Is there in Korea ( both North and South Korea) consensus on how to pronounce baduk?
I wouldn’t be surprised if there exists a difference in pronunciation in (just an example) Manpo (NK) and Masan (SK).
There’s a handful of dialects—Wikipedia gives 7, but these categories are always fuzzy—but they are all fairly similar. Also note that that the North/South division does not respect dialectical borders. There are some profound differences in vocabulary because of the DMZ, but they mostly apply to recent loanwords and hence “baduk” is basically the word for Go across the peninsula. Based on the list of sound correspondences I was able to find, I think “baduk” is pronounced nearly the same across the penninsula as well, and the differences (tone and vowel length) aren’t the things that dramatically change the Romanization. (I do want to say that I feel good enough about what I found for a forum post, but if anyone has firsthand knowledge or a clearer source, there’s a chance I’m wrong here.)
The North/South split admits a dramatic difference, though. The South uses Revised Romanization (RR) and the North uses McCune–Reischauer (MR). As a consequence, “paduk” is still the preferred spelling in the North. My politics are such that that’s reason enough to prefer “baduk” but any insistence from the OP that “paduk” is wrong or outdated is belied by the fact that the Pyeongyang government still uses it. Pyeongyang speaks the Seoul dialect, though, so the pronunciation, but not the Romanization, is basically identical between the seats of the two governments.
6 Likes
Here’s some adorable Pyongyang kids learning Paduk. There’s more speaking in the second half of the video. To me, there is not much of a difference from Seoul pronunciation, but as @rikforto pointed out, these are both geographically central. You may find a bigger difference between Manpo and Mansu. (p.s. are these significant cities? I hadn’t heard of them)
1 Like
I think these were chosen as arbitrary districts in the extreme north of North Korea and the extreme south of South Korea, to imply that due to the long distance, probably the accent is quite different as well.
2 Likes
North Korean pronunciation of Paduk
1 Like
2 Likes
That is a really great map you posted there! Regarding your question, I’ve been to many places all over South Korea and meet a lot of Koreans. I’ve been very close to Changwon (Masan does not exist anymore) a few times and they do indeed have their own way of speaking (compared to Seoul). Still as far as I can tell the pronunciation of Baduk is pretty much the same everywhere. I do not know that much about N.K. and their pronunciation for obvious reasons.
One interesting thing about this map is that even though S.K. and N.K. speak the same language and use the same alphabet the North uses the deprecated MR romanization system while the South uses the newer, superior RR system.
(quote has nothing to do with you, it’s regarding the sentiment from OGF in general)
No Regenwasser you are so wrong about RR. MR is actually so much better and RR is weird!
Meanwhile MR:
- Writes 함흥 as Hamhung which would be pronounced as 햄헝 by Americans (most) and as 함훙 by Europeans (most).
- Writes Nampo and Pyongyang with the same charactor “o”
- And my absolute favorite: Writes 김책 as Kimchaek so basically 킴책
The MR romanization really is something else.
I’d agree with that from what I’ve experienced.
There is some important thing you left out here. The South did have a spelling reform which causes some major spelling and pronunciation differences. But that does not apply to the word Baduk.
I mean N.K. is famous for being outdated in almost any area. If I’d take away anything from this then that this proves that “Paduk” is wrong and outdated.
I can really picture Kim Jong-un (who might be one of the biggest victims of MR now that I read his name) sitting there with his friends and laughing at foreigners that learned Korean on OGF and keep saying 파둑 all day long.
Quite interesting! The city of Mansu does not exist as far as I know. Mixing up “Mansu” and Masan is of course something that can happen. Masan was not really a significant city but large enough to be marked on the map. It has since been merged with Changwon.
None of the transliteration you posted are proper MR. Also, I think these examples also point out difficulties in the the revised romanization as well.
Hamheung might be interpreted as 함헤웅
Byeongyang and as 비옹얭
Gimchek might be close enough, but the G would be way more voiced than the Korean pronunciation.
2 Likes
How is it deprecated, if it’s actually being used as the official romanisation of NK?
Really, these are just two systems converting Hangul to Latin. They’re both equally valid.
It’s like calling the British spelling (harbour) deprecated, since there’s the newer, superior American spelling (harbor).
Nonsense, they’re both in use, and equally valid ways to write English.
4 Likes
Well this is just true 
2 Likes
Nah, it’s ugly 
4 Likes
The South did have a spelling reform which causes some major spelling and pronunciation differences. But that does not apply to the word Baduk.
Even if the spelling reform had changed the hangeul rendering of 바둑, it wouldn’t impact either Romanization because neither RR nor MR are transliteral. But it’s worse than that, because RR deliberately preserves the unreformed spelling in a few cases—noteably the surname 이 (리 pre-reform), where “Lee” is an explicit exception. It’s the Yale Romanization, YR, that is impacted by the reform because it is transliteral, though in practice it mostly follows the reform because it’s used in English-language linguistics papers and most informants are therefore South Korean.
You also have the causation backwards; the reform follows sound changes in the Gyeonggi dialect, not the other way around. This mostly doesn’t impact your point, but it goes to what I was saying above that you’re misunderstanding what these Romanizations are for.
I mean N.K. is famous for being outdated in almost any area. If I’d take away anything from this then that this proves that “Paduk” is wrong and outdated.
If the DPRK government would like my opinion, they should switch to RR. But until then, there is no other standard for current than what is currently in use, and MR still enjoys current use by dint of the Pyeongyang government continuing to use it. It’s an open-shut descriptive question, no matter your prescriptive questions.
I cannot stress enough, I am partisan to your preferred Romanization, but the reasons you are bringing are far afield of the kind of proof you need to bring to make a prescriptive argument here.
3 Likes
huh? according to leo (the online dictionary), its harbor in America, not “habor”. Right?
I’m also questioning right now if I’ve mispronounced that word my whole life …
2 Likes
I think the problem is that @Regenwasser expects the romanisation to be a guide to how to pronounce Korean words to a speaker of the English language.
But that’s not the purpose. The purpose of romanisation is to representing words from the Korean language unambiguously using Latin characters (and potentially diacritics or interpunction).
Both MR and RR succeed at this job. You can’t make a 1-1 map between Korean romanisation and sounds of the English language anyways (or the other way around), but Korean is quite nice in that you can make a 1-1 map between hangul and romanisation.
Regardless of which romanisation you use or even if you use hangul, neither gives you a clue of how to properly pronounce words in Korean, since you still need to learn the phonology of the language (or how to spell your words if you’re already a Korean speaker learning how to write).
5 Likes
Whoops, critical typo
4 Likes
Also:
Writes Nampo and Pyongyang with the same charactor “o”
In MR it’s Nampo and P’yŏngyang. I am not a fan of the diacritics, but MR distinguishes between 오 and 어—and to it’s boosters’ credit, without a digraph!
2 Likes
Like this? https://youtu.be/WBvkmWDjsYc?t=33
1 Like
Correct, just an example.
1 Like
Hey this is kind of fun: 바둑의 뜻과 지역별 사투리(방언)
Seems to be a Korean dialect dictionary of sorts. Tbh I am skeptical of accuracy since it looks auto generated, but maybe gives some ideas about how pronunciations of 바둑 might differ across the country.
Unsurprisingly, the biggest difference is in the vowels. But it looks like at least one accent has it as badol 
no, the "r"s sounds more like a barking dog 
1 Like