# The Value of Yale Romanization



## pktopp

Greetings!

I am a student of the Korean language and have just obtained Samuel E. Martin's massive Reference Grammar.  It is a remarkable work, but all the Korean has been transliterated via the Yale Romanization system.  I find it a great nuisance.  I was just wondering if any linguist or Korean scholar could explain to me the value of this seemingly cumbersome system.

Thanks!


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## Whodunit

Does this help you?


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## pktopp

Dear Whodunit,

I appreciate your time in linking me to Wikipedia, but no, that's not what I am asking.  I will be more specific.  As a linguist and advanced student of Korean, I am quite familiar with the various romanization methods of Korean--McCune-Reischauer, Revised Romanization, Yale, HNC Romaja etc.  

My question is, "Do any linguists out there actually find it easier to use the Yale romanization system rather than simply using 한글 ?  I find it hard to believe that anyone could find  "ceycw" easier to read than 제주.  

In other words, if you are at a level advanced enough to read a 1000 page survey of Korean historical linguistics, why would you need to have Korean transliterated into a counter-intuitive, cumbersome transliteration system?

That's what I meant to say!

But I thank you none the less!


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## Outsider

Reading the text that Whodunit linked to, it seems to be a Romanization system rich in linguistic information. Of course, some might say overloaded instead of rich...

P.S. According to this other page, Yale Romanization has become the "established standard among linguists".


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## Joannes

pktopp said:


> In other words, if you are at a level advanced enough to read a 1000 page survey of Korean historical linguistics, why would you need to have Korean transliterated into a counter-intuitive, cumbersome transliteration system?


I'm not sure because I don't know the work, but I guess this may very well be a kind of book that would be interesting for (comparative) linguistic studies too. Those linguists may often not know the Korean writing system. If they are considered important enough among the intended audience, then that could be a reason to use transliterations. However, I agree that it could not be a reason to _not_ use Korean characters _as well_. But I suppose that's where human laziness comes in.


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## Whodunit

Joannes said:


> I'm not sure because I don't know the work, but I guess this may very well be a kind of book that would be interesting for (comparative) linguistic studies too. Those linguists may often not know the Korean writing system. If they are considered important enough among the intended audience, then that could be a reason to use transliterations. However, I agree that it could not be a reason to _not_ use Korean characters _as well_. But I suppose that's where human laziness comes in.


 
I agree. If I were to compare the Altaic languages to which Korean and Japanese are hypothesized to belong, it would help me to see the transliterated text (at best along with the Hangul or Hiragana way) for other writing system, because there are sometimes exceptions you wouldn't learn by just studying the "letters", e.g. Japanese あたたあ is not pronounced "atta" but "atataa". If you want to have "atta", you have to put it あった, where you will notice that っ is not in the alphabet, and may be confused with つ (= tsu).


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