Korean romanization si/shi

[Mark Spahn]

In Japanese, there is no sound "si"; it is pronounced "shi".
Is the same true in Korean?
A book I am reading about North Korean propaganda/ideology
makes reference to a newspaper romanized as "Maeil sinbo".
My guess is that the original hanja is 毎日新報 (Mainichi Shinpou).
Is "sinbo" pronounced "shinbo"? I.e., is "si" just a systematic
romanization that is actually pronounced "shi", as it would be
in Japanese? Another newspaper is romanized as
"Rodong sinmun", which I infer is 労働新聞 (Roudou Shinbun).
Here too, the "si" is pronounced "shi", right?
-- Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY)

[Matthew Schlecht]

     The Hangeul particle ㅅ is spoken variously as "s" or "sh" depending on preceding consonant (if any), following vowel and consonant, by convention in certain words, and differing by regional accent.
     For example, one of the three ancient kingdoms on the Korean peninsula, 신라 (which is literally 'sinla', but hey...), can be pronounced either as "Silla" or "Shilla", depending on where you're from.  Wiki states that Modern Korean has this as "Shilla", but that's news to many who still say "Silla".
     The Romanization of Hangeul has many flavors, as does Japanese.

Matthew Schlecht, PhD
Word Alchemy
Newark, DE, USA
wordalchemytranslation.com

[Mark Spahn]

I notice from the preface of this book ("The Cleanest Race",
by B. R. Myers) that "The McCune-Reischauer system [of
romanizaton] is used throughout this book, except ...".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCune-Reischauer says
==QUOTE==
In South Korea's variant of McCune–Reischauer, in official use from 1984 to
2000, 시 is written as shi instead of the original system's si, and others
like 샤, 셔 and so on, where the pronunciation is deemed closer to a /ʃ/ sound
than a /s/ sound, are romanised with sh instead of s. The original system
deploys sh only in the combination 쉬, as shwi.
==UNQUOTE==

So I guess that answers my question: "si" is pronounced "shi".

-- Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY)

> In Japanese, there is no sound "si"; it is pronounced "shi".
> Is the same true in Korean?
> A book I am reading about North Korean propaganda/ideology
> makes reference to a newspaper romanized as "Maeil sinbo".
> My guess is that the original hanja is 毎日新報 (Mainichi Shinpou).
> Is "sinbo" pronounced "shinbo"? I.e., is "si" just a systematic
> romanization that is actually pronounced "shi", as it would be
> in Japanese? Another newspaper is romanized as
> "Rodong sinmun", which I infer is 労働新聞 (Roudou Shinbun).
> Here too, the "si" is pronounced "shi", right?

[Alan Siegrist]

Mark Spahn writes:

> In Japanese, there is no sound "si"; it is pronounced "shi".
> Is the same true in Korean?
> A book I am reading about North Korean propaganda/ideology makes
> reference to a newspaper romanized as "Maeil sinbo".
> My guess is that the original hanja is 毎日新報 (Mainichi Shinpou).

Apparently the hanja were originally每日申報. See:
http://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EC%84%9C%EC%9A%B8%EC%8B%A0%EB%AC%B8

> Is "sinbo" pronounced "shinbo"? I.e., is "si" just a systematic romanization
> that is actually pronounced "shi", as it would be in Japanese? Another
> newspaper is romanized as "Rodong sinmun", which I infer is 労働新聞
> (Roudou Shinbun).
> Here too, the "si" is pronounced "shi", right?

My Korean pronunciation is really poor, but Google translate has a nice feature where it will pronounce words written in various languages.

You can try running the hangul through GT and see how it sounds like to you.

For example, the hangul for "Maeil sinbo" is매일신보. Try:
https://translate.google.com/?q=google&rlz=1C1LDJZ_enUS499US500&aq=0&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&sa=N&tab=wT#auto/en/%EB%A7%A4%EC%9D%BC%EC%8B%A0%EB%B3%B4

Click on the little "speaker" icon to the bottom right of the left box containing the hangul. I seem to hear "si" as "shi" as you suggest, but YMMV.

Best,

Alan

[Mark Spahn]

Yes, I too hear this as Maeil SHinpo or Maeil SHinbo
(I can't decide whether I'm hearing a "p" or a "b".)
Thanks.

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[Mark Spahn]

As I understand it, there is no R/L distinctions in Chinese, Japanese, or
Korean.
That is, English has minimal pairs of words that differ in meaning because
of the R/L distinction (like "rice" and "lice"), but there are no such
minimal pairs in Chinese, Japanese, or Korean.
And in Japanese and Korean, there are no instances in which the meaning of a
word depends on a pronunciation that differs only in si/shi (as in "sit" and
"shit" in English).
Question: Is there a si/shi distinction in Chinese?
The answer seems to be Yes. Looking at the Pinyin
romanizations of シ words in Chinese, we find
四 si
市 shi
But the sound romanized by "shi" in Chinese is not exactly the "shi" sound
in English. Instead, the Chinese sound romanized by "shi" involves folding
the back of the tongue in a way that is not done with the English-language
sound "shi". So will an English-language "shi" sound be heard as a Chinese
"si", or as a Chinese "shi"?