in south korea there is a city whose english name is pusan/busan. Why diff spellings?

Answer 1

For a long time there have been multiple spellings of just about everything in Korea. People's names could be spelled in up to 10 different ways and there were at least 3 different "official" ways to transliterate the Korean alphabet into English. So the gov't decided to make a really official way to write Korean in the Roman alphabet based on pronunciation and went about changing all the signs and names of places to reflect that way of writing. So Pusan became Busan. The only city name that was not subjected to the new rules was Seoul because it was so internationally known. A lot of Koreans either don't know about the official changes or just don't care though, however, and continue to use the old spellings.

By the way, neither P nor B is actually the right pronunciation. The Korean sound for that actually starts as an unvoiced P and then becomes a voiced B, so no matter how you look at it, English speakers are likely to say it wrong.

Answer 2

Koreans have always pronounced it as Busan. However, English speakers assumed they "heard" Pusan when they listened to native Koreans pronounce the name, and Pusan became the spelling used by others. However, back in 2002 a movement to make standard all Korean names was accomplished and now the name of the city officially is pronounced Busan.

Answer 3

The older McCune transliteration system for Korean characters to Roman characters used the "P" when an initial sound. A few years ago, the linguists of Korea decided that a change was needed, and the Korean character for either "B" or "P" became "B" (also, "CH" became "J", etc.). Unfortunately, for English speakers, this has caused a lot of confusion. What was "Pusan" is now "Busan" (the Korean initial sound is kind of between "P" and "B" in English), and what was "Cheju" is now "Jeju" - the latter is pronounced "CHeJu" and not "JeJu", so the spelling hurts rather than helps.

By the way, the Chinese characters for Busan mean "iron kettle mountain".

Answer 4

hehe the answer is much more simpler than that!
Actually as a korean student and wife to a korean, I have asked this question many times.
Even if you only learn the korean alphabet you will know that the pronunciations are very difficult for english speakers. There are so many rules to how to say even the letter b. Sometimes it is pronounced closer to p, sometimes to b. Thus, pusan and busan are the same thing, but korean pronunciation is more in between than one or the other ^-^

Answer 5

A lot depends on what part of the country you're living in.

Some people make the P and B interchangeable because of pronounciation such as Pusan and Busan.

Also, the T and D are interchangeable, especially where I live. For example, Taegu and Daegu.

Another example; there is a company here in Korea that's spelled Woong-Jin, but yet it's pronounced Oong-Jin; the W is silent.

And then, the people find the R difficult to pronounce, so something with the letter R might be pronounced L.

Answer 6

Well, it's a bit like how Mumbai, India used to be Bombay, India. Mumbai is the politically correct way of spelling it, closer to how Indians pronounce the city's name (correct me if I'm wrong).

Likewise, English-speakers, when naming Korean cities on their maps, put the city down originally as Pusan.

Switching Korean into phonetic English (the way it is pronounced), is called romanization. According to the old romanization rules, the "b" letter in Korea was put down as a "p" in English.

Therefore, what Koreans pronounce more as boo-sahn was spelled as Pusan.

Here's more information about Korean romanization (from wiki, but the information's pretty accurate):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_romanization

Hope that helps!

Answer 7

the correct spelling is Pusan but koreans pronounce it as Busan.

Answer 8

Because the korean letter ㅂ can be pronounced as a B or a P. In some words it leans toward one sound or the other, but since its not based on a roman letter, the translations will differ.

Answer 9

they have an identity thing going on over there. think about it.. the country is still split. Busan /Pusan Korea/Corea all the same.