Why is North-Korean communist leader Kim Il-sung called Kim Ir Sen in some languages?
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Looking on Wikipedia I see that in many of the languages of the former communist countries, namely East European, the North Korean leader Kim Il Sung (or Song) (1912-1994) is called Kim Ir Sen. (I am posting the Polish page because it has more links to other languages than other pages have.)
The difference is not in the family name - which is Kim.
It seems a difference based on the former political divide of the Cold War, as in French and other West European languages, but also in Turkish and Greek (Turkey and Greece already being NATO members at the time), the name used is the same as in English. On Wikipedia I have not found a non (former) communist country that calls him Kim Ir Sen.
I see no linguistic similarity between countries using the same form of the name (Russian, Latvian, Albanian, Romanian share the same "communist" form), so the cause must be politic. But how has been the political divide projected in the name of this man?
To make things more interesting, there are also some exceptions: in former-Yugoslav countries, that is on the Wikipedia pages in Serbian, Croat, Slovenian and Macedonian, he is called like in the Western Europe: Kim Il Sung.
In Bulgarian, which is close if not identical to Macedonian, it's Kim Ir Sen. At least Croats and Serbs use the same name... But not Slovak and Czech, which were in the same country during the communist era: the Wikipedia page in Slovakian uses the "Western" form.
Maybe this differences between neighbours are recent. Are they also political?
communism names north-korea
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show 1 more comment
up vote
4
down vote
favorite
Looking on Wikipedia I see that in many of the languages of the former communist countries, namely East European, the North Korean leader Kim Il Sung (or Song) (1912-1994) is called Kim Ir Sen. (I am posting the Polish page because it has more links to other languages than other pages have.)
The difference is not in the family name - which is Kim.
It seems a difference based on the former political divide of the Cold War, as in French and other West European languages, but also in Turkish and Greek (Turkey and Greece already being NATO members at the time), the name used is the same as in English. On Wikipedia I have not found a non (former) communist country that calls him Kim Ir Sen.
I see no linguistic similarity between countries using the same form of the name (Russian, Latvian, Albanian, Romanian share the same "communist" form), so the cause must be politic. But how has been the political divide projected in the name of this man?
To make things more interesting, there are also some exceptions: in former-Yugoslav countries, that is on the Wikipedia pages in Serbian, Croat, Slovenian and Macedonian, he is called like in the Western Europe: Kim Il Sung.
In Bulgarian, which is close if not identical to Macedonian, it's Kim Ir Sen. At least Croats and Serbs use the same name... But not Slovak and Czech, which were in the same country during the communist era: the Wikipedia page in Slovakian uses the "Western" form.
Maybe this differences between neighbours are recent. Are they also political?
communism names north-korea
its spelled different but still pronounced the same way. source: a polish friend.
– ed.hank
6 hours ago
@ed.hank - I speak Romanian, English, French, Italian, have notions of Bulgarian and Serbian, I can say that is not true, it does not sound the same in all these languages. What that could mean is that the Korean names can be transcribed in different ways in European languages. But it is transcribed in only two ways, and these two ways are separated as I describe. Why?
– cipricus
6 hours ago
hmm i dont know why he would lie to me about something so silly. but im not polish so i wouldnt know.
– ed.hank
6 hours ago
@ed.hank - it is not a lie, sorry. I have updated comment to clarify what I mean. But what does your friend mean: it sounds the same in Polish? Why he being Polish is even significant here?
– cipricus
6 hours ago
im curious as to the answer too. his being polish is significant because a pole would likely know more about communist bloc slavic languages much more than i would.
– ed.hank
6 hours ago
|
show 1 more comment
up vote
4
down vote
favorite
up vote
4
down vote
favorite
Looking on Wikipedia I see that in many of the languages of the former communist countries, namely East European, the North Korean leader Kim Il Sung (or Song) (1912-1994) is called Kim Ir Sen. (I am posting the Polish page because it has more links to other languages than other pages have.)
The difference is not in the family name - which is Kim.
It seems a difference based on the former political divide of the Cold War, as in French and other West European languages, but also in Turkish and Greek (Turkey and Greece already being NATO members at the time), the name used is the same as in English. On Wikipedia I have not found a non (former) communist country that calls him Kim Ir Sen.
I see no linguistic similarity between countries using the same form of the name (Russian, Latvian, Albanian, Romanian share the same "communist" form), so the cause must be politic. But how has been the political divide projected in the name of this man?
To make things more interesting, there are also some exceptions: in former-Yugoslav countries, that is on the Wikipedia pages in Serbian, Croat, Slovenian and Macedonian, he is called like in the Western Europe: Kim Il Sung.
In Bulgarian, which is close if not identical to Macedonian, it's Kim Ir Sen. At least Croats and Serbs use the same name... But not Slovak and Czech, which were in the same country during the communist era: the Wikipedia page in Slovakian uses the "Western" form.
Maybe this differences between neighbours are recent. Are they also political?
communism names north-korea
Looking on Wikipedia I see that in many of the languages of the former communist countries, namely East European, the North Korean leader Kim Il Sung (or Song) (1912-1994) is called Kim Ir Sen. (I am posting the Polish page because it has more links to other languages than other pages have.)
The difference is not in the family name - which is Kim.
It seems a difference based on the former political divide of the Cold War, as in French and other West European languages, but also in Turkish and Greek (Turkey and Greece already being NATO members at the time), the name used is the same as in English. On Wikipedia I have not found a non (former) communist country that calls him Kim Ir Sen.
I see no linguistic similarity between countries using the same form of the name (Russian, Latvian, Albanian, Romanian share the same "communist" form), so the cause must be politic. But how has been the political divide projected in the name of this man?
To make things more interesting, there are also some exceptions: in former-Yugoslav countries, that is on the Wikipedia pages in Serbian, Croat, Slovenian and Macedonian, he is called like in the Western Europe: Kim Il Sung.
In Bulgarian, which is close if not identical to Macedonian, it's Kim Ir Sen. At least Croats and Serbs use the same name... But not Slovak and Czech, which were in the same country during the communist era: the Wikipedia page in Slovakian uses the "Western" form.
Maybe this differences between neighbours are recent. Are they also political?
communism names north-korea
communism names north-korea
edited 27 mins ago
Aaron Brick
11.9k33082
11.9k33082
asked 7 hours ago
cipricus
1,109819
1,109819
its spelled different but still pronounced the same way. source: a polish friend.
– ed.hank
6 hours ago
@ed.hank - I speak Romanian, English, French, Italian, have notions of Bulgarian and Serbian, I can say that is not true, it does not sound the same in all these languages. What that could mean is that the Korean names can be transcribed in different ways in European languages. But it is transcribed in only two ways, and these two ways are separated as I describe. Why?
– cipricus
6 hours ago
hmm i dont know why he would lie to me about something so silly. but im not polish so i wouldnt know.
– ed.hank
6 hours ago
@ed.hank - it is not a lie, sorry. I have updated comment to clarify what I mean. But what does your friend mean: it sounds the same in Polish? Why he being Polish is even significant here?
– cipricus
6 hours ago
im curious as to the answer too. his being polish is significant because a pole would likely know more about communist bloc slavic languages much more than i would.
– ed.hank
6 hours ago
|
show 1 more comment
its spelled different but still pronounced the same way. source: a polish friend.
– ed.hank
6 hours ago
@ed.hank - I speak Romanian, English, French, Italian, have notions of Bulgarian and Serbian, I can say that is not true, it does not sound the same in all these languages. What that could mean is that the Korean names can be transcribed in different ways in European languages. But it is transcribed in only two ways, and these two ways are separated as I describe. Why?
– cipricus
6 hours ago
hmm i dont know why he would lie to me about something so silly. but im not polish so i wouldnt know.
– ed.hank
6 hours ago
@ed.hank - it is not a lie, sorry. I have updated comment to clarify what I mean. But what does your friend mean: it sounds the same in Polish? Why he being Polish is even significant here?
– cipricus
6 hours ago
im curious as to the answer too. his being polish is significant because a pole would likely know more about communist bloc slavic languages much more than i would.
– ed.hank
6 hours ago
its spelled different but still pronounced the same way. source: a polish friend.
– ed.hank
6 hours ago
its spelled different but still pronounced the same way. source: a polish friend.
– ed.hank
6 hours ago
@ed.hank - I speak Romanian, English, French, Italian, have notions of Bulgarian and Serbian, I can say that is not true, it does not sound the same in all these languages. What that could mean is that the Korean names can be transcribed in different ways in European languages. But it is transcribed in only two ways, and these two ways are separated as I describe. Why?
– cipricus
6 hours ago
@ed.hank - I speak Romanian, English, French, Italian, have notions of Bulgarian and Serbian, I can say that is not true, it does not sound the same in all these languages. What that could mean is that the Korean names can be transcribed in different ways in European languages. But it is transcribed in only two ways, and these two ways are separated as I describe. Why?
– cipricus
6 hours ago
hmm i dont know why he would lie to me about something so silly. but im not polish so i wouldnt know.
– ed.hank
6 hours ago
hmm i dont know why he would lie to me about something so silly. but im not polish so i wouldnt know.
– ed.hank
6 hours ago
@ed.hank - it is not a lie, sorry. I have updated comment to clarify what I mean. But what does your friend mean: it sounds the same in Polish? Why he being Polish is even significant here?
– cipricus
6 hours ago
@ed.hank - it is not a lie, sorry. I have updated comment to clarify what I mean. But what does your friend mean: it sounds the same in Polish? Why he being Polish is even significant here?
– cipricus
6 hours ago
im curious as to the answer too. his being polish is significant because a pole would likely know more about communist bloc slavic languages much more than i would.
– ed.hank
6 hours ago
im curious as to the answer too. his being polish is significant because a pole would likely know more about communist bloc slavic languages much more than i would.
– ed.hank
6 hours ago
|
show 1 more comment
2 Answers
2
active
oldest
votes
up vote
5
down vote
Under an older system of transliteration, the Russians transliterated 김일성 (Kim Il-Sung) as Ким Ир Сен (Kim Irsen), which is still the standard way of rendering his name in Russian. Under the currently standard Kontsevich system, it would instead be transliterated as Ким Ильсо́н (Kim Ilson).
It seems that those countries that were closer to Russia politically tended to follow the Russian transliteration Ким Ир Сен (Kim Irsen); while those more to the west tended to use the Roman transliteration Kim Il-Sung.
By the way, this explains why Kim Jong-Il (son of Kim Il-Sung) was born Yuri Irsenovich (son of Ir Sen) Kim.
See this discussion: https://thediacritics.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/whats-in-a-kim/
1
was born Yuri Irsenovich
- you mean in Russian :)
– cipricus
6 hours ago
1
He was born on Soviet soil (despite the official North Korean mythology that he was born on Paektu Mountain in Korea). And so his Soviet birth record would probably have been in Russian. Time magazine: "According to Soviet records, Kim was born there as Yury Irsenovich Kim, the son of a rank and file officer of the Red Army, Kim Il-Sung".
– Kenny LJ
6 hours ago
So, no special reverential appellative in the "communist" form of the Kim Ir Sen name then! As my childhood was lived under the "Golden" era of Ceausescu for whom Kim Ir Sen was a master to emulate, I was expecting something like the Japanese "san" or "sensei" - look here and here two youtube versions of the same example of exotic propaganda.
– cipricus
6 hours ago
add a comment |
up vote
1
down vote
The Korean language has a different set of phonemes compared to most Indo-European languages.
Phonemes are individual sounds that are distinguished in pronunciation and used to differentiate words. For example, in English the words lot and rot are perceived as different because of the way the first letter (l versus r, typically denoted /l/ versus /r/) is pronounced. The East Asian languages Korean and (perhaps more famously) Japanese do not distinguish between an /l/ and an /r/ sound. In the Korean script, these both correspond to one letter (ㄹ). Depending on the surrounding, this sound may sound more like an l or more like an r to a westerner but a Korean will ‘hear’ no significant difference.
Furthermore, the vowel in Sung, denoted in Korean by the symbol ㅓ, corresponds to a sound which does exist in most European languages but does not have its own reserved letter: the schwa sound (again with potentially different pronunciation depending on the environment). In English, the schwa is used for reduced vowels: the e in unemphasised the, the second o in common or others. Korean uses a single symbol and differentiates it from other vowels such as a, e, i, etc.
The differences are suddenly significant when one tries to transliterate the original Korean into another language with a different script. Maybe you have seen the different spellings of Mao (Mao Tse-tung or Mao Zedong) depending on which romanisation standard was used. Likewise, various methods for the transliteration of Korean exist which were used at different times and by different countries.
According to the currently used system of South Korea (Revised McCune-Reischauer), the name would be spelt Kim Il-Seong in English—a spelling you probably have never seen before. The previous romanisation would indeed have turned him into the more common Kim Il-Sŏng. Because it was used at the time, people got used to it and the name was not changed when the revised system was introduced.
Unfortunately, I am not able to exactly source what happened in these countries you mention. However, the other answer has already provided that a different, older transliteration system was used in Russian. Russian, using Cyrillic letters, again needs to be transcribed into the Latin alphabet for languages such as Polish or Latvian which creates two levels of abstraction if the Russian spelling was used as the starting point—considering the history of these countries post World War II (when Kim Il-Song was contemporary) seems likely. As I mentioned above, the Latin and Korean alphabets don’t provide a perfect mapping—much worse than e.g. Latin and Cyrillic—so minor differences will occur and be carried on without there being any reason to assume a political background.
A case in point for a different script pair is the name of the last leader of the Soviet Union, rendered Gorbachev in English but Gorbatschow in German (East and West)—note the difference e versus o in the final syllable.
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2 Answers
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2 Answers
2
active
oldest
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active
oldest
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active
oldest
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up vote
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down vote
Under an older system of transliteration, the Russians transliterated 김일성 (Kim Il-Sung) as Ким Ир Сен (Kim Irsen), which is still the standard way of rendering his name in Russian. Under the currently standard Kontsevich system, it would instead be transliterated as Ким Ильсо́н (Kim Ilson).
It seems that those countries that were closer to Russia politically tended to follow the Russian transliteration Ким Ир Сен (Kim Irsen); while those more to the west tended to use the Roman transliteration Kim Il-Sung.
By the way, this explains why Kim Jong-Il (son of Kim Il-Sung) was born Yuri Irsenovich (son of Ir Sen) Kim.
See this discussion: https://thediacritics.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/whats-in-a-kim/
1
was born Yuri Irsenovich
- you mean in Russian :)
– cipricus
6 hours ago
1
He was born on Soviet soil (despite the official North Korean mythology that he was born on Paektu Mountain in Korea). And so his Soviet birth record would probably have been in Russian. Time magazine: "According to Soviet records, Kim was born there as Yury Irsenovich Kim, the son of a rank and file officer of the Red Army, Kim Il-Sung".
– Kenny LJ
6 hours ago
So, no special reverential appellative in the "communist" form of the Kim Ir Sen name then! As my childhood was lived under the "Golden" era of Ceausescu for whom Kim Ir Sen was a master to emulate, I was expecting something like the Japanese "san" or "sensei" - look here and here two youtube versions of the same example of exotic propaganda.
– cipricus
6 hours ago
add a comment |
up vote
5
down vote
Under an older system of transliteration, the Russians transliterated 김일성 (Kim Il-Sung) as Ким Ир Сен (Kim Irsen), which is still the standard way of rendering his name in Russian. Under the currently standard Kontsevich system, it would instead be transliterated as Ким Ильсо́н (Kim Ilson).
It seems that those countries that were closer to Russia politically tended to follow the Russian transliteration Ким Ир Сен (Kim Irsen); while those more to the west tended to use the Roman transliteration Kim Il-Sung.
By the way, this explains why Kim Jong-Il (son of Kim Il-Sung) was born Yuri Irsenovich (son of Ir Sen) Kim.
See this discussion: https://thediacritics.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/whats-in-a-kim/
1
was born Yuri Irsenovich
- you mean in Russian :)
– cipricus
6 hours ago
1
He was born on Soviet soil (despite the official North Korean mythology that he was born on Paektu Mountain in Korea). And so his Soviet birth record would probably have been in Russian. Time magazine: "According to Soviet records, Kim was born there as Yury Irsenovich Kim, the son of a rank and file officer of the Red Army, Kim Il-Sung".
– Kenny LJ
6 hours ago
So, no special reverential appellative in the "communist" form of the Kim Ir Sen name then! As my childhood was lived under the "Golden" era of Ceausescu for whom Kim Ir Sen was a master to emulate, I was expecting something like the Japanese "san" or "sensei" - look here and here two youtube versions of the same example of exotic propaganda.
– cipricus
6 hours ago
add a comment |
up vote
5
down vote
up vote
5
down vote
Under an older system of transliteration, the Russians transliterated 김일성 (Kim Il-Sung) as Ким Ир Сен (Kim Irsen), which is still the standard way of rendering his name in Russian. Under the currently standard Kontsevich system, it would instead be transliterated as Ким Ильсо́н (Kim Ilson).
It seems that those countries that were closer to Russia politically tended to follow the Russian transliteration Ким Ир Сен (Kim Irsen); while those more to the west tended to use the Roman transliteration Kim Il-Sung.
By the way, this explains why Kim Jong-Il (son of Kim Il-Sung) was born Yuri Irsenovich (son of Ir Sen) Kim.
See this discussion: https://thediacritics.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/whats-in-a-kim/
Under an older system of transliteration, the Russians transliterated 김일성 (Kim Il-Sung) as Ким Ир Сен (Kim Irsen), which is still the standard way of rendering his name in Russian. Under the currently standard Kontsevich system, it would instead be transliterated as Ким Ильсо́н (Kim Ilson).
It seems that those countries that were closer to Russia politically tended to follow the Russian transliteration Ким Ир Сен (Kim Irsen); while those more to the west tended to use the Roman transliteration Kim Il-Sung.
By the way, this explains why Kim Jong-Il (son of Kim Il-Sung) was born Yuri Irsenovich (son of Ir Sen) Kim.
See this discussion: https://thediacritics.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/whats-in-a-kim/
answered 6 hours ago
Kenny LJ
2,61232047
2,61232047
1
was born Yuri Irsenovich
- you mean in Russian :)
– cipricus
6 hours ago
1
He was born on Soviet soil (despite the official North Korean mythology that he was born on Paektu Mountain in Korea). And so his Soviet birth record would probably have been in Russian. Time magazine: "According to Soviet records, Kim was born there as Yury Irsenovich Kim, the son of a rank and file officer of the Red Army, Kim Il-Sung".
– Kenny LJ
6 hours ago
So, no special reverential appellative in the "communist" form of the Kim Ir Sen name then! As my childhood was lived under the "Golden" era of Ceausescu for whom Kim Ir Sen was a master to emulate, I was expecting something like the Japanese "san" or "sensei" - look here and here two youtube versions of the same example of exotic propaganda.
– cipricus
6 hours ago
add a comment |
1
was born Yuri Irsenovich
- you mean in Russian :)
– cipricus
6 hours ago
1
He was born on Soviet soil (despite the official North Korean mythology that he was born on Paektu Mountain in Korea). And so his Soviet birth record would probably have been in Russian. Time magazine: "According to Soviet records, Kim was born there as Yury Irsenovich Kim, the son of a rank and file officer of the Red Army, Kim Il-Sung".
– Kenny LJ
6 hours ago
So, no special reverential appellative in the "communist" form of the Kim Ir Sen name then! As my childhood was lived under the "Golden" era of Ceausescu for whom Kim Ir Sen was a master to emulate, I was expecting something like the Japanese "san" or "sensei" - look here and here two youtube versions of the same example of exotic propaganda.
– cipricus
6 hours ago
1
1
was born Yuri Irsenovich
- you mean in Russian :)– cipricus
6 hours ago
was born Yuri Irsenovich
- you mean in Russian :)– cipricus
6 hours ago
1
1
He was born on Soviet soil (despite the official North Korean mythology that he was born on Paektu Mountain in Korea). And so his Soviet birth record would probably have been in Russian. Time magazine: "According to Soviet records, Kim was born there as Yury Irsenovich Kim, the son of a rank and file officer of the Red Army, Kim Il-Sung".
– Kenny LJ
6 hours ago
He was born on Soviet soil (despite the official North Korean mythology that he was born on Paektu Mountain in Korea). And so his Soviet birth record would probably have been in Russian. Time magazine: "According to Soviet records, Kim was born there as Yury Irsenovich Kim, the son of a rank and file officer of the Red Army, Kim Il-Sung".
– Kenny LJ
6 hours ago
So, no special reverential appellative in the "communist" form of the Kim Ir Sen name then! As my childhood was lived under the "Golden" era of Ceausescu for whom Kim Ir Sen was a master to emulate, I was expecting something like the Japanese "san" or "sensei" - look here and here two youtube versions of the same example of exotic propaganda.
– cipricus
6 hours ago
So, no special reverential appellative in the "communist" form of the Kim Ir Sen name then! As my childhood was lived under the "Golden" era of Ceausescu for whom Kim Ir Sen was a master to emulate, I was expecting something like the Japanese "san" or "sensei" - look here and here two youtube versions of the same example of exotic propaganda.
– cipricus
6 hours ago
add a comment |
up vote
1
down vote
The Korean language has a different set of phonemes compared to most Indo-European languages.
Phonemes are individual sounds that are distinguished in pronunciation and used to differentiate words. For example, in English the words lot and rot are perceived as different because of the way the first letter (l versus r, typically denoted /l/ versus /r/) is pronounced. The East Asian languages Korean and (perhaps more famously) Japanese do not distinguish between an /l/ and an /r/ sound. In the Korean script, these both correspond to one letter (ㄹ). Depending on the surrounding, this sound may sound more like an l or more like an r to a westerner but a Korean will ‘hear’ no significant difference.
Furthermore, the vowel in Sung, denoted in Korean by the symbol ㅓ, corresponds to a sound which does exist in most European languages but does not have its own reserved letter: the schwa sound (again with potentially different pronunciation depending on the environment). In English, the schwa is used for reduced vowels: the e in unemphasised the, the second o in common or others. Korean uses a single symbol and differentiates it from other vowels such as a, e, i, etc.
The differences are suddenly significant when one tries to transliterate the original Korean into another language with a different script. Maybe you have seen the different spellings of Mao (Mao Tse-tung or Mao Zedong) depending on which romanisation standard was used. Likewise, various methods for the transliteration of Korean exist which were used at different times and by different countries.
According to the currently used system of South Korea (Revised McCune-Reischauer), the name would be spelt Kim Il-Seong in English—a spelling you probably have never seen before. The previous romanisation would indeed have turned him into the more common Kim Il-Sŏng. Because it was used at the time, people got used to it and the name was not changed when the revised system was introduced.
Unfortunately, I am not able to exactly source what happened in these countries you mention. However, the other answer has already provided that a different, older transliteration system was used in Russian. Russian, using Cyrillic letters, again needs to be transcribed into the Latin alphabet for languages such as Polish or Latvian which creates two levels of abstraction if the Russian spelling was used as the starting point—considering the history of these countries post World War II (when Kim Il-Song was contemporary) seems likely. As I mentioned above, the Latin and Korean alphabets don’t provide a perfect mapping—much worse than e.g. Latin and Cyrillic—so minor differences will occur and be carried on without there being any reason to assume a political background.
A case in point for a different script pair is the name of the last leader of the Soviet Union, rendered Gorbachev in English but Gorbatschow in German (East and West)—note the difference e versus o in the final syllable.
add a comment |
up vote
1
down vote
The Korean language has a different set of phonemes compared to most Indo-European languages.
Phonemes are individual sounds that are distinguished in pronunciation and used to differentiate words. For example, in English the words lot and rot are perceived as different because of the way the first letter (l versus r, typically denoted /l/ versus /r/) is pronounced. The East Asian languages Korean and (perhaps more famously) Japanese do not distinguish between an /l/ and an /r/ sound. In the Korean script, these both correspond to one letter (ㄹ). Depending on the surrounding, this sound may sound more like an l or more like an r to a westerner but a Korean will ‘hear’ no significant difference.
Furthermore, the vowel in Sung, denoted in Korean by the symbol ㅓ, corresponds to a sound which does exist in most European languages but does not have its own reserved letter: the schwa sound (again with potentially different pronunciation depending on the environment). In English, the schwa is used for reduced vowels: the e in unemphasised the, the second o in common or others. Korean uses a single symbol and differentiates it from other vowels such as a, e, i, etc.
The differences are suddenly significant when one tries to transliterate the original Korean into another language with a different script. Maybe you have seen the different spellings of Mao (Mao Tse-tung or Mao Zedong) depending on which romanisation standard was used. Likewise, various methods for the transliteration of Korean exist which were used at different times and by different countries.
According to the currently used system of South Korea (Revised McCune-Reischauer), the name would be spelt Kim Il-Seong in English—a spelling you probably have never seen before. The previous romanisation would indeed have turned him into the more common Kim Il-Sŏng. Because it was used at the time, people got used to it and the name was not changed when the revised system was introduced.
Unfortunately, I am not able to exactly source what happened in these countries you mention. However, the other answer has already provided that a different, older transliteration system was used in Russian. Russian, using Cyrillic letters, again needs to be transcribed into the Latin alphabet for languages such as Polish or Latvian which creates two levels of abstraction if the Russian spelling was used as the starting point—considering the history of these countries post World War II (when Kim Il-Song was contemporary) seems likely. As I mentioned above, the Latin and Korean alphabets don’t provide a perfect mapping—much worse than e.g. Latin and Cyrillic—so minor differences will occur and be carried on without there being any reason to assume a political background.
A case in point for a different script pair is the name of the last leader of the Soviet Union, rendered Gorbachev in English but Gorbatschow in German (East and West)—note the difference e versus o in the final syllable.
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The Korean language has a different set of phonemes compared to most Indo-European languages.
Phonemes are individual sounds that are distinguished in pronunciation and used to differentiate words. For example, in English the words lot and rot are perceived as different because of the way the first letter (l versus r, typically denoted /l/ versus /r/) is pronounced. The East Asian languages Korean and (perhaps more famously) Japanese do not distinguish between an /l/ and an /r/ sound. In the Korean script, these both correspond to one letter (ㄹ). Depending on the surrounding, this sound may sound more like an l or more like an r to a westerner but a Korean will ‘hear’ no significant difference.
Furthermore, the vowel in Sung, denoted in Korean by the symbol ㅓ, corresponds to a sound which does exist in most European languages but does not have its own reserved letter: the schwa sound (again with potentially different pronunciation depending on the environment). In English, the schwa is used for reduced vowels: the e in unemphasised the, the second o in common or others. Korean uses a single symbol and differentiates it from other vowels such as a, e, i, etc.
The differences are suddenly significant when one tries to transliterate the original Korean into another language with a different script. Maybe you have seen the different spellings of Mao (Mao Tse-tung or Mao Zedong) depending on which romanisation standard was used. Likewise, various methods for the transliteration of Korean exist which were used at different times and by different countries.
According to the currently used system of South Korea (Revised McCune-Reischauer), the name would be spelt Kim Il-Seong in English—a spelling you probably have never seen before. The previous romanisation would indeed have turned him into the more common Kim Il-Sŏng. Because it was used at the time, people got used to it and the name was not changed when the revised system was introduced.
Unfortunately, I am not able to exactly source what happened in these countries you mention. However, the other answer has already provided that a different, older transliteration system was used in Russian. Russian, using Cyrillic letters, again needs to be transcribed into the Latin alphabet for languages such as Polish or Latvian which creates two levels of abstraction if the Russian spelling was used as the starting point—considering the history of these countries post World War II (when Kim Il-Song was contemporary) seems likely. As I mentioned above, the Latin and Korean alphabets don’t provide a perfect mapping—much worse than e.g. Latin and Cyrillic—so minor differences will occur and be carried on without there being any reason to assume a political background.
A case in point for a different script pair is the name of the last leader of the Soviet Union, rendered Gorbachev in English but Gorbatschow in German (East and West)—note the difference e versus o in the final syllable.
The Korean language has a different set of phonemes compared to most Indo-European languages.
Phonemes are individual sounds that are distinguished in pronunciation and used to differentiate words. For example, in English the words lot and rot are perceived as different because of the way the first letter (l versus r, typically denoted /l/ versus /r/) is pronounced. The East Asian languages Korean and (perhaps more famously) Japanese do not distinguish between an /l/ and an /r/ sound. In the Korean script, these both correspond to one letter (ㄹ). Depending on the surrounding, this sound may sound more like an l or more like an r to a westerner but a Korean will ‘hear’ no significant difference.
Furthermore, the vowel in Sung, denoted in Korean by the symbol ㅓ, corresponds to a sound which does exist in most European languages but does not have its own reserved letter: the schwa sound (again with potentially different pronunciation depending on the environment). In English, the schwa is used for reduced vowels: the e in unemphasised the, the second o in common or others. Korean uses a single symbol and differentiates it from other vowels such as a, e, i, etc.
The differences are suddenly significant when one tries to transliterate the original Korean into another language with a different script. Maybe you have seen the different spellings of Mao (Mao Tse-tung or Mao Zedong) depending on which romanisation standard was used. Likewise, various methods for the transliteration of Korean exist which were used at different times and by different countries.
According to the currently used system of South Korea (Revised McCune-Reischauer), the name would be spelt Kim Il-Seong in English—a spelling you probably have never seen before. The previous romanisation would indeed have turned him into the more common Kim Il-Sŏng. Because it was used at the time, people got used to it and the name was not changed when the revised system was introduced.
Unfortunately, I am not able to exactly source what happened in these countries you mention. However, the other answer has already provided that a different, older transliteration system was used in Russian. Russian, using Cyrillic letters, again needs to be transcribed into the Latin alphabet for languages such as Polish or Latvian which creates two levels of abstraction if the Russian spelling was used as the starting point—considering the history of these countries post World War II (when Kim Il-Song was contemporary) seems likely. As I mentioned above, the Latin and Korean alphabets don’t provide a perfect mapping—much worse than e.g. Latin and Cyrillic—so minor differences will occur and be carried on without there being any reason to assume a political background.
A case in point for a different script pair is the name of the last leader of the Soviet Union, rendered Gorbachev in English but Gorbatschow in German (East and West)—note the difference e versus o in the final syllable.
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its spelled different but still pronounced the same way. source: a polish friend.
– ed.hank
6 hours ago
@ed.hank - I speak Romanian, English, French, Italian, have notions of Bulgarian and Serbian, I can say that is not true, it does not sound the same in all these languages. What that could mean is that the Korean names can be transcribed in different ways in European languages. But it is transcribed in only two ways, and these two ways are separated as I describe. Why?
– cipricus
6 hours ago
hmm i dont know why he would lie to me about something so silly. but im not polish so i wouldnt know.
– ed.hank
6 hours ago
@ed.hank - it is not a lie, sorry. I have updated comment to clarify what I mean. But what does your friend mean: it sounds the same in Polish? Why he being Polish is even significant here?
– cipricus
6 hours ago
im curious as to the answer too. his being polish is significant because a pole would likely know more about communist bloc slavic languages much more than i would.
– ed.hank
6 hours ago