Peter T. Daniels wrote:

>
> > Same here - I haven't kept up, but I have often thought it would be a
> > mighty good bar bet to claim that I could teach someone how to read
> > elementary Korean characters in the space of a long day.
>
> But not to pronounce Korean.

Yeah there are some sounds that are difficult for native English
speakers to create, let alone hear.

>
> "The usual romanization" is a 1-to-1 transliteration. If it's "full of
> holes," then so is Korean orthography. If you call English spelling
> "full of holes," then so is Korean -- it's MORPHOPHONEMIC.

1-1? I think there are sounds in Korean that don't exist in English. So,
the English spellings are approximations. Japanese has similar issues
with the kana row labeled "ra-ri-ru...". the sound is not the same as we
use that letter for. Ina addition, in Japanese, there are various
semi-standard romanizations floating around, and there may be the same
for Korean. That is what I was referring to - if there was a one-one
correspondence, there would not be competing romanizations.

But I am not yet sure what Andrew was referring too...unlike some people
here, I try to express my (mis-)understanding of someone's point rather
then simply write a simple sentence asking "What did you mean"? I find
it generally gets quicker results. YMMV.

Best,

Barry

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> Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...
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