kerpingtack | PARADIGM SHIFT

My sister just pointed out that maybe Jonghyun should be romanized as Jonghyeon, just like in those old posts from when SHINee first debuted and no one knew the official English spelling!! noooooooooooooo!!! It's because his name has ㅕ in it (종현), like Taeyeon (태연) and Hyoyeon (효연). If it were Jonghyun with the "u", it would be ㅜ/ㅠ ("oo") like in Yunho (윤호)?? So, like... Jonghyoon (종휸)? LOL ;~; Maybe the rule is different when there's a consonant (ㅇ doesn't really count; it's like an empty placeholder sound), because Seohyun (서현) and like, ramyun (라면) are also spelled with "u" ("hyun"/"myun"). Plus sometimes ㅜ/ㅠ will be written as "oo" instead of "u" like in Yoona (윤아) even though I guess it should technically be Yun-ah? (As a sidenote, 'Kim Yuna' should seriously be spelled Yeon-ah (연아).) But Onew (온유) isn't spelled Onyu or Onyoo. omg romanization rules are so confusing. Maybe for names, they just go by aesthetics. That seems to be the most logical answer, lol.

Okay while I have the language bar set to Korean~ girl!Onew's name is not really Eunsook (은숙), it should be Onsook (온숙) because they kept the first part of all their first names, or a close approximation in Key's case. Similarly, Junghee (정희) should be Jonghee (종희). The other three names are correct though. (~quick proof of the Korean spelling~)

Now I'm googling Korean romanization rules. Such wonders and progress I make in my life! ?__?

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as a disclaimer I TOTALLY don't speak korean so this is coming from a I've-taken-a-lot-of-linguistics-and-wrote-one-paper-on-korean-phonetics place, not a I-know-what-I'm-talking-about place

But I always figured the reason the "official" romanizations of their names didn't follow any particular pattern was because the phonetics of Korean and English match up really badly so "proper" romanization patterns are always at least a little bit ridiculous (among other things, who even thought of "eo" for ㅓ?? I SERIOUSLY ORIGINALLY THOUGHT "ryeowook, for example, went ree-oh-wook), so they were just like "FUCK IT" and tried to pick something that would make a person who read English but not Korean be able to pronounce it vaguely correctly? We English speakers are all so used to constonant-spelling ridiculousness that we DO interpret something like "hyun" as basically vaguely 현 but if I/we saw "yun" (as in Taeyeon/Hyoyeon) I think it'd be interpreted as 윤 and not 연. Idk about the oo/u Yoona/Yuna thing though because on the one hand, I remember looking up the hangul of Kim Yuna's name to see if it matched Yoona's (lol I couldn't even read it at the time), but on the other hand I still Yunho in my head as 연호 even though I know that's not it.

And then it's weird that they used oo in Yoona and not Yuri because it's the exact same and I think Yoori might even make people tend more towards the correct pronunciation??? Yuri kind of makes me tend towards something like Yurr-i rather than Yu-ri.

so basically I have no idea what is even going on or what anyone was thinking

That's kind of funny that girl!SHINee's names got muddled in translation though.

LOL oh that's a good point, that for names in particular they go for what would be most pronouncable? That makes a lot of sense. I wonder if it's any better for people who use the... Roman...?? alphabet but whose languages don't adhere to the English pronounciation rules. omg I took like three linguistics classes but obviously I learned nothing from them; I mean people who speak French or Spanish or other languages that use the same alphabet but that maybe have more vowel blends and diphthongs or whatever than English does. But even that doesn't match up. The Yuri/Yoona thing really makes the inconsistency clear because there's no reason for the difference. Maybe they were following a precedent/already accepted spelling for Yuri, because the equivalent Japanese name is spelled that way too? Yeah, I'm also just confused lol. I THINK THEY GO BY WHAT LOOKS PRETTIEST TO THEM!!

(Tangent: it's kind of fun to scroll through the different languages that use 'Yuri' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri) as a first name, both for men and women.)

SHINee's ifandom drives me crazy lol. Oh well, it's not a big deal, even though I don't know how the mistake happened... isn't it more logical to have Onew-->Onsook/Jonghyun-->Jonghee than Eunsook and Junghee? Not that logic is ever really relevant in kpop fandoms...

I don't know about Spanish but the French sound system lines up even worse to Korean sound system than the English one does. Like there's no equivalent to ㅓ at ALL in French (whereas we basically do in English, we just don't have a consistent way to spell it, which is I guess why "eo" exists as a romanization), and there's also no "j" so you'd end up naturally pronouncing Jonghyun something like ʒonghyoon? I do think it's probably mostly English that's considered (vs other languages with roman alphabets), because English-speaking asian countries like Singapore & the Philippines are generally better hallyu targets than Europe/Africa/South America et al. But good point about Yuri being a consistent/already existing romanization. (I think you might be right about the prettiest thing, hee.)

WAY more logical. The first time I saw a girl!SHINee fic I'm pretty sure I had to google it to be sure because the names were just off enough that you couldn't be sure...

omg I'm an airhead, I completely forgot about Hallyu or um general geopolitics in this discussion. I don't know what I was thinking lol. YES English is probably what they consider the most, and the basis of the romanization in the first place. why was I talking about French and Spanish lol.

Anyway, ty for the discussion so far! I... don't have anything of substance to contribute anymore. ;; I've just been sitting here saying all the names and different pronounciations out loud. "jamais... Jonghyun... Jyonhyon... hyooooon... Yuri... Yoori... Yurri..."

NO I AM GLAD YOU BROUGHT IT UP BECAUSE NOW I SITTING HERE SERIOUSLY CONSIDERING HOW A FRENCH PERSON WOULD PRONOUNCE THESE NAMES ON SIGHT

and apparently that is fun for me idk :|

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