On Fri, 5 Dec 2003, John Jenkins wrote: > On Dec 5, 2003, at 9:11 AM, Andrew C. West wrote: > > > Does anyone know what is the system of transliteration used for the > > kKorean key > > in the Unihan database ? The notes at the top of Unihan.txt simply > > state that > > kKorean gives "The Korean pronunciation(s) of this character". > > However, the > > readings are in some strange orthography that I am not familiar with.
For the nice summary of various transliteration/transcription schemes for Korean, see http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~ez3k-msym/charsets/roma-k.htm As you can see, ROK MOE (198?) scheme was (almost) identical to McCune-Reischauer scheme (that I like most), but it was replaced by a new scheme in 2000. See also http://asadal.cs.pusan.ac.kr/hangeul/rom/ts11941/index.html (ISO TR 11941) http://www.korean.go.kr/search/grammar/rule/roma_rule.html (the current ROK standard, Ministry of Culture and Tourism : it's mainly for transcription, but at the end - article 8 - the transliteration scheme is spelled out) IIRC, the original draft of TS 11941 (jointly submitted by DPRK and ROK) was closer to Yale scheme and there was a pretty widely-used Romanization filter (for reading Korean materials at a non-Korean text terminal) in the early 1990's based on the draft. However, it seems like the draft appears to have changed quite a lot before it became TS 11941. > I checked with Lee Collins (who's the person who put the data in there > originally). Quoth'a: > > It's called Yale, since it appears in a number of Samuel Martin's works > published by Yale Press. It's well documented and the closest to the > way the hangul are formed and spelled. It's not as good for > transcribing running text, though, since there are problems with > syllable boundaries. As he wrote, it's good as a transliteration scheme, but certainly is not a transcription scheme. It'd be better if the same transliteration scheme had been used in Unicode Hangul syllable names and UniHan DB. Jungshik
