a concise explanation for the question: > WHY is there still, in 2009, no concerted move among the (very limited) number of people regularly using the McCune-Reischauer method of transciption to revise it and get rid of those impossible breves? What is the great advantage of retaining them? Do they have magic powers?
[R King writes] They do indeed have magical powers -- they render unambiguously and without resorting to clumsy digraphs vowels that the Korean sound system insists be distinguished and that otherwise would go undistinguished in roman script. They signal, through their unitary unigraphicity, that a single vowel is being represented -- something that Seong-su or Seung-mi from Incheon cannot do with the new system. ...there is a trade-off between the clumsiness of the special character and the clumsiness of a digraph... =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= in short, those who no longer need the romanized aids to pronunciation do not have a stake in the system of diacritics any more. Those new to the language do not have a stake in one system of transcription over another. But those who are neither beginners or intermediate students of Korean language do very much benefit from the diacritic cues to distinguish sounds.
Monash Korean language textbooks 'My Korean 1 and 2' (by Young-A Cho, In-Jung Cho and Douglas Ling) are now available free of charge at http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/korean/klec/ . supported by the Korea Foundation with a 2008 grant (Support for Instructional Materials Development). -- Young-A Cho & In-Jung Cho, Korean Studies at Monash
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