gimchi

Gimchi is a simple Ruby gem for handling Korean characters.

Features:

Decompose a Korean character into its 3 components, namely chosung, jungsung and optional jongsung
Compose elements back into the Korean character
Read numbers in Korean
Pronounce Korean characters
Romanize Korean characters

Gimchi (partially) implements the following rules dictated by The National Institute of The Korean Language (http://www.korean.go.kr)

Korean Standard Pronunciation
Korean Romanization

Installation

gem install gimchi

Usage

Composing and decomposing Korean character

chosung, jungsung, jongsung = Gimchi.decompose "한"

Gimchi.compose chosung, jungsung, jongsung    # 한
Gimchi.compose chosung, "ㅗ", jongsung        # 혼

Inspecting Korean characters

Gimchi.korean_char? 'ㄱ'           # true
Gimchi.complete_korean_char? 'ㄱ'  # false

Gimchi.korean_char? 'ㅏ'           # true
Gimchi.complete_korean_char? 'ㅏ'  # false

Gimchi.korean_char? '가'           # true
Gimchi.complete_korean_char? '가'  # true

# Alias of korean_char?
Gimchi.kchar? '가'                 # true

Gimchi.chosung?  'ㄱ'              # true
Gimchi.jungsung? 'ㄱ'              # false
Gimchi.jongsung? 'ㄱ'              # true

Gimchi.chosung?  'ㅏ'              # false
Gimchi.jungsung? 'ㅏ'              # true
Gimchi.jongsung? 'ㅏ'              # false

Gimchi.chosung?  'ㄺ'              # false
Gimchi.jungsung? 'ㄺ'              # false
Gimchi.jongsung? 'ㄺ'              # true

Using Gimchi::Char

kc = Gimchi::Char("한")
kc.class                    # Gimchi::Char

kc.chosung                  # "ㅎ"
kc.jungsung                 # "ㅏ"
kc.jongsung                 # "ㄴ"
kc.to_a                     # ["ㅎ", "ㅏ", "ㄴ"]
kc.to_s                     # "한"

kc.complete?                # true
kc.partial?                 # false

Gimchi::Char("ㅏ").partial? # true

# Modifying its elements
kc.chosung = 'ㄷ'
kc.jongsung = 'ㄹ'
kc.to_s                     # "달"
kc.complete?                # true
kc.partial?                 # false

kc.chosung = nil
kc.jongsung = nil
kc.complete?                # false
kc.partial?                 # true

Reading numbers in Korean

Gimchi.read_number(1999)         # "천 구백 구십 구"
Gimchi.read_number(- 100.123)    # "마이너스 백점일이삼"
Gimchi.read_number("153,191,100,678.3214")
    # "천 오백 삼십 일억 구천 백 십만 육백 칠십 팔점삼이일사"

# Age, Time ( -살, -시 )
Gimchi.read_number("20살")       # "스무살"
Gimchi.read_number("13 살")      # "열세 살"
Gimchi.read_number("7시 30분")   # "일곱시 삼십분"

Standard pronunciation (partially implemented)

str = "됐어 됐어 이제 그런 가르침은 됐어 매일 아침 7 시 30 분까지 우릴 조그만 교실로 몰아넣고"
Gimchi.pronounce str
  # "돼써 돼써 이제 그런 가르치믄 돼써 매일 아침 일곱 시 삼십 분까지 우릴 조그만 교실로 모라너코"

Gimchi.pronounce str, :slur => true
  # "돼써 돼써 이제 그런 가르치믄 돼써 매이 라치 밀곱 씨 삼십 뿐까지 우릴 조그만 교실로 모라너코"

Gimchi.pronounce str, :number => false
  # "돼써 돼써 이제 그런 가르치믄 돼써 매일 아침 7 시 30 분까지 우릴 조그만 교실로 모라너코"

Gimchi.pronounce str, :each_char => true
  # "됃어 됃어 이제 그런 가르침은 됃어 매일 아침 일곱 시 삼십 분까지 우릴 조그만 교실로 몰아너고"

Romanization (partially implemented)

str = "됐어 됐어 이제 그런 가르침은 됐어 매일 아침 7 시 30 분까지 우릴 조그만 교실로 몰아넣고"

Gimchi.romanize str
  # "Dwaesseo dwaesseo ije geureon gareuchimeun dwaesseo mae-il achim ilgop si samsip bunkkaji uril jogeuman gyosillo moraneoko"

Gimchi.romanize str, :slur => true
  # "Dwaesseo dwaesseo ije geureon gareuchimeun dwaesseo mae-i rachi milgop ssi samsip ppunkkaji uril jogeuman gyosillo moraneoko"

Gimchi.romanize str, :number => false
  # "Dwaesseo dwaesseo ije geureon gareuchimeun dwaesseo mae-il achim 7 si 30 bunkkaji uril jogeuman gyosillo moraneoko"

Gimchi.romanize str, :as_pronounced => false
  # "Dwaet-eo dwaet-eo ije geureon gareuchim-eun dwaet-eo mae-il achim ilgop si samsip bunkkaji uril jogeuman gyosillo mol-aneogo"

Limitation of the implementation

Unfortunately in order to implement the complete specification of Korean pronunciation and romanization, we need NLP, huge Korean dictionaries and even semantic analysis of the given string. And even with all those complex processing, we cannot guarantee 100% accuracy of the output. So yes, that is definitely not what this gem tries to achieve. Gimchi tries to achieve "some" level of accuracy with relatively simple code.

Currently, Gimchi code contains a lot of ad-hoc (possibly invalid) patches that try to improve the quality of the output, which should better be refactored anytime soon.

Contributing

Fork it
Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Added some feature')
Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
Create new Pull Request