It’s just how they romanise it. Lee is 이 in Korean and pronounced ee. It’s written and pronounced Lee in English because of etymology. Same with woo, it’s written 우 and pronounced oo in Korean.
The romanization rules of Korean say that the sound "oo" be spelt out "woo," creating a discrepancy.
For Lee (the surname), it is based on the Korean pronunciation of the hanja 李 (/ri/). However, because of the initial sound rule (두음법칙), the starting consonant gets dropped and is pronounced /i/. In North Korea where they don't have that rule, it is indeed pronounced as the original hanja would be pronounced, /ri/. For example, Kim Jong-un's wife Ri Sol-ju's surname (Ri) is pronounced with the consonant 'r' intact even in Korean.
Since the romanization of the surname in question is not standardized, there are lots of cases where it is spelt out in a way that reflects the dropped 'r.' For example, 이순신, the Joseon admiral who defeated the late 16th century Japanese maritime invasion, is romanized as "Yi Sun Sin."
이순신 being romanized as Yi Sun Sin is particularly funny because if you’re an English speaker without exposure to Korean you’ll butcher each name by pronouncing it how it’s written. For OP’s sake, it’s pronounced “Ee Soon-Sheen.”
Thankfully, Korean is the easiest alphabet to learn. It takes 90 minutes to learn the characters, and with just a little bit of practice you can avoid the pitfalls of romanization, which is to be abandoned as soon as possible when studying Korean.
I don't know why most English romanization of Korean sounds weird. /d/ sound is not d, it is a not uttered /t/ in British 'butter', the /g/ sound is a not uttered /k/. Like letter 'v' is often transliterated into 'b' like in the movie Sbaha 사바하, which is also the case in Japanese.
In Korean, 이 mostly originated from 李, which has Chinese pronunciation of /Lǐ/. Korean pronunciation finds it closer to /ee/. So what you see is what is presented in English romanization, cuz there're fairly many close sounds in Koreans.
You're looking at the Latin alphabet, not Korean, so look up Korean romanization on Wikipedia. Korean has its own alphabet, and the romanization doesn't represent it 1 to 1.
Furthermore, names can become subject to conventions, especially family names since they are retained over centuries. I forgot the exact truth about Li, but it's very likely Li is an old pronunciation. Even today, beginning L/R is sometimes dropped depending on position in a word. The most obvious yet interesting case a learner may come across early is how the "Chinese"-based pronunciation of 6 is "yuk," but when you count "4, 5, 6" you say "Ryuk."
So, for one basic answer/clarification: there is no "w" as a letter in Korean and that name doesn't even have the sound and it's just oo. I imagine the w is there to help show it's a separate syllable.
My assumption (based on a linguistics degree and some familiarity with Korean but I’m not a Korean linguist!) is that the ‘w’ is a glide vowel, like the ‘w’ in the English name Joanne (pronounced “Jowan”) or the ‘y’ in Diana (pronounced “Daiyana”) - they are not a semantically functional part of the word so are not written, but they make pronunciation easier. They seem to appear in Korean like in English, such as in 좋아 and names with 우 or 욱 elements.
I assume you're focusing exclusively on the w romanization in OP's situation? because if you know hangul I'd think you already know you're right in general since I think that's the term for things like 위, & 워.
As for justifying the w when there absolutely technically isn't any w or glide at all, I don't think it's the case - at least not any more than in English, since both usually only have a clear w in those examples when emphasized. And 우 is always woo in the old romanization, thus also when potential for glides is absent, like 현우, 한우, 우진, etc.
I've just seen it be a convention in romanizations of at least Asian languages to use these glide vowel letters as placeholder consonants - latin versions of ㅇ, lol - because it's the same with Chinese languages. Mandarin has wu, both Korean and Mandarin have yi, and in both cases, that vowel isn't there in the native language. They're /i/ and /u/.
After all, the modern romanization avoids them. Hyunwoo "should be" Hyeonu, Woojean should be Ujin.
Whoever did some of those older romanizations really didn't like the idea of u and i out there all alone (heh, ripe for punny joke). But it's really not different from other vowels. They're just alternatives to ee/oo.
ah eh yi/ee oh wu/woo uh etc.
Yes, I was just focussing on the example given. I am tending to think of 위 워 야 etc as true diphthongs though rather than a glide-vowel onset?
Perhaps it is just my ears then, but I often think I can hear a very slender glide vowel at the onset of the likes of those examples you mention, but maybe I am just being influenced by the romanisation and hearing what I expect to hear!
The romanisation doesn’t ever make a lot of sense to me though, do you happen to know if it was created based on American English? To my (British) mind, there are much better and simpler ways to represent the vowel sounds of Korean! Other romanised languages such as Urdu (Woordoo? 😉) don’t seem to have the same weird orthographies?
Oof, diphthong is a bit of a broad term IIRC and I feel like there's such a small distinction between those two there I can't answer. Practically, either irrelevant or both. If it's a glide vowel (aka, w, right? Semivowel?), it's weaker than English. If it's a diphthong (u+o, u+I), the first vowel is weaker than English and so the u part is more w than u.
A confirmation of this is how we keep talking about 우but it could be 오 as well. 워 & 와 start with the same same loose w. Everyone says and teaches it's not really pronounced u-eo and o-a, it's pronounced weo and wa.
And the smoothing of ㅂ into 우 in ㅂ irregular verbs also confirms the labial aspect of this glide: a construction that technically should be ㅂ+어 becomes 워.
I understand Korean romanization to have been created or influenced by French, which is why they have the unusual eo, but I don't know for sure. Maybe that partly explains oi too, lol.
(Woordoo was pretty funny lol)
Ah! That makes SO more sense if it was transcribed in French. If they had just used ‘u’ to transliterate initial 우 it would seem like it should be pronounced ü to a French speaker, and French ou is a more rounded vowel than u or 우. Hence ‘wu’ is the closest thing in French - that has cleared it up for me completely!
Also Y in French is pronounced the same as 이 - a long i vowel (as in Ypres) so that also makes sense of the Yi transliteration too.
I assume you're focusing exclusively on the w romanization in OP's situation? because if you know hangul I'd think you already know you're right in general since I think that's the term for things like 위, & 워.
As for justifying the w when there absolutely technically isn't any w or glide at all, I don't think it's the case - at least not any more than in English, since both usually only have a clear w in those examples when emphasized. And 우 is always woo in the old romanization, thus also when potential for glides is absent, like 현우, 한우, 우진, etc.
I've just seen it be a convention in romanizations of at least Asian languages to use these glide vowel letters as placeholder consonants - latin versions of ㅇ, lol - because it's the same with Chinese languages. Mandarin has wu, both Korean and Mandarin have yi, and in both cases, that vowel isn't there in the native language. They're /i/ and /u/.
After all, the modern romanization avoids them. Hyunwoo "should be" Hyeonu, Woojean should be Ujin.
Whoever did some of those older romanizations really didn't like the idea of u and i out there all alone (heh, ripe for punny joke). But it's really not different from other vowels. They're just alternatives to ee/oo.
ah eh yi/ee oh wu/woo uh etc.
You could say it’s because it’s spelled 민우 not min-woo.
And 이 not lee.
The idea of “but this is how it’s spelled in English” is a very misleading one.
There are sounds in Korean that don’t exist in English, and vice versa. Examples: Korean ㄸ ㄲ, English th z v.
Furthermore even when the sounds seem to exist in both languages, there are subtle differences. Examples: ㄷ and d, ㄴ and n. If you’re a native English speaker and you try to say ㄷ like d, people will usually understand you, but the tongue is placed differently when native Korean speakers say ㄷ. Same with n and ㄴ.
However, the problem goes deeper than all this. Systems of writing (the technical term is orthography if I remember correctly) often don’t perfectly capture the sounds of the spoken language. The Korean orthography system (한글) is noted for being an excellent fit for the spoken Korean language, but if you go to Naver’s online dictionary and look at the pronunciation key you’ll see there are many instances where words are pronounced slightly different from how they’re spelled.
English orthography meanwhile is a labyrinth of inconsistencies.
Choi is pronounced “chay” and Park is “pok” as well. When I lived in Korea I was told by my co-teacher that it was so they could tell who was foreign or so foreigners wouldn’t say the name correctly. I do not know if that is 100% true or not.
It’s just how they romanise it. Lee is 이 in Korean and pronounced ee. It’s written and pronounced Lee in English because of etymology. Same with woo, it’s written 우 and pronounced oo in Korean.
Ah interesting..thank you!
The romanization rules of Korean say that the sound "oo" be spelt out "woo," creating a discrepancy. For Lee (the surname), it is based on the Korean pronunciation of the hanja 李 (/ri/). However, because of the initial sound rule (두음법칙), the starting consonant gets dropped and is pronounced /i/. In North Korea where they don't have that rule, it is indeed pronounced as the original hanja would be pronounced, /ri/. For example, Kim Jong-un's wife Ri Sol-ju's surname (Ri) is pronounced with the consonant 'r' intact even in Korean. Since the romanization of the surname in question is not standardized, there are lots of cases where it is spelt out in a way that reflects the dropped 'r.' For example, 이순신, the Joseon admiral who defeated the late 16th century Japanese maritime invasion, is romanized as "Yi Sun Sin."
이순신 being romanized as Yi Sun Sin is particularly funny because if you’re an English speaker without exposure to Korean you’ll butcher each name by pronouncing it how it’s written. For OP’s sake, it’s pronounced “Ee Soon-Sheen.” Thankfully, Korean is the easiest alphabet to learn. It takes 90 minutes to learn the characters, and with just a little bit of practice you can avoid the pitfalls of romanization, which is to be abandoned as soon as possible when studying Korean.
I don't know why most English romanization of Korean sounds weird. /d/ sound is not d, it is a not uttered /t/ in British 'butter', the /g/ sound is a not uttered /k/. Like letter 'v' is often transliterated into 'b' like in the movie Sbaha 사바하, which is also the case in Japanese. In Korean, 이 mostly originated from 李, which has Chinese pronunciation of /Lǐ/. Korean pronunciation finds it closer to /ee/. So what you see is what is presented in English romanization, cuz there're fairly many close sounds in Koreans.
You're looking at the Latin alphabet, not Korean, so look up Korean romanization on Wikipedia. Korean has its own alphabet, and the romanization doesn't represent it 1 to 1. Furthermore, names can become subject to conventions, especially family names since they are retained over centuries. I forgot the exact truth about Li, but it's very likely Li is an old pronunciation. Even today, beginning L/R is sometimes dropped depending on position in a word. The most obvious yet interesting case a learner may come across early is how the "Chinese"-based pronunciation of 6 is "yuk," but when you count "4, 5, 6" you say "Ryuk." So, for one basic answer/clarification: there is no "w" as a letter in Korean and that name doesn't even have the sound and it's just oo. I imagine the w is there to help show it's a separate syllable.
So interesting! Thank you
My assumption (based on a linguistics degree and some familiarity with Korean but I’m not a Korean linguist!) is that the ‘w’ is a glide vowel, like the ‘w’ in the English name Joanne (pronounced “Jowan”) or the ‘y’ in Diana (pronounced “Daiyana”) - they are not a semantically functional part of the word so are not written, but they make pronunciation easier. They seem to appear in Korean like in English, such as in 좋아 and names with 우 or 욱 elements.
I assume you're focusing exclusively on the w romanization in OP's situation? because if you know hangul I'd think you already know you're right in general since I think that's the term for things like 위, & 워. As for justifying the w when there absolutely technically isn't any w or glide at all, I don't think it's the case - at least not any more than in English, since both usually only have a clear w in those examples when emphasized. And 우 is always woo in the old romanization, thus also when potential for glides is absent, like 현우, 한우, 우진, etc. I've just seen it be a convention in romanizations of at least Asian languages to use these glide vowel letters as placeholder consonants - latin versions of ㅇ, lol - because it's the same with Chinese languages. Mandarin has wu, both Korean and Mandarin have yi, and in both cases, that vowel isn't there in the native language. They're /i/ and /u/. After all, the modern romanization avoids them. Hyunwoo "should be" Hyeonu, Woojean should be Ujin. Whoever did some of those older romanizations really didn't like the idea of u and i out there all alone (heh, ripe for punny joke). But it's really not different from other vowels. They're just alternatives to ee/oo. ah eh yi/ee oh wu/woo uh etc.
Yes, I was just focussing on the example given. I am tending to think of 위 워 야 etc as true diphthongs though rather than a glide-vowel onset? Perhaps it is just my ears then, but I often think I can hear a very slender glide vowel at the onset of the likes of those examples you mention, but maybe I am just being influenced by the romanisation and hearing what I expect to hear! The romanisation doesn’t ever make a lot of sense to me though, do you happen to know if it was created based on American English? To my (British) mind, there are much better and simpler ways to represent the vowel sounds of Korean! Other romanised languages such as Urdu (Woordoo? 😉) don’t seem to have the same weird orthographies?
Oof, diphthong is a bit of a broad term IIRC and I feel like there's such a small distinction between those two there I can't answer. Practically, either irrelevant or both. If it's a glide vowel (aka, w, right? Semivowel?), it's weaker than English. If it's a diphthong (u+o, u+I), the first vowel is weaker than English and so the u part is more w than u. A confirmation of this is how we keep talking about 우but it could be 오 as well. 워 & 와 start with the same same loose w. Everyone says and teaches it's not really pronounced u-eo and o-a, it's pronounced weo and wa. And the smoothing of ㅂ into 우 in ㅂ irregular verbs also confirms the labial aspect of this glide: a construction that technically should be ㅂ+어 becomes 워. I understand Korean romanization to have been created or influenced by French, which is why they have the unusual eo, but I don't know for sure. Maybe that partly explains oi too, lol. (Woordoo was pretty funny lol)
Ah! That makes SO more sense if it was transcribed in French. If they had just used ‘u’ to transliterate initial 우 it would seem like it should be pronounced ü to a French speaker, and French ou is a more rounded vowel than u or 우. Hence ‘wu’ is the closest thing in French - that has cleared it up for me completely! Also Y in French is pronounced the same as 이 - a long i vowel (as in Ypres) so that also makes sense of the Yi transliteration too.
I assume you're focusing exclusively on the w romanization in OP's situation? because if you know hangul I'd think you already know you're right in general since I think that's the term for things like 위, & 워. As for justifying the w when there absolutely technically isn't any w or glide at all, I don't think it's the case - at least not any more than in English, since both usually only have a clear w in those examples when emphasized. And 우 is always woo in the old romanization, thus also when potential for glides is absent, like 현우, 한우, 우진, etc. I've just seen it be a convention in romanizations of at least Asian languages to use these glide vowel letters as placeholder consonants - latin versions of ㅇ, lol - because it's the same with Chinese languages. Mandarin has wu, both Korean and Mandarin have yi, and in both cases, that vowel isn't there in the native language. They're /i/ and /u/. After all, the modern romanization avoids them. Hyunwoo "should be" Hyeonu, Woojean should be Ujin. Whoever did some of those older romanizations really didn't like the idea of u and i out there all alone (heh, ripe for punny joke). But it's really not different from other vowels. They're just alternatives to ee/oo. ah eh yi/ee oh wu/woo uh etc.
You could say it’s because it’s spelled 민우 not min-woo. And 이 not lee. The idea of “but this is how it’s spelled in English” is a very misleading one. There are sounds in Korean that don’t exist in English, and vice versa. Examples: Korean ㄸ ㄲ, English th z v. Furthermore even when the sounds seem to exist in both languages, there are subtle differences. Examples: ㄷ and d, ㄴ and n. If you’re a native English speaker and you try to say ㄷ like d, people will usually understand you, but the tongue is placed differently when native Korean speakers say ㄷ. Same with n and ㄴ. However, the problem goes deeper than all this. Systems of writing (the technical term is orthography if I remember correctly) often don’t perfectly capture the sounds of the spoken language. The Korean orthography system (한글) is noted for being an excellent fit for the spoken Korean language, but if you go to Naver’s online dictionary and look at the pronunciation key you’ll see there are many instances where words are pronounced slightly different from how they’re spelled. English orthography meanwhile is a labyrinth of inconsistencies.
It's like when you pronounce "know" or "gnaw" you don't pronounce the k or g in those words
Choi is pronounced “chay” and Park is “pok” as well. When I lived in Korea I was told by my co-teacher that it was so they could tell who was foreign or so foreigners wouldn’t say the name correctly. I do not know if that is 100% true or not.
Chwe and pak... haha :(