ORTHOGRAPHY AND PRONUNCIATION.
In the transliteration of Corean names into English, an attempt has been made to render them in as accurate and simple a manner as is, under the circumstances, possible. The Coreans themselves have no uniform system of spelling proper names, nor do the French missionaries agree in their renderings—as a comparison of their maps and writings shows. Our aim in this work has been to use as few letters as possible.
Japanese words are all pronounced according to the European method—a as in father, é as in prey, e as in men, i as in machine, o as in bone, u as in tune, ŭ as in sun; ai as in aisle, ua as in quarantine, ei as in feign, and iu is sounded as yu; g is always hard; and c before a vowel, g soft, l, q, s used as z, x, and the combinations ph and th are not used. The long vowel, rather diphthong o, or oho, is marked ō.
The most familiar Chinese names are retained in their usual English form.
Corean words are transliterated on the same general principles as the Japanese, though ears familiar with Corean will find the obscure sound between o and short u is written with either of these letters, as Chan-yon, or In-chiŭn, or Kiung-sang. Ch may sometimes be used instead of j; and e where o or a or u might more correctly be used, as in Kang-wen, or Wen-chiu. Instead of the French ou, or ho, we have written W, as in Whang-hai, Kang-wa, rather than Hoang-hai, Kang-hoa, Kang-ouen, Tai-ouen Kun, etc.; and in place of ts we have used ch, as Kwang-chiu rather than Kwang-tsiu, and Wen-chiu than Ouen-tsiu. [[xxii]]