Re: writing in an alphabet with fewer letters: letter replacements

Hi Jonathan,

I definitely appreciate the partial datapoints from your links, but
>
> Google is your friend
>
by itself doesn't lead us closer to a real answer, and in this case I
think that there are at least some good answers, and in any case some
answers will be better than others.

This reminds me of former South Korean president 이승만 (not exactly a
sympathetic figure), whose most common English rendering ("Syngman
Rhee") doesn't follow any system of transcription I'm aware of. (For
Chinese, historical figures seem to be predominantly rendered in pinyin
now, though I haven't tried to do a thorough check including TW etc, and
Sun Yat-sen is a famous exception. I think Korean figures mostly follow
the Revised Romanization now, but "Rhee" persists and stands out.)

Another interesting case I know is that of a Bhutanese gentleman I met
in an airport: the name in his passport wasn't listed in the original
Dzongkha (with Bhutanese Tibetan writing) at all (and nowhere in the
passport, according to him) but only with Latin letters.

Stephan
Received on Fri Jul 05 2013 - 04:23:35 CDT