Why Pusan became Busan and more...
Oct. 23rd, 2011 12:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtran"Keep our airports clean, or we shall biff you!"
One of the tricks to Korean pronunciation is that there are consonants which change their sound according to circumstance. This is usually easily predictable, but it does lead to some confusion when converting into English.
There's one consonant that sounds like a 'g' when it's between two vowels[2] and like an unaspirated (soft) [1] 'k' when it's preceded by a consonant or occurs at the start of a sentence. So, the place known as Gimpo can be pronounced as "Gimpo" or "Kimpo" depending on what comes before it [3]. Likewise, Jeju can be pronounced as "Jeju" or "Cheju", thanks to another consonant that alternates between "j" and "ch". Other such pairs are p/b and t/d.
All this is nice and consistent, but how do you write them in English? Well, in the older system, known as McCune-Reischauer, the stronger sound was used for each of the pairs. This made some sense because when a word is said on its own, it will usually start with that sound. i.e. "Where are you going?" "Kimpo!"
However, the next trick is that for each of those pairs of consonants, there's actually another pair that can sometimes make the same sound. Just as one Korean letter can swap between 'g' and a soft 'k', there's another that goes between a soft 'k' and a hard 'k'. So, how do you tell them apart?
Well, in McCune-Reischauer, they introduced apostrophes to denote the extra aspirated letters: K', P', J' and T'. The downside of this is that the apostrophes tend to get lost when they get translated in English, and once you're a bit inconsistent, all bets are off. (In the old system, Gimpo would actually be spelt Kimp'o and kim chee would be kim ch'i. Those apostrophes rarely made it into English.)
In the new system of transliteration, there are no apostrophes and only the softest version of each pair is always used. So, how do you tell the difference? You just need to apply the pronunciation rule to work it out. If it has a vowel on each side of it, it's always going to be the softer of the two options. So, if you see Gimpo, you know that the first letter is g/k and the the fourth letter is p/p'.
So, all you need is the one simple rule [4], and suddenly you can reliably pronounce any word. Plus, there's no need for apostrophes! Very elegant!
And the next time you try to order "Bibimbap", "pibimbap" or "bibimbab", all you need to know is that it's now spelt bibimbap and so, if said in English, it should come out as "pibimbap"....
[1] Aspiration is the puff of air that comes out when you say certain consonants. The 'k' in 'kill' is aspirated, the 'k' in 'skin' usually isn't.
[2] If the consonant is at the start of a word, the preceding vowel may be at the end of the previous word.
[3] There are also doubled consonants, but I'm ignoring those for now.
[4] Okay, there is slightly more to it. Especially around trailing consonants.
One of the tricks to Korean pronunciation is that there are consonants which change their sound according to circumstance. This is usually easily predictable, but it does lead to some confusion when converting into English.
There's one consonant that sounds like a 'g' when it's between two vowels[2] and like an unaspirated (soft) [1] 'k' when it's preceded by a consonant or occurs at the start of a sentence. So, the place known as Gimpo can be pronounced as "Gimpo" or "Kimpo" depending on what comes before it [3]. Likewise, Jeju can be pronounced as "Jeju" or "Cheju", thanks to another consonant that alternates between "j" and "ch". Other such pairs are p/b and t/d.
All this is nice and consistent, but how do you write them in English? Well, in the older system, known as McCune-Reischauer, the stronger sound was used for each of the pairs. This made some sense because when a word is said on its own, it will usually start with that sound. i.e. "Where are you going?" "Kimpo!"
However, the next trick is that for each of those pairs of consonants, there's actually another pair that can sometimes make the same sound. Just as one Korean letter can swap between 'g' and a soft 'k', there's another that goes between a soft 'k' and a hard 'k'. So, how do you tell them apart?
Well, in McCune-Reischauer, they introduced apostrophes to denote the extra aspirated letters: K', P', J' and T'. The downside of this is that the apostrophes tend to get lost when they get translated in English, and once you're a bit inconsistent, all bets are off. (In the old system, Gimpo would actually be spelt Kimp'o and kim chee would be kim ch'i. Those apostrophes rarely made it into English.)
In the new system of transliteration, there are no apostrophes and only the softest version of each pair is always used. So, how do you tell the difference? You just need to apply the pronunciation rule to work it out. If it has a vowel on each side of it, it's always going to be the softer of the two options. So, if you see Gimpo, you know that the first letter is g/k and the the fourth letter is p/p'.
So, all you need is the one simple rule [4], and suddenly you can reliably pronounce any word. Plus, there's no need for apostrophes! Very elegant!
And the next time you try to order "Bibimbap", "pibimbap" or "bibimbab", all you need to know is that it's now spelt bibimbap and so, if said in English, it should come out as "pibimbap"....
[1] Aspiration is the puff of air that comes out when you say certain consonants. The 'k' in 'kill' is aspirated, the 'k' in 'skin' usually isn't.
[2] If the consonant is at the start of a word, the preceding vowel may be at the end of the previous word.
[3] There are also doubled consonants, but I'm ignoring those for now.
[4] Okay, there is slightly more to it. Especially around trailing consonants.
