“What is going on in Jeju-do?” - the greatest thread in the history of forums, locked by a moderator after 12,239 pages of heated debate,
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Not even going to argue about this but I want you to know that I visibly shook my head after reading that sentence.
Yes, it would. You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Why would you even write all this down if you have no clue?
It does not. You can easily read on wikipedia that
the official spelling of this surname is I
The reason why people still use “Lee” is because changing your name on the passport is not easy and because Koreans do not care all to much for using the correct romanization.
I literally never said that. What I said is that the spelling reform causes “major pronunciation” differences (in how the words should be pronounced according to their spelling).
I didn’t ask any questions. I informed you that MR is deprecated. I do not really care what N.K. has implemented as standards. I see no reason to acknowledge them or even follow them. But you’re of course free to learn Korean using the North Korean approach.
No Regenwasser does not do that and I can’t believe you have the audacity to imply I do. As I have told you several times I speak Korean and several European languages fluently. Do you really think I in my position could get such an idea? In terms of Korean I’m basically a high rank dan and you are a DDK but for some unfathomable reason you still try to find fault in everything I write.
I think it’s pretty clear based on the comments in this thread that @rikforto has a strong understanding of Korean and language in general. I’m not sure why you say otherwise.
Please stop questioning other people’s expertise, especially when you have made it abundantly clear you lack an understanding of these topics yourself.
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I see now what you meant, but this interpretation is no better. The spelling reform aligned the official spelling with the pronunciation in the prestige dialect, eliminating the difference. Regardless, as I already pointed out:
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However good you may be in Korean, your debating skills are clearly lacking. If you were more respectful, maybe you could reach more people with your ideas. Its good to reflect on oneself, and be open and tolerant towards other peoples views.
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Happy to disclose my Korean is pretty shoddy. I lived in Seoul, I took classes, and I can get around on some basics, but all sorts of finer points elude me; what I also bring to the table is I know more formal linguistics than the average bear.
And I will also take @Regenwasser at face that his Korean is fluent. This is easy for me to do since I don’t think the issue of proper Romanization is one of fluency since the prescribed and described script for fluent Korean communication is hangeul. The question of whether or not a widely used, state-sanctioned, (ugly) Romanization is in fact “correct” isn’t something we need fluent informants to filter our judgments about—it’s not even a hard question!
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Look I’ve tried to be respectful in the beginning but at some point enough is enough. I’ve said it’s the last straw two times and then came back both times just because there was always more and more misinformation added on top of the pile.
And the thing is there is never some kind of catharsis or reflection by the other people in this thread. It’s always the same pattern:
- Someone writes something in a way that looks like he is 100% certain and knows about the topic. It looks like it has to be true and is right out of a text book.
- I point out that what they say is certifiably wrong.
- Another person who does know nothing about the topic jumps in and points out something that is completely irrelevant or tries to find the reason why I could not understand the person who made the false claim.
- I reply in an even harsher way.
- No one ever acknowledges that they were wrong. Either they keep arguing if it’s a point where I cannot easily prove they’re wrong or if it’s something that is subjective to some degree. Or they just straight up ignore me pointing out they’re wrong because they know it too and then there is no acknowledgement or accountability either.
And this cycle keeps repeating.
I did not question his expertise, I said he is wrong because he literally is. It’s a simple wikipedia search to show that. And while he has a really nice English writing style (I have that too in my native language) I just do not understand why he would write something wrong in a way that sounds like he is a professor in the topic.
This time it is really the final straw though. I have no idea where I got those extra straws from but this third last straw is also the straw that broke the camels back. I’m out of this thread. Have fun playing Dungeons & Dragons Korea edition where each of you acts like they know Korean and you can debate each other about the made up version of Korean that seems to exist in this thread. It’s probably spoken in the city of Mansu.
This seems like the perfect time and place to ask @Gia why the Greek rendering of the word go (from her previous user title, Goddess of go) transliterates to “nko” (literally, “gko”). How would it be pronounced differently if it was just rendered with the Greek characters for “go” without inserting the Greek “k” in there? And is the word ko spelled with the Greek characters for “ko”? 
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It seems I missed a few posts… oh well
I don’t hear a “n” at the beginning when I say or hear other Greeks say “Go”. Sometimes, there is indeed a “n” sound when the equivalent of “g” sound is made, but for Go specifically, I hear (and speak) a clear “g” sound, with no “n”.
We translitarate it as “g”, but the first letter in Γκο is “γ” (this sound https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhJmfJjobf0&ab_channel=AnnatheGreekteacher). We don’t have a letter for g, we use two consonants to form it, either γγ or γκ.
Ko is Ko (one of those is written with Greek characters 
)
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@Regenwasser, this will be the last warning.
You have to start treating people with respect here, and stop assuming your level of Korean is superior to anybody who disagrees with you (even if it is). If not, I have no other option than to silence you, because you are upsetting people for the third time in this thread.
You can discuss the points that people make using valid arguments based on the content of their messages. You cannot insinuate that your Korean is superior to others and therefore other opinions are wrong.
I hope you can change this attitude, because this is the third time I have to ask you.
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Oh, interesting. I recently taught myself how to read biblical Greek, and γ appears as a standalone letter there. When it does appear in front of another γ or κ, those combinations are pronounced ng/nk. So in modern Greek, you couldn’t just spell the game as Γο? What about Γγo?
camel’s
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You, don’t want to open that can of worms. Greeks usually have a very low regard for the Erasmian pronunciation of Classical Greek, used by Western Academia since Erasmus of Rotterdam, which deviates greatly from the Byzantine and Modern Greek pronunication.
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It really depends. I really don’t want to go into specifics right now!
Γο would sound completely wrong, because γ doesn’t imply a g sound. I always find it funny that one of the first words foreigners have to learn is γεια, which is hello, where the first letter ir really hard to get right for most of them! However, because greeklish is a thing (writing Greek with the Latin alphabet), I think many Greeks would instantly get that someone forgot to switch keyboards and actually meant Go. For example, if someone writes “γοογλε” sometimes in my head I automatically read it as “google”.
Two γγ’s to form g are used in specific situations that have to do with spelling, foreign words that get transliterated get the γκ version.
Did it take less that 100 posts since I predicted this would happen? 
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You’re fluent at Korean and several European languages, but this does not mean that people who are not fluent in Korean have nothing to say in this topic. I for one thinks it’s irrelevant whether you’re fluent in any language at all, and would take the opinion of a linguist knowing phonology over an average Korean native speaker; one knows how to speak a language, the other has studied the exact topic of this discussion.
I find fault in your writing because you’re calling MR deprecated and RR superior, giving (wrong) transliterations of MR as examples, and giving as a reason that “Americans / Europeans would read transliteration X as Y”, and otherwise mentioning the reason for it being that “N.K. is famous for being outdated in almost any area”.
North Korea is a country with lots of people living in it, actively using MR to write Korean words in the Latin alphabet. It’s even happening officially. That makes it not deprecated more or less by definition of the word deprecated. It’s not deprecated in North Korea.
As for why I said that you seem to expect that the romanisation ought to be a guide to how to pronounce words, this is literally the argument you use to discredit MR:
Romanised Korean is not supposed to be read by an American / European, interpreting it as if it was a word in their own language. That’s not the function of romanisations.
Lots of people pronounce Tōkyō incorrectly, because they don’t know how to pronounce Japanese. But that doesn’t make the romanisation “wrong”. It serves it purpose as a system to write Japanese words using Latin letters, and you still have to learn the pronunciation of those letters in order to pronounce the word correctly.
The exact same holds for people pronouncing Korean words incorrectly, because they are reading the symbols as they are pronounced in their native language. That’s the people who don’t know Korean at fault, not the romanisation failing in doing what it is meant to do.
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Any hints as to how to pronounce it?
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The video I posted above has a few examples
Also, the face Yannis makes here is all of us
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I don’t know how greeks pronounce γ, but I know that people who are a native speakers of a slavic language tend to pronounce “h” somewhat similar to how “g” is pronounced in Dutch (/x/, similar to how Germans pronounce the “ch” in “nacht”).
I remember that pope John Paul II, who was from Poland, once gave a public blessing in Dutch, pronouncing “heilige geest” (holy spirit) as what sounded like “geilige geest” (horney spirit) to Dutch ears.
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