I'm a german, who's first language is russian, and ive attempted learning japanese and korean over the time, and it fucks me up that the vowels in all languages are suPER similiar (except for english). the japanese おはよう would be romanized into ''ohayou'', simply each letter's romanization (?) put together into one word, easily read and correctly pronounced by a german or russian. so it confuses me SO much that the korean 어 or 우 gets romanized into uh and woo when its really eo and u? [1/2]
i feel like the korean romanization is fit for english speakers, but not for, say, europeans? i always pronounced hyuna ''hyoonah'' bc thats how I know the vowel U, and thats how its pronounced in german and in japanese too, so I was super shocked that it's actually hyeona. also, if i remember correctly you said theres no correct romanization for (개)새기(야) or 싫어 but ?? isnt ''saekki'' or ''sirheo'' (or idk maybe even sekki/shiroh, if thats easier to pronounce) a way to romanize it? [2/2]
I’ve said before, and I will never stop saying it: I HATE the (lack of) standard romanization of Korean. It’s visually unappealing and it’s just plain incorrect and leads to far too many inaccuracies. Like you said, it completely disregards different dialects or accents of English and other languages that use similar alphabets, and augggh.
Japanese is easy to romanize because its vowels and consonants all have equivalents in the English language. (Speaking it is a different issue, aha)
Meanwhile, for Korean, there is no equivalent for certain consonant combinations and vowels, especially since English is inconsistent about the pronunciation of its own vowels depending on where it is in a word. Just take the letter ‘o’ for example, and it’s different in ‘nation’, ‘owl’, ‘women’, ‘woman’, and ‘bowl’. That really messes up Korean romanization.
You are correct that the typical romanization for 새끼 would be ‘saekki’ but not a single person without previous knowledge of the romanization system would know how that’s supposed to be said. Further, not a single person who hasn’t lived surrounded by Korean for at least two years of their life would be able to pronounce the word even if they knew how to read it.
What does the vowel combination ae mean? How is it read? Is it like the ae in the slang word ‘bae’? I know people who would read ‘sae’ as “say” and others who would read it “sah-ey” as if it were a Japanese romanization. Both are incorrect. The issue is compounded by the fact that the system is inconsistent. It would be fine if there was one set romanization everyone adheres to and learns and uses, but no one manages even two of the three.
What about that double k (ㄲ)? How is that read? It will make a little bit of sense if someone takes the time to sit down and explain it to you, but otherwise it’s incomprehensible, especially when the Korean consonant it is a double of is often translated to ‘g’ (ㄱ) and ‘k’ (ㅋ) is a separate consonant entirely.
The correct pronunciation for 새끼 is with an aspirated s, the ‘eck’ from heck, and then ‘gi’ with a hard g, like from ‘go’. However, there are words with ㄲ at the beginning of the word. How do I explain the sound then? How do I separate kk (ㄲ) from kk (ㅋㅋ) which is literally the Korean ‘k’ equivalent twice and often used to indicate snickering?
As for 싫어, its proper romanization in the revised transcription style is is ‘sireo’, but I have also seen it as ‘siluh’ and ‘siruh’. I mentioned in another post, but the closest I can explain a correct pronunciation for 싫어 is a clipped ‘she’ with the ‘ta’ from the American pronunciation of Italy, and even that is a little off.
In all honesty, the biggest issue is that even if there is a standard romanization, people don’t take the time to actually learn how the romanization should be pronounced. People will read ‘sireo’ and pronounce it like ‘sir’ and ‘oreo’ put together. People will see ‘saekki’ and know what the romanization looks like but make assumptions on what it sounds like.
Further, people don’t understand that unlike Japanese, there is no one-for-one romanization of Korean. Our consonants change pronunciation based on placement in the word, so to properly romanize things, people need to learn about Korean phonemes and allophones and how they work in relation to our alphabet. The problem is that Korean romanization is a hassle to design and a pain to learn, so no one bothers to do it right, and misinformation continues to spread.
So what can we do about it? I, uh, honestly don’t know. For my part, I’ll probably just keep explaining pronunciations the best I can in the method I always have, by using bits and pieces of existing English words. My hope is that if I do this, people will at least develop a few Korean words they recognize on sight and know how to pronounce, and that will go a long way in developing an understanding the Korean sound bank in relation to its word construction.
