The Kontsevich system () is a

Cyrillization Cyrillization or Cyrillisation is the process of rendering words of a language that normally uses a writing system other than Cyrillic script into (a version of) the Cyrillic alphabet. Although such a process has often been carried out in an ad ...

system for the

Korean language Korean (South Korean: , ''hangugeo''; North Korean: , ''chosŏnmal'') is the native language for about 80 million people, mostly of Korean descent. It is the official and national language of both North Korea and South Korea (geographica ...

and currently the main system of

transcribing Transcription in the linguistic sense is the systematic representation of spoken language in written form. The source can either be utterances (''speech'' or ''sign language'') or preexisting text in another writing system. Transcription shoul ...

and

transliterating Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus ''trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or L ...

Korean words into the

Cyrillic alphabet , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = Gr ...

. The Kontsevich system was created by the

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

scholar

Lev Kontsevich Lev Rafailovich Kontsevich ( rus, Лев Рафаилович Концевич, , born 3 September 1930) is a Soviet- Russian orientalist and Candidate of Sciences, who created the Kontsevich system, the cyrillization system for the Korean langua ...

() in the 1950s based on the earlier transliteration system designed by ().

Features

Cyrillization systems for Korean were developed domestically in both

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu (Amnok) and T ...

(where it has been proposed to replace the current script in the past) and

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

; Kontsevich carried out work on the systemization of these rules. In contrast with some systems of

Romanization of Korean Romanization of Korean refers to systems for representing the Korean language in the Latin script. Korea's alphabetic script, called Hangul, has historically been used in conjunction with Hanja (Chinese characters), though such practice has bec ...

, the transcription is based primarily on the pronunciation of a word, rather than on its spelling.

Consonants

Initial

Final

Medial consonant rules

Some letters are transcribed differently in the middle of a word when following certain other letters.

Vowels

Examples

Notes

Korean personal names are written by

family name In some cultures, a surname, family name, or last name is the portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family, tribe or community. Practices vary by culture. The family name may be placed at either the start of a person's full name, ...

first, followed by a space and then the

given name A given name (also known as a forename or first name) is the part of a personal name quoted in that identifies a person, potentially with a middle name as well, and differentiates that person from the other members of a group (typically a ...

. As a rule, syllables in given names are not separated.

External links

*
Degrees of Courtesy and Communication Styles in the Korean Language
by K. B. Kurotchenko. *
Entry for Lev Kontsevich on the Institute of Oriental Studies
*
Russian and Latin Transcription of Korean Words
by Lev Kontsevich. {{Cyrillization Korean language

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula * Korean cuisine * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl **Korean dialects and the Jeju language ** ...

Korea–Soviet Union relations