By Michael Breen
Aliens, be careful what you moan about. The government is mulling a change in its method for spelling Korean words in English, apparently because of foreigner criticism.
``There have been a lot of complaints from foreigners that the current system is confusing and difficult to use," Kang Man-soo, chairman of the Presidential Committee on National Competitiveness, said last week. ``We have to change the system before it is too late."
There are two ways this might happen. One is to fiddle with the system we use now. The other is something that looks new, even if it isn't. Expect the latter, not because it's necessary, but because this administration wears a hard hat. Demolishing and rebuilding to leave legacies is its thing. (Chairman Kang's ``too late" is the clue. It's a reminder that the bureaucracy moves slowly and if the decision isn't made soon, the next president may get the credit for this initiative.)
The threatened system, known as Revised Romanization (RR), was developed in 1995, when Kim Young-sam was President, and adopted in 2000 by the Kim Dae-jung government. It replaced the McCune-Reischauer method, invented in 1937 and in official use since 1984.
Although RR did away with computer-unfriendly, non-alphabet apostrophes and symbols known as breves, its crime was to foist a weird ``e" on us when converting the vowels어 (eo) and 으 (eu). One result is that many French people think Incheon is ``Eing-shay-ong" or something like that. It also packed in consonants. Gyeonggido Province may promote itself as a ``global inspiration," but the fact is that most earthlings can't say it out loud. Guy-ee-ong-g-g-ee-doo.
That said, or not, it's hard to figure how to do better. The fact is that the 26 symbols of the Roman alphabet are insufficient to convey the 41 meaningful sounds of Korean. The alphabet, incidentally, does an even worse job with English, which has around 44 sounds. That is why, when God invented English as his main means of communication, he decided against any earthly priesthood deciding on correct spelling.
English, in other words, just happens.
For this reason, my recommendation to the central government is to leave things be.
Or, to express this position in a different way, if there is a hankering for tinkering with the spelling of proper nouns, let it be done by their owners. Take the good people of Guyeeongggee, for example. Surely, they, and not a central government committee stacked with people from enemy provinces, have the right to their spelling?
When the last revision passed into law, local governments all over Korea had to fall into line. Incheon Metropolitan Government seriously considered resisting that ``e." The city was already famous without it. In a country where many places sound the same, like Shincheon and Shinchon, which are both districts of Seoul, it would not be unreasonable for outsiders to assume that Incheon, Busan and Gwangju were entirely different places from Inchon, Pusan, and Kwangju. (Memo to the culture police: when I wrote that sentence, Microsoft Word left those old spellings alone, but underlined the new ones in red). But city authorities figured the cost of a battle would have outweighed the benefit.
This tale notwithstanding, you could argue the need for some central government approval of place names to avoid confusion with other places. But with some proper nouns there definitely needs to be a hands-off policy.
Back in 2000, companies and people were supposed to adopt RR in due course. That's fascist. English spelling allows Koreans room to express their creativity. Three of the country's top fashion designers, for example, are Song Jain, Imseonoc and Song Zio. What is to be gained by forcing them to become Song Ja-in, Im Seon-ok, and Song Chi-oh? And consider the cost to the brand if Hyundai were to become Hyeondae.
I hope this is not what Chairman Gang and his boss, President Ri, have in mind.
Michael Breen is chairman of Insight Communications Consultants and exclusive partner of FD International. He can be reached at mike.breen@insightcomms.com.