[Uim] Korean input

Park Jae-hyeon jhpark at kias.re.kr
Wed Jul 20 07:52:14 EEST 2005


Jeroen Ruigrok/asmodai <asmodai at in-nomine.org> writes:

> >> Is there a particular reason to settle on the old romanization style?  All
> >> literature I encounter seems to use "kamsa hamnida" versus "gamsa habnida".
> >
> >Roughly speaking, "kamsa hamnida" is how ?????????? is pronounced, and
> >"gamsa habnida" is how it is written.  You do not expect an `English
> >input method' to translate "inuf" to "enough", or a Japanese input
> >method to translate "tokyo" to "toukyou".
> 
> I think there's a slight misunderstanding here.  I did not mean that it
> should catch errors at all.

Neither did I.

> Now Korean.  I like how you build up hangeul with the separate jamo, which
> then basically are almost syllables.  (Even though Korean is not considered
> a syllabary, due to ambiguities: jeong-eum versus jeon-geum.)
> 
> I am now reading http://www.mct.go.kr:8080/english/K_about/Language04.html
> 
> So instead of old McCune-Reischauer/Ministery of Education (mungyobu) the
> move is being made to the Korean Language Society (hangeul haghoe)
> transliteration scheme.
> 
> I do not understand where 'gamsa habnida' comes from though.  gamsa hamnida
> I can understand, but not gamsa habnida.  The Ministry didn't change that,
> so why the b?  It is still the HANGUL CHOSEONG MIEUM and not HANGUL CHOSEONG
> PIEUP (http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1100.pdf) unless I am sadly
> mistaken.  So please clarify if I got this wrong or not.
> So the only issue left is pronunciation.  But then again the k or g for
> gamsa hamnida is in-between the k and g sound anyway.  So on that front I
> don't care.

Sorry, my explanation was too short to be understandable.  First of
all, let me clarify that "thank you" is written "감사합니다."  The web
page you are referring to is describing romanization for reading or
pronunciation.  In ``5. Other changes,'' it is explaining, ``... words
are Romanized according to sound, as opposed to a transliteration
system, in which Romanization would be done according to Korean
spelling regardless of pronunciation.''

Let me quote a part of a fictitious Korean language textbook for
foreigners.

    [Korean textbook]
    Meaning: Thank you.
    Written form: 감사합니다.  -> romanized as "gam sa hab ni da"
    Spoken  form: 감사함니다.  -> romanized as "gam sa ham ni da"

In the previous post, I compared this to English and Japanese in the
following sense.

    [English textbook]
    Meaning: Thank you.
    Written form: Thank you.  -> romanized as "thank you"
    Spoken  form: Thaenk yu.  -> romanized as "thaenk yu"
    
    [Japanese textbook]
    Meaning: Thank you.
    Written form: ありがとう。 -> romanized as "a ri ga tou"
    Spoken  form: ありがとー。 -> romanized as "a ri ga to-"

In short, an input method should expect romanization for writing, not
for pronunciation.  I did not mean that it should detect and correct
errors.

If you ask me why the standard written form is "감사합니다" instead of
"감사함니다," I don't have much to say.  Maybe it is for the sake of
consistency of the inflected forms such as "합니다" and "합시다".

As for the k/g distinction in the input method sense, if you enter
"kam," it is likely to mean "캄" instead of "감" romanized "gam,"
as David already explained.

If you really want to use romanization for reading for Korean input,
it might be conceivable that we build a romanized input method that
does word-to-word conversion like "gamsahamnida" -> "감사합니다."

I hope this helps you to write good documents.

Cheers,

Park, Jae-hyeon
School of Physics, KIAS
jaehyeon.park at gmail.com



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