Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 June 24

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June 24

Lee Sung Jin’s name in the Korean alphabet

I’m only barely cognizant of the Korean alphabet, so this might be an obvious thing, but I noticed that the Korean spelling of Lee Sung Jin is 이성진, but my understanding is that ᄋ in an initial position is an indication of no initial consonant (since a Hangul syllable cannot begin with a vowel). So I’m wondering why 이 is rendered “Lee.” Is that how his name would be pronounced in Korean or is the added initial L a sop to Western expectations who would find a family name of I or Ee to be too short? D A Hosek (talk) 02:02, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

There's a bit more info at Lee (Korean surname). There's still in principle a consonant "ㄹ" at the beginning of the syllable, but Korean phonetics don't pronounce this sound in initial position. The practice in South Korea is that this type of phonetic rule should be reflected in spelling, so it's written "이" instead of "리". In North Korea the spelling is "리" and the name is also transliterated as "Ri", as in Ri Sol-ju. So it's not entirely made up for Western expectations. Other names are also affected by related phonetic rules: for example, Roh Moo-hyun's family name is written "노" in Korean. The same root Chinese character does have an "ㄹ" when it's not at the start of a word. --Amble (talk) 03:14, 24 June 2024 (UTC)