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McCune-Reischauer
 
 
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McCune-Reischauer romanization is one of the two most widely used Korean language
Korean language

Korean is the official language of North Korea and South Korea. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China....
 romanization
Romanization

In linguistics, romanization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Latin alphabet, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system ....
 systems, along with the Revised Romanization of Korean
Revised Romanization of Korean

The Revised Romanization of Korean is the official Korean language romanization system in South Korea, used as a replacement for the 1984 McCune-Reischauer?based romanization system....
, which replaced (a modified) McCune-Reischauer as the official romanization system in South Korea
South Korea

South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea , ), often referred to as Korea and the "names of Korea#Revival of the names", is a Semi-presidential system republic in East Asia, located in the southern half of the Korean Peninsula....
 in 2000. Another variant of McCune-Reischauer is used as the official system in North Korea
North Korea

North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea , is a state in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula....
.

The system was created in 1937 by two America
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
ns: George M. McCune
George M. McCune

George McAfee "Mac" McCune was co-developer, with Edwin O. Reischauer, of the McCune-Reischauer romanization of Korean language. He was born in Pyongyang as the son of an American educational missionary, George Shannon McCune....
 and Edwin O. Reischauer
Edwin O. Reischauer

Edwin Oldfather Reischauer was the leading U.S. educator and noted scholar of the history and culture of Japan, and of East Asia. From 1961?66, he was the United States Ambassador to Japan....
. With a few exceptions, it does not attempt to transliterate hangul
Hangul

Hangul is the native alphabet of the Korean language, as distinguished from the logogram Sino-Korean vocabulary hanja system. It was created in the mid-fifteenth century, and is now the official writing system of both North Korea and South Korea, being co-official in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture of China....
 but rather to represent the phonetic pronunciation.






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McCune-Reischauer romanization is one of the two most widely used Korean language
Korean language

Korean is the official language of North Korea and South Korea. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China....
 romanization
Romanization

In linguistics, romanization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Latin alphabet, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system ....
 systems, along with the Revised Romanization of Korean
Revised Romanization of Korean

The Revised Romanization of Korean is the official Korean language romanization system in South Korea, used as a replacement for the 1984 McCune-Reischauer?based romanization system....
, which replaced (a modified) McCune-Reischauer as the official romanization system in South Korea
South Korea

South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea , ), often referred to as Korea and the "names of Korea#Revival of the names", is a Semi-presidential system republic in East Asia, located in the southern half of the Korean Peninsula....
 in 2000. Another variant of McCune-Reischauer is used as the official system in North Korea
North Korea

North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea , is a state in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula....
.

The system was created in 1937 by two America
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
ns: George M. McCune
George M. McCune

George McAfee "Mac" McCune was co-developer, with Edwin O. Reischauer, of the McCune-Reischauer romanization of Korean language. He was born in Pyongyang as the son of an American educational missionary, George Shannon McCune....
 and Edwin O. Reischauer
Edwin O. Reischauer

Edwin Oldfather Reischauer was the leading U.S. educator and noted scholar of the history and culture of Japan, and of East Asia. From 1961?66, he was the United States Ambassador to Japan....
. With a few exceptions, it does not attempt to transliterate hangul
Hangul

Hangul is the native alphabet of the Korean language, as distinguished from the logogram Sino-Korean vocabulary hanja system. It was created in the mid-fifteenth century, and is now the official writing system of both North Korea and South Korea, being co-official in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture of China....
 but rather to represent the phonetic pronunciation. McCune-Reischauer is widely used outside of Korea. A variant of it was used as the official romanization system in South Korea from 1984 to 2000. A third system—the Yale Romanization
Yale Romanization

The Yale romanizations are four systems created during World War II for use by United States US armed forces. They romanized the four East Asian languages of Mandarin Chinese, Yue Chinese, Korean language, and Japanese language....
 system, which is a transliteration
Transliteration

Transliteration is the practice of transcribing a word or text written in one writing system into another writing system or system of rules for such practice....
 system—exists, but is only used in academic literature, especially in linguistics. During the period of Russian interest in Korea at the beginning of the 20th century, attempts were also made at representing Korean in Cyrillic
Kontsevich system

The Kontsevich system for the Cyrillization of the Korean language was created by the Russian scholar Lev Kontsevitch on the basis of the earlier system designed by Aleksandr Kholodovich ....
.

Characteristics and criticism

The McCune-Reischauer system is friendly to Westerners. For example, Korean has phonologically
Phonology

Phonology is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use. Just as a language has syntax and vocabulary, it also has a phonology in the sense of a sound system....
 no distinction between voiced and voiceless consonants, but it phonetically
Phonetics

Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds , and the processes of their physiological production, auditory reception, and neurophysiological perception....
 distinguishes them. Aspirated
Aspiration (phonetics)

In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of Earth's atmosphere that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents....
 consonants like "p' ", "k' ", and "t' " are distinguished by apostrophe from unaspirated ones, which may be falsely understood as a separator between syllables (as in ? twich'agi, which consists of the syllables twi, ch'a and gi). The apostrophe is also used to mark transcriptions of as opposed to : ? chan'gum vs. ? changum).

Critics of the McCune-Reischauer system claim that casual users of the system omit the breve
Breve

A breve is a diacritical mark ?, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. It looks similar to caron , but the caron has a sharp tip, whilst the breve is rounded....
s over the o for ? and the u for ?, because typing o or u without the breves is often easier than adding them. This, in turn, can lead to confusion over whether the o being Romanized is ? or ? or the u being Romanized is ? or ?. Casual users also often omit the apostrophe that differentiates aspirated consonants (?, ?, ?, and ?) from their unaspirated counterparts (?, ?, ?, and ?), which can also lead to confusion. Defenders of the McCune-Reischauer system, however, respond that a casual user unfamiliar with Korean can easily approximate the actual pronunciation of Korean names or words even when breves and apostrophes are omitted, although it is still best to include them.

Such common omissions were the primary reason the South Korean government adopted a revised system of romanization in 2000. Critics of the revised system claim it fails to represent ? and ? in an easily recognizable way, and that it misrepresents the unaspirated consonants as they are actually pronounced.

Meanwhile, despite official adoption of the new system in South Korea, many in the Korean Studies community, both in and out of South Korea, and international geographic and cartographic conventions generally continue to use either the McCune-Reischauer or Yale system, and North Korea uses a version of McCune-Reischauer. Even within South Korea, usage of the new system is less than universal, as was the case with the variant of McCune-Reischauer that was the official Romanization system between 1984/1988 and 2000.

Guide

This is a simplified guide for the McCune-Reischauer system. It is very useful for the transliteration of names but will not convert every word properly as several Korean letters are pronounced differently depending on their position.

Vowels

?? ????? ? ? ? ??? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ??
Vowel a ya o yo o yo u yu u i wa wo ae e *oe wi ui wae we yae ye
* e - written as ë after?and ?

Consonants


† An initial consonant before a vowel to indicate absence of sound.

Basically, when deciding whether g or k, b or p, d or t and j or ch is used, use g, b, d or j if it is voiced, and k, p, t or ch if it is not. Pronunciations such as these take precedence over the rules in the table above.

Double Consonants
  • ? kk
  • ? tt
  • ? pp
  • ? ss
  • ? tch


  • ? ks(h)
  • ? nj
  • ? n
  • ? lg
  • ? lm
  • ? lb
  • ? ls(h)
  • ? lt
  • ? lp'
  • ? l
  • ? bs


Examples

Simple examples:

  • ?? pusan
    Busan

    Busan Metropolitan City, also known as Pusan is the largest seaport city in South Korea. Busan has a population of 3.65 million and is South Korea's second largest metropolis, after Seoul....
  • ??? mothada
  • ?? mokta
  • ??? mogotta


Examples with assimilation:

  • ?? yollak
  • ??? han'gungmal
  • ???? mongnun'gunyo
  • ?? yongnyang
  • ?? simni
  • ?? kach'i
  • ?? ant'a


Examples where pronunciation takes precedence:

  • ?? hancha (pronunciation: ?? hantcha), Sino-Korean character
    Hanja

    Hanja is the Korean language name for Chinese characters. More specifically, it refers to those Chinese characters borrowed from Chinese language and incorporated into the Korean language with Korean pronunciation....
     (cf. ? ? (? ?) han ja, "one letter (one character)")
  • ?? oekwa (pronunciation: ?? oekkwa), surgery (cf. ?? oegwa, "outer anklebone")
  • ?? anta (pronunciation: ?? antta) and its conjugation ?? anko (pronunciation: ?? ankko) (as a rule, all verbs ending in -?? (pronunciation: -?? ntta) and -?? (pronunciation: -?? mtta) are nta and mta except for the present progressive verb ending -??/-??, which is nda or nunda)
  • ?? ???????. Olhae sorunnyodorimnida.
  • ?? choun, good


For an example of a short text transcribed in the McCune-Reischauer system, see Aegukka
Aegukka

Aegukka is the national anthem of North Korea. It is also known by the first phrase of the song Ach'imun pinnara or "Let Morning Shine."Before the founding of North Korea, the northern part of Korea initially had as its anthem the Aegukga as South Korea, but North Korea adopted this newly-written piece in 1947....
, the national anthem of South Korea
South Korea

South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea , ), often referred to as Korea and the "names of Korea#Revival of the names", is a Semi-presidential system republic in East Asia, located in the southern half of the Korean Peninsula....
.

North Korean variant

In North Korea
North Korea

North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea , is a state in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula....
's variant of McCune-Reischauer, aspirated consonants are not represented by an apostrophe, but instead by adding an "h". For example, ?? is written as Phyongan. With the original system this would be written as P'yongan.

South Korean variant

In South Korea
South Korea

South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea , ), often referred to as Korea and the "names of Korea#Revival of the names", is a Semi-presidential system republic in East Asia, located in the southern half of the Korean Peninsula....
's variant of McCune-Reischauer, in official use from 1984 to 2000, ? is written as shi instead of the original system's si, and others like ?, ? and so on, where the pronunciation is deemed closer to a sh sound than a s sound, are romanised with sh instead of s. The original system deploys sh only in the combination ?, as shwi.

? is written as wo instead of the original system's wo in this variant. Because the diphthong w (? or ? as a semivowel
Semivowel

Semivowels, also known as glides or non-syllabic vowels, are vowels that form diphthongs with full syllable vowels. That is, they are vowel-like sounds that do not form the syllable nucleus of a syllable or mora ; they are not the most prominence part of the syllable....
) + o does not exist in Korean phonology, the South Korean government omitted a breve in wo.

Hyphens are used to distinguish between ?? and ?? in this variant system, instead of the apostrophes in the original version. Therefore apostrophes are only used for aspiration marks in the South Korean system.

Additionally, assimilation-induced aspiration by an initial ? is indicated, e.g. ??? (; "a directly-governed city") is written as chik'alshi, which under the official system is chikhalsi.

See also

  • List of Korea-related topics
    List of Korea-related topics

    This is a list of articles on Korea-related people, places, things, and concepts. For help on how to use this list, see the #Introduction below....
  • Kontsevich system
    Kontsevich system

    The Kontsevich system for the Cyrillization of the Korean language was created by the Russian scholar Lev Kontsevitch on the basis of the earlier system designed by Aleksandr Kholodovich ....
    —Cyrillization of Korean


Footnotes


External links

  • : Rules, guidelines, and font
  • PDF files of the
    • , and the