On the Regulation for Pronunciation of Loanwords in Korean

외래어의 표준 발음과 어문 규범

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how to decide pronunciation of loanwords in Korean language. There has not been a regulation for pronunciation of loanwords in Korean language. Even the dictionary published by the government does not provide any information about the pronunciation of loanwords. In this paper, some actual solutions are suggested for the pronunciation of loanwords. Korean language has Regulations of Standard Korean, Korean Orthography, Regulations on Hangeul Transcriptions on Loanwords and Pronunciation Methods of Standard Korean. These language standards could help to decide pronunciation of loanwords. Some pronunciations which could not be regulated by them must be presented in the standard pronunciation dictionary. For example, glottalization rule of 's' in many loanwords could be presented in the description of each loanword in the dictionary. However the pronunciation of loanwords must be similar to the spelling. If various pronunciations are allowed to one spelling, then people will be so confused by the discrepancy between pronunciation and spelling of loanwords.