McCune–Reischauer romanization is one of the two most widely used Korean-language romanization systems. It was created in 1937 and the ALA-LC variant based on it is currently used for standard romanization library catalogs in North America. The system was first published in 1939 by George M. McCune and Edwin O. Reischauer. With a few exceptions, it does not attempt to transliterate Korean hangul but rather represents the phonetic pronunciation. A variant of McCune–Reischauer is still used as the official system in North Korea. South Korea formerly used another variant of McCune–Reischauer as its official system between 1984 and 2000, but replaced it with the Revised Romanization of Korean in 2000.

Characteristics and usage

Under the McCune–Reischauer system, aspirated consonants like, , and are distinguished by apostrophes from unaspirated ones. The apostrophe is also used to distinguish ㄴㄱ from ㅇㅇ: 연구 is transcribed as while 영어 is. The breve is used to differentiate vowels in Korean: ㅜ is spelled, ㅡ is , ㅗ is and ㅓ is.

Criticism

Because of the dual use of apostrophes—the more common being for syllabic boundaries—it can be ambiguous for persons unfamiliar with McCune–Reischauer as to how a romanized Korean word is pronounced. For example, 뒤차기 →, which consists of the syllables , and ). In the early days of the Internet, the apostrophe and breve were even omitted altogether for both technical and practical reasons, which made it impossible to differentiate the aspirated consonants, , and from the unaspirated consonants , , and , ㄴㄱ from ㅇㅇ , and the vowels ㅜ and ㅡ as well as ㅗ from ㅓ. As a result, the South Korean government adopted a revised system of romanization in 2000. However, Korean critics claimed that the Revised System fails to represent ㅓ and ㅡ in a way that is easily recognizable and misrepresents the way that the unaspirated consonants are actually pronounced. Regardless of the official adoption of the new system in South Korea, North Korea continues to use a version of McCune–Reischauer.

Guide

This is a simplified guide for the McCune–Reischauer system.

Vowels

Consonants

For ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ, and ㅈ, the letters g, d, b, or j are used if voiced, k, t, p, or ch otherwise. Pronunciations such as those take precedence over the rules in the table above.

Examples

Exceptions that do not predict pronunciation

Personal names

The rules stated above are also applied in personal names, except between a surname and a given name. A surname and a given name are separated by a space, but multiple syllables within a surname or within a given name are joined without hyphens or spaces. The original 1939 paper states the following: "The Romanization of Proper Names and Titles Proper names like words should not be divided into syllables, as has often been done in the past. For example, the geographic term 光州 should be romanized Kwangju. Irregularities occurring in proper names such as in P'yŏngyang 平壤 which is colloquially pronounced P'iyang or P'eyang, should usually be ignored in romanizations intended for scholarly use. Personal names demand special consideration. As in China, the great majority of surnames are monosyllables representing a single character, while a few are two character names. The given name, which follows the surname, usually has two characters but sometimes only one. In both two character surnames and two character given names the general rules of euphonic change should be observed, and the two syllables should be written together. The problem of the euphonic changes between a surname and given name or title is very difficult. A man known as Paek Paksa 백 박사 (Dr. Paek) might prove to have the full name of Paeng Nakchun 백낙준 because of the assimilation of the final k of his surname and the initial n of his given name. The use in romanization of both Dr. Paek and Paeng Nakchun for the same person would result in considerable confusion. Therefore it seems best for romanizations purposes to disregard euphonic changes between surnames and given names or titles, so that the above name should be romanized Paek Nakchun. For ordinary social use our romanization often may not prove suitable for personal names. Even in scholarly work there are also a few instances of rather well-established romanizations for proper names which might be left unchanged, just as the names of some of the provinces of China still have traditional romanizations not in accord with the Wade–Giles system. There is, for example, Seoul, which some may prefer to the Sŏul of our system. Another very important example is 李, the surname of the kings of the last Korean dynasty and still a very common Korean surname. Actually it is pronounced in the standard dialect and should be romanized I, but some may prefer to retain the older romanization, Yi, because that is already the familiar form. In any case the other romanizations of 李, Ri and Li, should not be used." The original paper also gives McCune–Reischauer romanizations for a number of other personal names:

Variants

North Korean variant

A variant of McCune–Reischauer is currently in official use in North Korea. The following are the differences between the original McCune–Reischauer and the North Korean variant: The following table illustrates the differences above.

South Korean variant

A variant of McCune–Reischauer was in official use in South Korea from 1984 to 2000. The following are the differences between the original McCune–Reischauer and the South Korean variant: The following table illustrates the differences above.

ALA-LC variant

The ALA-LC romanization of Korean is based on but deviates from McCune–Reischauer. The following table illustrates the differences above.

Other systems

A third system, the Yale romanization system, which is a transliteration system, exists but is used only in academic literature, especially in linguistics. The Kontsevich system, based on the earlier Kholodovich system, is used for transliterating Korean into the Cyrillic script. Like McCune–Reischauer romanization it attempts to represent the pronunciation of a word, rather than provide letter-to-letter correspondence.

Footnotes