59th Meeting - Aditi's Presentation on the Korean Romanisation

211022 공부방

Aditi

백선생님, Aditi, Matthew and Vivien were the members present in this meeting. We also welcomed Elena, who was joining one of our meetings for the first time.

Aditi had prepared some material for the meeting and was the one who led the discussion this time. The discussion began with a question: Why do we need Romanisation? Reflecting on the various purposes Romanisation serves was necessary to be able to then evaluate the different systems of Romanisation. In this meeting, we focused on the two most widely used systems: the McCune-Reischauer (MR) system and the Revised Romanisation (RR) system. Aditi explained the basics of each system, even getting the members to practice using them. This hands-on experience with the systems revealed the problems with them, as the members found them tricky to use and often had varying answers for the same questions. Each system was confusing in its own ways. For example, MR contains several diatric symbols, which makes for a more ‘accurate’ representation of Korean sounds, but these symbols make it very inconvenient and difficult to use. On the other hand, RR is quite easy to use, but it does not make distinctions between some Korean sounds, which can lead to confusion. The merits and demerits of both systems considered, the members all seemed to agree that, overall, RR was an easier, more intuitive system to use. Aditi elaborated on this a little further by distinguishing between the different purposes each system serves, such as MR’s importance in research and RR’s importance in common, everyday use.

The meeting was very enjoyable and, given the importance of Romanisation for anyone interested in Korea or the Korean language, very informative and relevant.