Why is North-Korean communist leader Kim Il-sung called Kim Ir Sen in some languages?
score:35
Under an older system of transliteration, the Russians transliterated 김일성 (Kim Il-Sung) as Ким Ир Сен (Kim Irsen), which is still the standard way of rendering his name in Russian. Under the currently standard Kontsevich system, it would instead be transliterated as Ким Ильсо́н (Kim Ilson).
It seems that those countries that were closer to Russia politically tended to follow the Russian transliteration Ким Ир Сен (Kim Irsen); while those more to the west tended to use the Roman transliteration Kim Il-Sung.
By the way, this explains why Kim Jong-Il (son of Kim Il-Sung) was born Yuri Irsenovich (son of Ir Sen) Kim.
See this discussion: https://thediacritics.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/whats-in-a-kim/
Upvote:19
The Korean language has a different set of phonemes compared to most Indo-European languages.
Phonemes are individual sounds that are distinguished in pronunciation and used to differentiate words. For example, in English the words lot and rot are perceived as different because of the way the first letter (l versus r, typically denoted /l/ versus /r/) is pronounced. The East Asian languages Korean and (perhaps more famously) Japanese do not distinguish between an /l/ and an /r/ sound. In the Korean script, these both correspond to one letter (ㄹ). Depending on the surrounding, this sound may sound more like an l or more like an r to a westerner but a Korean will ‘hear’ no significant difference.
Furthermore, the vowel in Sung, denoted in Korean by the symbol ㅓ, corresponds to a sound which does exist in most European languages but does not have its own reserved letter: the schwa sound (again with potentially different pronunciation depending on the environment). In English, the schwa is used for reduced vowels: the e in unemphasised the, the second o in common or others. Korean uses a single symbol and differentiates it from other vowels such as a, e, i, etc.
The differences are suddenly significant when one tries to transliterate the original Korean into another language with a different script. Maybe you have seen the different spellings of Mao (Mao Tse-tung or Mao Zedong) depending on which romanisation standard was used. Likewise, various methods for the transliteration of Korean exist which were used at different times and by different countries.
According to the currently used system of South Korea (Revised McCune-Reischauer), the name would be spelt Kim Il-Seong in English—a spelling you probably have never seen before. The previous romanisation would indeed have turned him into the more common Kim Il-Sŏng. Because it was used at the time, people got used to it and the name was not changed when the revised system was introduced.
Unfortunately, I am not able to exactly source what happened in these countries you mention. However, the other answer has already provided that a different, older transliteration system was used in Russian. Russian, using Cyrillic letters, again needs to be transcribed into the Latin alphabet for languages such as Polish or Latvian which creates two levels of abstraction if the Russian spelling was used as the starting point—considering the history of these countries post World War II (when Kim Il-Song was contemporary) seems likely. As I mentioned above, the Latin and Korean alphabets don’t provide a perfect mapping—much worse than e.g. Latin and Cyrillic—so minor differences will occur and be carried on without there being any reason to assume a political background.
A case in point for a different script pair is the name of the last leader of the Soviet Union, rendered Gorbachev in English but Gorbatschow in German (East and West)—note the difference e versus o in the final syllable.
More post
- 📝 Where can I find the earliest surviving versions of Herodotus's Histories?
- 📝 Was the Eye of Providence also a symbol of Bavarian illuminati?
- 📝 How dependent was Nazi Germany on iron ore from Sweden?
- 📝 White on Polish coat of arms
- 📝 How were the day-to-day activities of the French Resistance financed?
- 📝 What does it mean to grant a church to a priory?
- 📝 Where was the Japanese surrender signed on Okinawa in June 1945?
- 📝 Could there have been wars between the Aztecs and the Persians?
- 📝 Were commandos brought in to break the Grand Mosque siege French or Pakistani?
- 📝 Napoleon's exploits in 1785
- 📝 When and why China started to make a difference in the superpower arena?
- 📝 How old is the idea that humans have 360 joints?
- 📝 Was the "drowning man prays to God, but ignores the boats God sends" joke/tale known in Ancient Roman times?
- 📝 Is there a civilization that never believed in God in the ancient times?
- 📝 Master title for fencing
- 📝 What events or situations of WW1 led to a Nazi fascination with Anglo-Saxon powers?
- 📝 Did USSR ever consider invading West Germany during the Cold War seriously?
- 📝 Why was Maharana Kumbha killed by his own son?
- 📝 What was the world population around 970 BC? Does it fit the biblical narrative?
- 📝 What was the size of surface of a cereal crop needed per man per year during the Dark Ages in Western Europe?
- 📝 When did Sultan Saif ad-Din Qutuz escape from Mongol swords?
- 📝 Could a jeweler in 1800 AD tell a synthetic gem stone is fake?
- 📝 When did Herod the Great die?
- 📝 Identify uniform worn in photograph
- 📝 Where is the tomb of Erwin Rommel located?
- 📝 Why did water stored on premodern ships "go brackish" or "go bad" while at sea?
- 📝 Did the Romans eat breakfast?
- 📝 How did the ancestors of proto-Malagasy in South Borneo reach Madagascar?
- 📝 How did (riverine) toll castles operate?
- 📝 How much cheaper were flintlocks than wheellocks?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Why is North-Korean communist leader Kim Il-sung called Kim Ir Sen in some languages?
- 📝 Why do some 17th and 18th century maps depict Ottoman sanjaks north of the Danube in Wallachia?
- 📝 Why didn’t the Chinese leave troops behind in North Korea after the Korean War?
- 📝 How didn't the North Koreans catch the pun "We paean the DPRK. We paean their great leader Kim Il Sung"?
- 📝 Why did China and some other communist countries boycot the 1980 Summer Olympics?
- 📝 Why did North America economically prosper, and maintain stable government and South/Central America didn't?
- 📝 What led some people to (correctly) believe that there was no land under the ice cap at the North Pole?
- 📝 Why didn't the Nors*m*n colonize North America?
- 📝 Why does Latin America have a higher number of surviving Native Americans than North America?
- 📝 Who was the last leader of a country to call himself a dictator, or the last regime that called itself a dictatorship?
- 📝 Why didn't the silk road run north of the Black Sea?
- 📝 Why did the Allies Invade French North Africa?
- 📝 Why did the United States not invade North Vietnam?
- 📝 Why did some Enlightenment thinkers despise democracy?
- 📝 Why did Hitler not concentrate more on North Africa?
- 📝 Why did native Americans and Europeans mix in South America but not in North America?
- 📝 Why is Lady Jane Grey called Lady instead of Queen?
- 📝 Why didn't the participants of the Korean War also fight in the Vietnam War?
- 📝 Why did some people need to pay a bond in the 1700s in order to get married?
- 📝 Why do some sections of Great Wall of China seem to be bidirectional?
- 📝 Why is it called the "Ottoman" Empire in English language?
- 📝 Why did Hitler send Manstein's army (and not some other) to Leningrad in the summer of 1942?
- 📝 If modern human existed for hundreds of thousands years why was writing invented only some 7000-9000 years ago?
- 📝 Why didn't USSR "bust a move" to veto the Korean War?
- 📝 Why are some later Mayan scripts unintelligible to archaeologists, while earlier ones can be read?
- 📝 Why did civilisation/city states never take root in Australia and North America?
- 📝 Why did people in some countries start to drive on the right?
- 📝 Why did the political parties in the US give up power to run primary elections to some states?
- 📝 Why is the heir to the British throne called "Prince of Wales"?
- 📝 Why was the Spanish kingdom in America called New Spain if Spain didn't exist as a country back then?