Concise English-Korean Dictionary Romanized. by Joan V.

Underwood
Review by: Shannon McCune
The Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Nov., 1954), pp. 128-129
Published by: Association for Asian Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2942262 .
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128 FAR EASTERN QUARTERLY

three appendices: Chronological List of Rulers and Dynasties, Publishing

Houses and Societies, and Glossary. In addition, there are eight useful maps,
and indices by title and author.
This guide is admittedly provisional and should be judged accordingly.
Nevertheless, several of its features may well be retained in futureeditions:
the classification of works by the languages in which they are written,use of
well-known romanizations beside reproductions of the original scripts, and
cross-references at the end of chapters.
The large numberof works in Japanese reflects accurately the long pre-
dominance of Japanese scholars in all fields of the study of Korea. On the
other hand, the almost complete dearth of works in Chinese, if representative,
shows a surprising-and monumental-indifference to Korea on the part of
China. Worksin Westernlanguages seem on the whole to be well represented,
but the same can not be said of those in Russian, which are conspicuous by
their absence.
Considered fromthe standpoint of subject-matter,the volume is again some-
what uneven. The selections seem fullest in the chapters dealing with history,
where the authors built on the research of the late Professor George McCune,
and geography, where they have had the benefit of the advice of Professor
Shannon McCune. On the other hand, to take only selections on subjects
familiar to the reviewer, the chapters on literature and language leave some-
thing to be desired. The chapter on literature, although it mentions folklore
in the introduction,fails to mentionthe major collections of Korean folktales
(except Ch'oe's). The chapter on language seems clearly the weakest. The
authors state flatly that Korean is an Altaic language, withoutany indication
of the considerable controversyon this point, and, indeed, on the question of
whether there is any such thing as an Altaic family at all. Further, in an-
notating Ramstedt's Grammar,they state that he should have used han-guit
instead of "a difficult system of romanization." It is apparently not realized
that harngrWis not an orthographypossessing one-to-one correspondences
with the phonemes of Korean but rather a mixtureof phonemic, morphopho-
nemic and morphemicorthographicconventions. It is thus, despite its apparent
simplicity, less well suited to the purposes of an analytical treatmentthan
phonemic transcription. Finally, the chapter omits entirely the best modern
linguistic treatmentsof Korean, i.e. the works of Samuel E. Martin.
On the whole, however, the authors and the Institute of East Asiatic Studies
are to be congratulated on the work,constitutingas it does a very satisfactory
and muchneeded introductionto Korean studies, just as its makers intended.
D. L. OLMSTED
Yale University

Concise English-Korean Dictionary Romanized. By JOAN V. UNDERWOOD.

Rutland, Vermontand Tokyo, Japan: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1954. xvii,
320. $1.25 or M 450 in the Far East.
This dictionary is a handy, useful aid to persons interested in Korea. It
proved its worthto me in recent field work. The 8,000 words were well chosen

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 BOOK REVIEWS 129

through the use of Thorndike's list of 5,000 most commonly used English
words plus numerous military, medical and political terms. In addition Mrs.
Underwood included some of the specialized terms (for example, five words
for rice) which are used in colloquial Korean. Born and raised in Korea and
now a missionary, she was well qualified for this task; she received assist-
ance fromher husband one of the best American linguists of Korean and from
a Korean scholar, Hugh Nam Pang.
The pocket-sized book is printed in clear type on good paper. Each word in
English is followed by its Korean equivalent given in the McCune-Reischauer
romanization, according to Mrs. Underwood's opinion "the best so far de-
vised," and in hangul, the unique Korean syllabary. At the start of the book
is a brief and well arranged seven-page explanation of the romanization sys-
tem with a guide to pronunciation. The hangul spelling follows, wherever
possible, the Republic of Korea Government's specific spelling rules. (tJn-
fortunately,there appears to be a move to discard these rules and go back to
the chaotic situation in which persons spelled phonetically according to their
individual preferences; if this whimsical movementcontinues it will be a
major catastrophe to standardization of Korean spelling.)
Mrs. Underwoodand the Charles E. Tuttle Company are to be congratulated
and thanked for providing at a relatively low cost (considering the time that
must have been spent in preparingthe list and in printingit in so effective a
form)a needed and useful tool forthe traveller in Korea.
SHANNON MCCUNE
Colgate University

Bali: Temple Festival. By JANE BELO. Edited by ESTHER S. GOLDFRANK.

Monographs of the American Ethnological Society XXII. New York: J. J.
Augustin Publisher, [953. viii, 66. Glossary, bibliography, 9 plates,
1 chart.
From her extensive material collected in Bali between 1931' and 1939, Jane
Belo has isolated and presented in this attractively edited volume a system-
atic description of an odalan, anniversary temple festival, when the gods of
the temple are invited to descend to their temporaryresidence where they are
entertained with refreshments,music, dances and contests and then "sent
home" again.
The monograph,divided into four chapters, contains a careful record of
events as they unfolded at Pura (temple) Nagasari of the village Sajan during
one week of April 1937. The introductionand the brief first chapter place
these events into broader context of Balinese ritual life. Chapter two is de-
voted to three days of preparations preceding the festival. The thirdand major
chapter deals with the principal day of odalan-it lasted fromdawn to 2.30
a.m. of the following day-when the gods were "brought down." The subse-
quent three days of entertainmentand offeringsfollowed by the send-offof the
gods on the morningof the fourthday are described in the last chapter.

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