Africanist Romaja

Table of Contents

• About
• Features
• Compared to Revised Romanization
• Description
• Convert to/from hangul
• Type in Africanist Romaja

About

Africanist Korean Romanization was inspired by Latin-script variants for African languages, once you get over the surprise of these unfamiliar-looking letters, this system is surprisingly simple and easy to learn.

This idea was spawned by this thing I posted on Reddit to which I got an unexpectedly positive reaction!

Features

Special characters

Africanist Korean Romanization uses the following special characters.

• Open E ⟨Ɛ ɛ⟩ and Open O ⟨Ɔ ɔ⟩ These vowel letters from the IPA have been used in many African languages, spread in part by the International African Alphabet. Here, it represents the vowels ㅐ and ㅓ.
• O with slash ⟨Ø ø⟩ This letter, usually found in Scandinavian alphabets, represents the vowel digraph ㅚ.
• Eng ⟨Ŋ ŋ⟩ This letter invented by Benjamin Franklin is also used in the IPA and many African languages. Here, it represents ㅇ as a syllable-final consonant (batchim).
• K with hook ⟨Ƙ ƙ⟩, T with hook ⟨Ƭ ƭ⟩, P with hook ⟨Ƥ ƥ⟩, and C with hook ⟨Ƈ ƈ⟩ Hooked letters typically represent implosives in African alphabets. Here, they are repurposed for the tense stops ㄲ ㄸ ㅃ ㅉ.
• S with swash tail ⟨Ȿ ȿ⟩ This visually similar letter represents the tense fricative ㅆ.
• Turned H ⟨Ɥ ɥ⟩ This letter from the IPA, also invented by Benjamin Franklin, is used in the Dan language of Liberia to stand for the /ɯ/ vowel. Here, it represents the vowel ㅡ.

Direct correspondence to hangul

Africanist Korean Romanization can convert to and from hangul with no loss of information. Using Wikipedia’s example phrase, meaning “a person who cannot do it”:

• Hangul 못하는사람이
• Africanist moshanɥnsalam’i
• Phonetic transcription in IPA [mo.tʰa.nɯn.sa.ɾa.mi]
• Hangul phonetic respelling 모타는사라미
• Africanist phonetic respelling motanɥnsalami

Realization of Bureosseugi

Hangul is written in a system called moasseugi, which assembles jamo (i.e. individual consonant or vowel letters) into blocks. There has been some historical discussion about switching to bureossugi, a system where jamo are written in a single line, when moving to adopt Western-style horizontal writing, dating back to December 1908. However, nothing really came of it.

Since ⟨ㅇ⟩ is silent when at the start of a syllable block and /ŋ/ at the end, it has been suggested to drop the silent ⟨ㅇ⟩ in bureosseugi. However, simply listing the jamo horizontally will be slow to handwrite, and cause ambiguity in sequences such as ⟨ㅐ⟩ vs. ⟨ㅏㅣ⟩ if the silent ⟨ㅇ⟩ is dropped.

Africanist Korean Romanization is a realization of that bureosseugi idea. It separates ⟨ㅇ⟩ into its two ancestors: the always silent ⟨ㅇ⟩ and the obsolete ⟨ㆁ⟩ letter standing for its /ŋ/ sound.

Compared to Revised Romanization

Revised Romanization is the current official standard for Korean romaja.

Advantages

• Fewer digraphs; fewer hyphens/apostrophes

  Revised Romanization is full of digraphs, such as eo ⟨ㅓ⟩, eu ⟨ㅡ⟩, ae ⟨ㅐ⟩, ch ⟨ㅊ⟩, ng ⟨ㅇ⟩, and ⟨ㅃ⟩ pp. This necessitates the use of hyphens to break up ambiguous sequences: for example, is aeo meant to be ⟨ㅏ어⟩ a-eo or ⟨ㅐ오⟩ ae-o? Is Gangwon meant to be Gang-won ⟨강원⟩ or Gan-gwon ⟨간권⟩?

  By using more unique letters, Africanist Romaja reduces this ambiguity to a bare minimum. (aeo would be clearly disambiguated as aɔ ⟨ㅏ어⟩ and ɛo ⟨ㅐ오⟩.) The apostrophe is only ever used as the initial ⟨ㅇ⟩.

• Faithful to hangul

  Unlike Revised Romanization, Africanist Romaja transcribes the spelling in hangul instead of pronunciation, potentially making Africanist Romaja a good learning aid in studying Korean word derivation rules and batchim sound changes.

• No initial–final irregularities

  Unlike in Revised Romanization, where “ㄹ” is ⟨r⟩ when initial and ⟨l⟩ when final, here “ㄹ” is always ⟨l⟩.

Disadvantages

• Pronunciation rules

  By directly representing the hangul spelling, Africanist Romaja does not directly represent the pronunciation of the word. The reader must apply the sound change rules in their minds, which are equal to that in hangul.

• Nearly nonexistent keyboard and font support

  Its use of special characters requires the use of a specialized international keyboard. Shona no longer uses ⟨Ȿ ȿ⟩, making it currently unused by any natural language. Even without ⟨Ȿ ȿ⟩, no one natural language uses all the remaining letters of Africanist Romaja. Only specialist fonts, such as Andika used on this page, cover all the letters of Africanist Romaja.

  It might be worth trying to make a variant of this system with more commonly used special characters, such as ⟨è⟩ for ⟨ɛ⟩.

Description

In alphabetical order

In hangul order

• ⟨Ø ø⟩ for “ㅚ” is a compromise to avoid merging with other vowel spellings, and a means to avoid making ⟨OI oi⟩ a digraph.
• “ㅡ이” requires an apostrophe to disambiguate from “ㅢ”.

Ieung rules

Convert to/from hangul

This tool is powered by hangul-js.

This tool will capitalize the first word of each sentence. If you need to capitalize other letters, please use the “Toggle case of selected” button.

Type in Africanist Korean Romanization

This affects the output text box in the previous section, “Convert to/from hangul”.

Sample text: Batcim assimilation rules

*Please note that I don’t fully understand batcim assimilation rules either, so this guide may be inaccurate.

What’s a batcim?

A batcim is a consonant placed at the end of a syllable. It means “support” or “prop” in Korean because it is written at the bottom of the syllable block in hangɥl.

The batcim consonant is also called joŋsɔŋ in/about Korean, and a “coda consonant” generally.

Basic sound change

Some letters sound different when it becomes a batcim.

• g, k, and ƙ all sound like k.
• c, d, h, j, s, t, and ƭ all sound like t.
• b and p both sound like p.

In hangɥl, ŋ is written using the dummy consonant ⟨ㅇ⟩. This is because, historically, they were two different letters with a different sound: ⟨ㅇ⟩ (silent) and ⟨ㆁ⟩ ŋ. Because you could just leave the ⟨ㅇ⟩ out at the end of a syllable block, and the sound ŋ did not appear at the start of a syllable, these two letters with similar shapes merged into one letter with two contextual sounds, one as a cosɔŋ (initial consonant) and another as a joŋsɔŋ (final consonant).

Before a vowel or an apostrophe

If the next syllable starts with a vowel (including y or w), you’re already there! If there is an apostrophe, simply remove it.

• man’wɔn → manwɔn “10,000 won”
• pul’i → puli “interpretation”
• mɔg’i → mɔgi “feed”

d and t before i

Certain Korean words with d’i and t’i change to sound like j’i and c’i.

• hɛdod’i → hɛdoji
• gat’i → gaci

ƙ and ȿ

The only tense consonants that can be batcim are ƙ and ȿ. They confer their tenseness to the following consonant, or just sound like themselves if it is before a vowel.

• ƙɔƙda, ɔȿda → ƙɔkƭa, ɔsƭa → ƙɔkƭa, ɔtƭa
• ƙɔƙ’ɔ, ɔȿ’ɔ → ƙɔƙɔ, ɔȿɔ

h

If the batcim forms a cluster containing h, it confers the aspiration to the consonant before or after it and then disappears.

As an exception, l and n do not have an aspirated form, so it just erases the h.

• jabhida → japida
• gɥlɔhji → gɥlɔci
• bagha → baka
• silhyɔn → silyɔn

Double batcim

Some syllables have two consonants at the end.

In isolation or at the end of a word, the “higher-ranking” consonant is pronounced, while the “lower-ranking” consonant is ignored. The “rank” of a consonant is encoded in hangɥl consonant order: g > n > d > l > m > b ...

The list of valid double batcim are: lg, nj, nh, lb, lh, lm, bs, gs, ls, lt, and lp. The first 7 are the most common.

Before another consonant (i.e. there are three consonant letters in a row), discard the “lower-ranking” consonant, then apply regular sound changes. Exceptions apply, however:

• malgda “clear” → malƭa, not magƭa
• mulgda “watery” → mulƭa, not mugƭa
• ilgda “read” → ilƭa, not igƭa
• balbda “step on” → bapƭa, not balƭa

Before an apostrophe, simply remove the apostrophe.

ŋ–assimilation

Some combinations between g/k and n/m cause one of them to turn into ŋ.

• -gn- or -kn- → -ŋn-
• -gm- or -km- → -ŋm-
• -ng- → -ŋg-
• e.g. goŋlyoŋ “dinosaur” –> goŋnyoŋ

m–assimilation

Some combinations between n/b/p and n/m/b cause one of them to turn into m.

• -nm-, -bm-, or -pm- → -mm-
• -nb- → -mb-
• -bn- or -pn- → -mn-

n–assimilation

All batcim pronounced like t turn into n before n or m.

l clustering rules

l wins against n. The clusters -ln- and -nl- both turn into -ll-.

l draws against g. When they cluster, l turns into n and g turns into ŋ.

Surprisingly, l loses against m. The clusters -ml- and -lm- cause the l to turn into n.

When clustering against an unaspirated consonant, it causes that consonant to be tense.

tensing

When an unaspirated, aspirated, or tense consonant clusters with an unaspirated consonant, the consonant on the onset becomes tense.

“Last resort” n–assimilation

Only when no other rules apply, clusters ending in n turn into nn.

• iȿnɥn –> innɥn
• myɔcnyɔn –> myɔnnyɔn
• nohnɥn –> nonnɥn
• bicna –> binna