Shouldn’t be a problem with Shinn :-)

>hangulization

There is an English word for what you are doing: it is called “transliteration” from latin script to hangul.

There is an English word for what you are doing: it is called “transliteration” from latin script to hangul.

Well, I use the word transliteration in the narrow sense of a mapping from one writing system to another, as opposed to transcription, the mapping of the sounds of a language to the writing system of another language. Everyday usage conflates the two, but I want to maintain a distinction between the two terms since it’s a somewhat specialist website.

The rendering into hangul that I describe is theoretically transcription, since it is meant to be based on the pronunciation, but in practice it’s a mixture of transcription and transliteration. The words romanization and cyrillization refer to such broad mixtures of the different modes of rendering words into the Roman alphabet and the Cyrillic alphabet respectively, so I’m using the analogous word hangulization to broadly describe any rendering of foreign words into hangul.

Shouldn’t be a problem with Shinn :-)

Indeed. ’Nick Shinn’ is rendered 닉 신 in Korean, and 신 is actually a Korean surname as well!

I see the strict definitions of transcription and transliteration that you link to, but you are right they don’t quite work, so maybe your word is indeed best. “Transcription” in English is normally from spoken to written, as when a court reporter takes down everything that is said for a court record.

I am familiar with Hebrew transliteration, which is rarely done as the article defines it, namely as a system which enables you to reconstruct the original spelling in the other language.

As this article on Romanization of Hebrew explains, the Romanization of Hebrew is basically a mess. There are so called ’scientific’ ways of doing it, systematically, in the strict definition of ’transliteration’, but they are rarely followed. There are a lot of different ways that are practiced, so ’Iontef’ and ’Yontef’ are the same in Hebrew, and he himself might not romanize it the same way all the time. Basically people today tend to romanize Hebrew roughly as it sounds spoken in modern Hebrew, but ’roughly’ the operable word.

Henri Friedlaender was raised in Germany and left because of the Nazis. So his name would I guess be properly pronounced as in German.

William, thanks for your explanation about the romanization of Hebrew being a mess. Koreans can’t be depended on to romanize their own names consistently, either, and most do not follow any of the existing systems for transliteration. It would be good to know which spelling Iontef/Yontef himself uses though, if he does favour one over the other.

From what I can gather, Henri Friedlaender was born in France and lived in Germany and the Netherlands before going to Israel. He has a French given name and a German surname. I’m going by the Hebrew spelling of his name (הנרי פרידלנדר), which seems to represent ’Hnri Fridlndr’ going by a chart of the Hebrew alphabet. I was hoping a typophile could supply the missing vowels in the most common pronunciation of his name in Hebrew. I’m guessing ’Henri Fridlander’ or ’Henri Fridlender’.

Friedlaender in the Hebrew version would have vowels that make the “ie” something like a long ’e’ (see), but without the diphthong that English has. Both the ’ae’ and the ’e’ before ’r’ would be like an English short “e” (bed), I am guessing, as that would be closest to the German.

Thomas Marecki (Germany)
Julien Janiszewski (France)

looks like polish names: [maretski] and [yanišeuski]

Joan Barjau (Spain)
Laura Meseguer (Spain)
Josep Patau (Spain)

The only difference between Spanish and Catalan pronuncation when rendering these into the Korean system would be that the J would be ㅈ instead of ㅎ. Laura Meseguer would be slightly different but would be more representative in the Korean phonetic system to use ㅅ for the intervocalic S.

I should add that, at least for Joan Miró, my modern art history professor (who was Korean) always used the Spanish version of his name, Juan.

«El futuro es una línea tan fina que apenas nos damos cuenta de pintarla nosotros mismos». (La Luz Oscura, por Javier Guerrero)

The existing rules for hangulization uses ㅈ for the [z] sound of intervocalic ’s’ in French and Portuguese (but not in Italian, where some speakers may pronounce [s] and others [z]). I also feel that ㅅ would be closer to the [z] sound in many cases, but it’s not up to me to make the rules.

I should add that, at least for Joan Miró, my modern art history professor (who was Korean) always used the Spanish version of his name, Juan.

Interesting. Maybe your professor just assumed that Joan was a Spanish name and pronounced it as such, so that it came out like Juan? How do non-Catalan-speaking Spaniards pronounce Catalan names in general?

looks like polish names: [maretski] and [yanišeuski]

English speakers with Polish names often pronounce them entirely unlike the original Polish pronunciations, so I would like to check if Marecki and Janiszewski use similarly Germanized and Gallicized pronunciations.

What about the names of English-speaking types designers? Could anyone help with Montalbano, Summerour, Giampa, Giasson, Jamra, and Greishaber?

Thierry Puyfoulhoux: (im gonna do my best here) tieri püifulu.

dr

Thank you David, I’ll take your word for it. I’ve corrected the transcription on the page.

> Thomas Marecki (Germany)
> Julien Janiszewski (France)
>
> looks like polish names: [maretski] and [yanišeuski]

I don’t know how it’s “gallicised”, however in Polish Janiszewski’s “w” marks an IPA[v] AFAIK, not an IPA[u] or [w] as andrijko suggested.

Marecki would be pronounced [maretski] in German as well.

Szabolcs

Thanks Szabolcs. I’ve corrected the transcription for Marecki.

There are existing rules for hangulization of Polish, and Janiszewski comes out as /yanišefski/ as a matter of fact if taken as a Polish name. The transcription I’m using is not IPA but my own notation that I’m calling the Hangulization Auxiliary Alphabet that shows the simplified pronunciation used for the hangul transcription.

I currently have /yaniševski/ for Janiszewski on the theory that the French pronunciation will closely respect the Polish one but stop short of following the Polish devoicing rules that converts the /v/ into [f] in actual pronunciation.

Yes, you’re right, in this position the phoneme is realised devoiced. But as most (if not all?) European languages have this devoicing feature you seldom transcribe that... here. Do you actually have voiced+unvoiced consonant clusters in Korean that do not assimilate?

Szabolcs

David Berlow. 데이비드 벌로우 (미국) /deivid bəlo/

I think, maybe, since I’m the only one with an “rl” combination, you are close enough.

Cheers!

I currently have /yaniševski/ for Janiszewski on the theory that the French pronunciation will closely respect the Polish one but stop short of following the Polish devoicing rules that converts the /v/ into [f] in actual pronunciation.

The polish prononciation is exact. But time goes by and as my grand-grand parents were the ones to imigrate to France my name has been converted into a more french prononciation. Even I wasn’t really aware of the exact polish pronociation until I spoke with polish people :/

So I usually pronounce it -janijevski- (sorry I don’t know the phonetic alphabet…) and don’t pronounce the -j- in the polish way as it is difficult enough for the french administration to deal with it :D

We really do take into account the original pronunciations at the phonetic level, including the devoicing rules, since Korean phonology is quite different from that of most European languages. Korean doesn’t allow many consonant clusters, so epenthetic vowels (in most cases ’ㅡ’ IPA [ɯ]) are inserted, after which the devoicing issue is moot since they are no longer consonant clusters.

In addition, unlike most European languages, Korean consonant phonemes don’t follow the voiced-devoiced distinctions but a three-tier distinction based on aspiration and tenseness. We don’t have voiced consonants per se, but some consonants that are voiced in certain environments (and most Koreans won’t hear the difference anyway). The idea that voiced and devoiced consonant pairs like ’v’ and ’f’ can be different realizations of the same underlying sounds is not at all obvious to Koreans.

[edited to add:]

Thank you Julien! It’s great to hear from the man himself. The transcription has been corrected.

David, as a rule we don’t write the r’s in English that are not followed by a vowel, since those r sounds are not strong enough for Korean speakers to hear or are not pronounced anyway in many accents of English. We don’t write the r’s in the Swedish and Norwegian combinations ’rl’ either for related reasons.

>r’s ...not pronounced anyway in many accents of English

But they are in American, which has a strong r, like Mandarin Chinese. So if you are taking care about how a German name in pronounced in Hebrew or a Polish one in French, then why not our American ’r’?

Not that it matters :)

Well, the r sound in Korean is rather different from that of English, and it can only be followed by a vowel (it can’t come at the end of a word). So we usually transcribe r’s in such positions only when they are trilled or gutteral. You might feel that the American r is strongly pronounced, but to us it just sounds like the preceding vowel is being modified rather than a separate consonant is being pronounced. The r in such Mandarin Chinese words as ’er’ is not transcribed as an r in Korean, either, but as an l (it just doesn’t sound really much like the Korean r sound to us).

We don’t write the r’s at the end of words in German either, if that makes you feel better.

“David, as a rule we don’t write the r’s in English that are not followed by a vowel...”
I know, that’s why I said, “close enough!” :)

Cheers!

>to us it just sounds like

That’s the basic problem with doing proper names in a different language. In one language what is an essential difference is not even heard by the native speaker of another, and may not be representable in their orthography and sound system.

I have helped some Chinese speakers to communicate in American English. At first what they are saying sounds to them just like what they are hearing. But they are actually often incomprehensible to native speakers of English. Of course after training and practice they get the sounds right enough to communicate.

We Americans try generally harder than the English to get foreign names closer to their originals. But sometimes I think the English have it right: just anglicize it shamelessly and don’t pretend to pronounce it like a native.

Alejandro Paul > Paul is not pronounced like the name Paul, is a german surname but I dont know how to write the pronunciation to help you :)

Thanks Alejandro. The way I have your surname right now is basically what I think it would be pronounced as in German/Spanish pronunciation (if you ignore the differences in the ’p’ sound), not as in the English name Paul.

Mon tal ba no

Is a Sicilian name but will most likely follow your spanish pronunciation.

Thank you, James. So you prefer Mon-tahl-bah-no with the Italian vowels? That’s simple enough. The transcription has been updated.

You’ve got it! Thank you.

James