronounced “Silla” the S-I combination in hangeul requires you add an h after the s. So its “Shilla”. The Shilla Dynasty. Its just not transliterated to reflect that. Two popular subway stops in Seoul are called Sillim and Jamsil, but they are pronounced Shillim and Jamshil.
You aren’t be serious as to “what’s being heard is different than what’s being said,” are you? There’s a concept in Linguistics known as allophones. That’s what I was trying to explain above without having to wander into Linguistic Analysis of the entire language.
Here goes: An allophone is one of a group of different phones (sounds) which, to a native speaker of whatever language we happen to be discussing at the moment, are the same sound as far as that speaker is concerned in his mind. So, to a Korean speaker, the phones [r] and [l] are allophones of the phoneme /r/. To an English speaker, the phones [p] and [p[sup]h[/sup]] are allophones of the phoneme /p/ because English aspirates voiceless stops at the beginning of syllables. To say that they are both being pronounced the same but the person hearing it is hearing it differently is not only inaccurate, it’s just plain wrong.
BTW: I do speak, read, and write Korean, to include Hangul & Hancha.
Before anyone else adds to my last posting:
Yes, I realize there’s something known as Acoustic Phonetics. That’s obviously not what was being discussed by either of us above. What we’re discussing is the particular phone being uttered and thus heard; in other words, Articulatory Phonetics.