232 — National Geographic Magazine. 
by the application of which the sounds of Korean proper names 
may be correctly expressed in our own letters. At the present 
day it would seem possible, therefore, to fix, by common consent, 
upon a general, systematic orthography for Korean proper names, 
to be used upon the charts prepared by all those nations employ- 
ing Roman letters; and this without serious danger of clashing 
with previously developed national systems, or having to undo 
much work done by others. 
The system of transliteration developed by Mr. E. M. Satow, of 
the British Diplomatic Service, which has been put to practical 
use by that gentleman in his work entitled “List of Korean 
Geographical Names,” would seem well adapted to meet future 
needs. It gives a simple series of equivalents for Korean sounds, 
and is remarkably free from diacritical marks. Mr. Satow’s sys- 
tem has recently been employed by English and German authors, 
while efforts to extend its application would seem to have met 
thus far with no opposition. 
The French system of transliteration, which antedates the one 
above referred to, was developed by the French Roman Catholic 
Missionaries in Korea, and has been employed by them in their 
admirable works the “Grammaire Coréenne” and the “ Diction- 
naire Coréen,” by far the most important yet prepared upon the 
language, and the first given to the outer world. The mission- 
aries aimed at reproducing native speech, and to this end faith- 
fully copied symbols representing shades of sound that are not to 
be appreciated by the foreign ear, and which in fact are often 
neglected in conversation by the Koreans of the present day—for 
the On-mun, or native alphabet, has long since lost its purely 
phonetic character. The simplicity of the French system is 
marred, therefore, by the use of a multiplicity of letters, which, 
appearing in the form of aggregations of consonants or of vowels, 
are more apt to mislead than to guide. 
Inasmuch as the proper names upon native maps, which are 
invariably written in the Chinese, may be correctly rendered into 
English, whereas attempts at the systematic transliteration of 
Chinese characters have generally failed, it may be well to allude 
to the points of difference in the two cases. The possibility of 
the transliteration of Korean depends upon the following: (1) 
that the Korean pronunciation of Chinese characters is indepen- 
dent of the pitch of the voice or tone; (2) that the native alpha- 
bet is especially constructed with a view to the easy reproduction 
