What's in a Name???

Since I[m planning on making Korea my home for the next several years (heck, I could almost see myself settling down here permanently I enjoy it so much), I thought Id be more diligent about learning Hangul (한굴). I have to admit that last year, I failed miserably at learning this language. While I did okay at picking up things phonetically, and I still do so, I resisted trying to learn the written character set.

But this time is different. I am more determined, plus something just clicked. I think my previous attempts focused too much on learning the entire alphabet all at once, rather in pieces. When I finally decided to break learning the letters into vowels, consonants, and complex vowels, remembering the corresponding sounds became easy. That and I found a few good YouTube videos that focused on simple pronunciation.

That being said, Im still thrown off by a few things that creep into my daily life. You see, since English is such an important thing, many business cards are two-sided. One side is written in Hangul and the reverse in is English. I often find myself looking at the individuals Korean name and trying to see why they chose their English name. It makes for some good conversations around some soju. One thing that Ive noticed is that the Lee surname really isnt written as Lee.

Its written as 이 (ee) rather than 리(lee). I brought this discrepancy to my manager and asked for the reasoning behind it. It seems that there are actually laws on the books that dictate how certain words are to be spelled in English. Now I know that there is a government transliteration standard, but I was surprised that it was extended to names. Talk about making learning the language a little bit more confusing. In fact, there is litigation underway to change the practice to change transliteration of the above to something more like Yui, which would be a better approximation of the actual spelling.

Oh, and one more thing it seems that in the UK they are finally going to drop the i before e except after c rule in English because there are too many exceptions!

Category:

Education

Tags:

• qiranger
• south
• korea
• hangul
• language
• english
• rules

[SpyderR0de0]

I was going to star learning Hangul and Korean soon, Is their any good online programs that can help me? Or should i go out and get books, or try Rosetta Stone?

[qiranger]

Find a Korean friend and just talk with them. Once you get the basics, it's pretty easy.

[bundangbear]

Some words are just not properly translatable NOR transliteratable, and that is that. I think the best way for any true scholar is to actually try to learn the target language, like you're doing! 짱!

[qiranger]

;-)

[fehquig]

Interesting...

[qiranger]

Word.

[sombarnharmanrattatt]

저도 이런 개정이 달갑지 않습니다. 비록 법 개정한지 몇년이 지났지만... 우리 한국 사람에게는 "Pusan"이나 "Busan"이나 똑같은 도시인게 당연하지만, 한국어를 전혀 모르는 대부분의 외국 사람들에게는 두 도시가 같은지, 다른지 헷갈리고 (아마 다른 도시라고 생각할 가능성이 높지요) 항상 설명이 필요하지요. 그래서 저는 항상 이런 법개정을 할 때 한국어를 모르는 외국인을 염두해둬야한다고 생각합니다. 모든 사람이 한국어를 잘 할 수도 없고, 배울 필요도 못느끼거든요.

[KatiushaVN4]

@Seres1091

No such thing as "Ly dynasty". LOL Great!

Well, I can see that the founder family of Tang dynasty had the surname 李, but that doesn't mean anything. The thing is that you don't have the official 李 Dynasty. Do you have 陳 dynasty?? Probably not. But I see whole bunch of you Chinese have our surname 陳 (Chen, Chan), but we call Tran.

Do you have 黎 dynasty?? I don't think so, but we do have 黎 dynasty. I see that bunch of you Chinese have our surname 黎 (Li, Lai). You'd better stop copy !

[Seres1091]

@KatiushaVN4 No such thing as "李 dynasty" only Lý, a Latin script. 李 family has been around since 商 dynasty, and they're the founders of Tang, my ancestors also, 2000 years and 500 years before fake "Lý dynasty" respectively. The 李 name was given to some Viets just like American blacks have Anglo names, given by former masters.

Vietnam doesn't have language, only master France's language, as evident by Latin letters.