Revised Romanization of Korean
Revised Romanization of Korean is the official Korean language romanization system in South Korea. It was developed by the National Academy of the Korean Language from 1995 and was released to the public on 7 July 2000 by South Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism in Proclamation No. 2000-8.
Conversion process
The following steps are applied in order to construct an RR romanization from a Hangul string:- With some exceptions, swap out portions of the Hangul string to reflect standard pronunciation spellings. For example, swap out "독립문" with "동님문" ; the latter spelling is how the former is pronounced.
- * Exceptions include the given names of people or between syllables that will receive hyphens in the romanization.
- For each syllable, in order from left to right, break the syllable down into jamo. For each jamo, refer to either the consonant or vowel table below, depending on the role the jamo is serving. Some consonants are rendered differently depending on whether they are the initial or final character of a syllable; use the corresponding romanization.
- Some modifications may need to be made to the romanization. For example, a space should be inserted between family and given names, proper nouns should be capitalized, and hyphens should be inserted before administrative units. There are a number of scenarios where hyphens can optionally be inserted, but optional hyphens are discouraged.
| Hangul | ㅏ | ㅐ | ㅑ | ㅒ | ㅓ | ㅔ | ㅕ | ㅖ | ㅗ | ㅘ | ㅙ | ㅚ | ㅛ | ㅜ | ㅝ | ㅞ | ㅟ | ㅠ | ㅡ | ㅢ | ㅣ |
| Romanization | a | ae | ya | yae | eo | e | yeo | ye | o | wa | wae | oe | yo | u | wo | we | wi | yu | eu | ui | i |
Examples
- 안녕하세요 ㅇㅏㄴㄴㅕㅇㅎㅏㅅㅔㅇㅛ annyeonghaseyo
- 종로구 종노구 ㅈㅗㅇㄴㅗㄱㅜ jongnogu Jongno-gu
- 홍빛나 ㅎㅗㅇㅂㅣㅊㄴㅏ hongbitna Hong Bitna
Hyphenation
In RR, hyphens can be either optional or mandatory.- Optional hyphens are used in two scenarios:
- # Disambiguating pronunciation
- # Between syllables of a given name
- Mandatory hyphens are for separating an administrative unit
The National Institute of Korean Language has stated that the use of optional hyphens should be discouraged. One member wrote the following:
Linguistic characteristics
The unaspirated consonants ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ, and ㅈ are represented as ⟨g⟩, ⟨d⟩, ⟨b⟩, and ⟨j⟩ respectively. The aspirated consonants ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ, and ㅊ are represented as ⟨k⟩, ⟨t⟩, ⟨p⟩, ⟨ch⟩. These letter pairs have a similar aspiration distinction in English at the beginning of a syllable ; this approach is also used by Hanyu Pinyin.When placed in the final position, ㄱ, ㄷ, and ㅂ are romanized as ⟨k⟩, ⟨t⟩, and ⟨p⟩ respectively, as they are neutralized to unreleased stops: 벽 → byeok, 밖 → bak, 부엌 → bueok; 벽에 → byeog'e, 밖에 → bakke, 부엌에 → bueoke, 입 → ip, 입에 → ib'e.
Vowels ㅓ and ㅡ are written as ⟨eo⟩ and ⟨eu⟩ respectively. However, ㅝ is written as ⟨wo⟩, not ⟨weo⟩; and ㅢ is written as ⟨ui⟩, not ⟨eui⟩.
ㅅ in the syllable-initial position is always written as ⟨s⟩. When followed by another consonant or when in the final position, it is written as ⟨t⟩: 옷 → ot.
ㄹ is ⟨r⟩ before a vowel or a semivowel and ⟨l⟩ everywhere else: 리을 → rieul, 철원 → Cheorwon, 울릉도 → Ulleungdo, 발해 → Balhae. ㄴ is written ⟨l⟩ whenever pronounced as a lateral rather than as a nasal consonant: 전라북도 → Jeollabuk-do
Phonological changes are reflected where ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ and ㅈ are adjacent to ㅎ: 좋고 → joko, 놓다 → nota, 잡혀 → japyeo, 낳지 → nachi. However, aspirated sounds are not reflected in case of nouns where ㅎ follows ㄱ, ㄷ and ㅂ: 묵호 → Mukho, 집현전 → Jiphyeonjeon.
In addition, special provisions are for regular phonological rules in exceptions to transcription.
Reversible variant
When reversibility is desired, namely in academic articles, a variant of RR can be applied that allows for a letter-by-letter transliteration. For example, 독립 would be rendered as doglib in the letter-by-letter transliteration, whereas by its normal pronunciation spelling it would be dongnip. In this case, hyphens can be used to denote a soundless syllable-initial ㅇ. For example, 없었습니다 → ''eobs-eoss-seubnida.''Background
The new system attempts to address perceived problems in the implementation of the McCune–Reischauer system, such as the phenomena where different consonants and vowels became indistinguishable in the absence of special symbols. To be specific, under the McCune–Reischauer system, the consonants ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ and ㅈ and ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ and ㅊ became indistinguishable when the apostrophe was removed. In addition, the vowels ㅓ and ㅗ, as well as ㅡ and ㅜ, became indistinguishable when the breve was removed. Especially in early internet use, where omission of apostrophes and breves is common, this caused confusion. To this end, the system has an explicit goal of using only the 26 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet.The system was developed in anticipation of the 2002 FIFA World Cup, which was to be partly hosted in South Korea.