Page:The history of Korea, v1 (1905).djvu/11

 what high regard for literature, and there could have been no such reason for destroying histories as might exist where one dynasty was forcibly ejected by another hostile one. In the third place the monasteries were the great literary centers during the centuries preceding the rise of the present dynasty, and we may well believe that the Mongols would not seriously molest these sacred repositories. On the whole then we may conclude that from the year 57 B. C. Korean histories are fairly accurate. Whatever comes before that is largely traditional and therefore more or less apocryphal.

One of the greatest difficulties encountered is the selection of a system of romanisation which shall steer a middle course between the Scilla of extreme accuracy and the Charybdis of extreme simplicity. I have adopted the rule of spelling all proper names in a purely phonetic way without reference to the way they are spelled in native Korean. In this way alone can the reader arrive at anything like the actual pronunciation as found in Korea.

The simple vowels have their continental sounds : a as in "father," i as in "ravine," o as in "rope" and u as in "rule." The vowel e is used only with the grave accent and is pronounced as in the French "recit." When a vowel has the short mark over it, it is to be given the flat sound: ä as in "fat," ŏ as in "hot." ŭ as in "nut." The umlaut ö is used but it has a slightly more open sound thang in German. It is the "unrounded o" where the vowel is pronounced without protruding the lips. The pure Korean sound represented by oé is a pure diphthong and is pronounced by letting the lips assume the position of pronouncing o while the tongue is thrown forward as if to pronounce the short e in "met." Eu is nearly the French eu but with a slightry more open sound. As for consonants they have their usual sounds, but when the surds k, p or t in the body of a word are immediately preceded, by an open syllable or a syllable ending with a sonant, they change to their corresponding sonants : k to g, p to b and t to d. For instance, in the word Pak-tu, the t of the tu would be d if the first syllable were open. No word begins with the sonants g, b or d.