Talk:닭

Romanizations

What are the authorities for the romanizations "dak" and "tak"? An editor at Wikipedia maintains that, according to ko:Wiktionary (http://ko.wiktionary.org/wiki/%EB%8B%AD), they're "dalk" and "talk"? 24.29.228.33 00:49, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

We use "dak" here because it reflects the actual pronunciation. The spelling "dalk" is an etymological spelling. —Stephen 01:17, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you; the question is, though, what are the actual Revised and M-R romanizations of this syllabic block? Is there a reliable source we draw on for these two romanizations? 24.29.228.33 01:24, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

You have to know the Revised Romanization and you have to know how this cluster is pronounced. —Stephen 01:50, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

This makes sense, but do/should we include these variations at Wiktionary entries, as Korean syllabic blocks change their pronunciation by proximity with other syllabic blocks? I believe we should, otherwise we would mislead our readers that a given block is always pronounced in the one way we have it. Regarding RR, is there an actual available print or Internet source that gives all the blocks' regular pronunciations and alternate pronunciations? 24.29.228.33 04:03, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I think we’re doing it the best possible way here. The intricacies of pronunciation such as you describe belong at the individual letters, such as ㄹ or at w:Hangul. If someone begins learning Korean and the Korean alphabet, they will quickly discover that, like most alphabets, Korean letters may be pronounced differently in some words or in some environments. And no, I know of no source like that. —Stephen 04:18, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I still believe we should stipulate the variations in pronunciation, and perhaps also give examples of words containing these variations. This would be a resource found nowhere else, which we could build gradually. To simply present a single pronunciation when that pronunciation is only used some or most of the time for that syllabic block, would seem to be presenting a misleading and incomplete entry for our readers. 24.29.228.33 06:13, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Off the top of my head I’d say that Korean has about 9000 different syllable blocks, and I don’t believe anybody will be willing to make such an extensive pronunciation section for so many syllables. We already have trouble just trying to convince editors to use the Revised Romanization, with pronunciation-based transcriptions rather than etymological ones. Add to this the differences in pronunciation among dialects, especially North and South Korean.... Doing a pronunciation section for each syllable as you suggest would be a huge undertaking. I don’t think it’s feasible. —Stephen 07:48, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, I didn't know there were so many exceptions per block. By the way, do we note the sound changes for Arabic "lam" which changes sound to match according to "sun" or "moon" letters? I would think this is a somewhat similar linguistic phenomenon. 24.29.228.33 17:28, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

We give the sun letter pronunciation in the transcriptions of individual words and phrases. —Stephen 20:36, 12 September 2008 (UTC)