SKATS stands for Standard Korean Alphabet Transliteration System. It is also known as Korean Morse equivalents. Despite the name, SKATS is not a true transliteration system.
SKATS maps the
Hangul
The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul, . Hangul may also be written as following South Korea's standard Romanization. ( ) in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea, is the modern official writing system for the Korean language. The let ...
characters through Korean Morse code to the same codes in
Morse code
Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one of ...
and back to their equivalents in the
Latin script
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...
. Any phonetic correspondence between the Korean and Roman letters would be purely coincidental.
If a Korean Morse code operator were to transmit a Korean message in Morse, and an English-speaking Morse code operator heard the message, what they would write down is SKATS.
The advantage of SKATS is the letter-perfect accuracy in conveying the Korean message, something that would be lost with romanisations such as
RR or
McCune-Reischauer used. SKATS dates back to the days before Korean keyboards gained widespread acceptance, so it was a way for Westerners who knew Korean to accurately produce the Korean language on a typewriter or keyboard. The primary users of SKATS are government departments who are interested in letter-to-letter accuracy.
SKATS is not a
cipher
In cryptography, a cipher (or cypher) is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption—a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is ''encipherment''. To encipher or encode i ...
. When using SKATS it is important to remember not to read the letters as they sound in English, but to read them as its original sound in SKATS.
The letters are written left to right as in standard written English. The correct form is to put one space between syllables and two spaces between words, but this often varies from one user to another. Without the double spaces between words, word breaks are ambiguous. If the rules are strictly observed, a Korean text written in SKATS could be perfectly recovered.
Double consonants and double or triple vowels are written the same way – each letter in the same order as if it were written in Hangul.
Sample sentence
Morse:
.-.. ..- -- -.-. ..- .-.. . -- . --. -.- ..- --. --. -... .
SKATS:
LUM CU LE MEG KUGG BE
Letter-by-letter equivalent:
Hangul:
Revised romanisation:
''Kimchiga masitta.''
English:
The
kimchi is delicious.
References
External links
http://www.mykit.com/kor/ele/morse.htm
{{Portal bar, Language
Hangul
Romanization of Korean
Morse code