User Comments - changye

Posted on: SBTG: Confucius

Hi baomaijin,

I think your translation is right. "每个人都有值得大家学习的地方" should be translted as "Everyone has something worth learning (emulating?)" or something liket that. But I'm not sure whether or not my English translation is grammatically correct.....

Posted on: Seoul

Hi wolson,

＞ Their "Han" as in "Hangul" comes from
＞ "Khan" of the Mongolian Steppes

Wow, thank you very much for good information. That is very interesting. In fact, an ancient Korean dynasty, 高丽 (gao1 li4, 고려), was under the control of the Mongolian empire, 元 (yuan2), between the 13th and 14th century, which led many Mongolian words to flow into the Korean Peninsula. Furthermore, the pronunciation system of Korean language also slightly changed due to the inflow of those foreign words.

한글 (Hangul) consists of two indigenous Korean words, i.e. the former one “한 (han)” means “great”, and the latter “글 (gul)” means “writing”. For the record, the word “한글” (Hangul) is not officially used in North Korea at present, probably because the pronunciation of 한 (han) is the same as that of 韩 (of 韩国). They call the Korean characters “우리글자” (our characters) or “조선글자” (chosun characters) in North Korea.

The word “khan (汗, han4)” means “king (王)” in Mongolian, therefore it is very conceivable that the Mongolian word “khan” (king) became the Korean word “한, han” (great) after it was imported into Korea. Of course, it’s just my guess. Lastly, the name “한글” (Hangul) was invented perhaps by a Korean scholar around one hundred years ago, which was about 500 years after the advent of the Korean characters in the mid-15th century.  

Posted on: Seoul

Hi sushan,

＞ I envision a native Korean and Japanese
＞ discussing its merits or
＞ disputing its origin in Mandarin....

I agree that it’s a very good idea, and I’d like to listen to such a dialogue. But when it comes to “drinking”, there is no way you, or even Japanese, can beat Korean people, at least in Asia. So I’m very willing to credit Korean with the invention of Soju (소주, 烧酒, shao1 jiu3).

In fact, I hear that this type of alcohol was not uncommon in East Asia in ancient times. And I groundlessly believe that Soju is also originated in ancient China (northern region), just like many other things you can see in Japan. Anything goes, or possible, in China!

Posted on: Seoul

Hi howard97,

＞ The Monolian leaders 2 centuries earlier
＞ had promoted a "new" character set

The Mongolian character set you mentioned above is Phags-pa Script (八思巴字, ba1 si1 ba1 zi4), which was invented based on old Tibetan scripts by a Tibetan scholar (a Buddhist monk) with the same name at the request of the famous Mongolian king “Kublai Khan” in the 13th century. As you said, they are already forgotten characters.

Interestingly, some linguists, Korean included, believe there is some influence from Phags-pa Script (巴斯八字) in Hangul (한글). In the afterword of “训民正音”, the first official textbook of Hangul, you can see the phrase “象形而字倣古篆” (modeled script forms on 古篆), and some scholars think the 古篆 indicates Phags-pa Script for a few linguistic reasons.

＞ The main problem with Hangeul is that
＞ there are not enough "sound/characters"
＞ to be able to make foreign words.

I agree with you, and I’m willing to admit the readings of foreign words in Japanese are as disastrous as those in Korean! But I don’t think this “sound” problem is so critical. Anyway, it wouldn’t be easy for any set of characters to precisely represent the pronunciations of foreign words. I hear even IPA phonetic symbols don’t cover all the pronunciations used in the world.

I must say that some borrowed words in English also have very different readings from their original pronunciations. I know some Korean scholars are trying to modify Hangul characters so that they can represent sounds in other languages, but I don’t think this has much significance. Hangul has enough number of consonants and vowels for Korean language, and that's all.

The most serious problem for me, an old guy, in reading Hangul is that some types of characters are very difficult to read or recognize. For example, those three characters (홋 훗 흣) are all different but it’s not easy to tell for me. How about these two sets, (옿 뫃 읗 믛 웋 뭏) or (옷 못 읏 믓 웃 뭇)…..? I sometimes need a magnifier, no joking, to read those kinds of characters.  

Of course, native Koreans can read them relatively easily from the context, but some of my Korean friends admit that they also have some difficulties reading words and names that are new to them, especially when characters are small or displayed on the screen. I like Korean characters (Hangul) very much, but sometimes I’d like to grumble about their “recognizability”.

Posted on: Seoul

Hi howard97,

＞ Abandoning Chinese characters was
＞ basically to educate the masses.
＞ Koreans didn't want to adopt Roman letters

I guess that it was an “official reason” to stop using Chinese characters in Korea. I still think that strong nationalism in Korean society was the primary reason for the abolishment, because the literacy rate in Korea was probably relatively high at that time, and I believe that it was not so difficult for Korean people to learn Chinese characters.

Let me tell you an interesting story. G.H.Q. (American occupation forces stationed in Japan), also tried to abolish Chinese characters in Japanese, out of good will (i.e. for enlightening Japanese people), three years after the end of the World War II. Cleverly, GHQ conducted a nationwide (farmers included) meticulous survey on literacy rate beforehand.

And GHQ people gave up the idea to eliminate 汉字 in Japanese soon after they got the result of the survey, simply because the literacy rate in Japan at that time was incredibly 98%, which was all credited to the effective (and comprehensive) educational system in Japan. “Kanji” was not a big burden for Japanese people, and the same goes for Korean.

During Japanese rule of Korea, the similar educational system, not the same though, was being introduced and a lot of schools were constructed in Korean society, as well as in Taiwan, which was also under Japanese rule then. Please don’t get me wrong, of course, I have no intention to justify the Japanese rules, but I’m only telling some historical facts.

More importantly, as you know, Korean are very diligent and education-minded (or sometimes education-obsessed) people, and therefore I have good reasons to believe that literacy rate in Korea was probably high, just like Japan, after the WWII. I think that Korean leaders at that time definitely knew that 汉字 was not a burden for their people.  

Posted on: Seoul

Hi howard97,

> Basically it was the Chinese that needed
> a name for Seoul not the other way round.

I’m afraid that it IS the other way around. The historical name “汉城” for Seoul, mainly used in China (not in Korea) now, has been completely OK with Chinese people, but Korean people don’t like it since they tend to associate the name “汉城” with Korea’s historical obedience to Chinese dynasties, in a sense, they might feel humiliated by the Chinese style name..

And that’s just why the Korean government has adopted “首尔 (首爾)” as the official Chinese transliteration of Seoul, and after that they began to politely recommend China also uses it instead of “汉城”. At first, China was not willing to accept the new name, because there was no need to do it, but the use of 首尔 has later gradually become popular in the Chinese mass media.

As foleadu said, it might have been a kind of “linguistic” diplomacy. I guess the Chinese authorities didn’t want to offend Korean people by ignoring “首尔”. More importantly, it’s possible that they also thought it would not be appropriate to have the Chinese style place name with the character “汉” located just next to China. Fortunately, 汉堡 (Hamburg) is very far from China!

To me, it’s somewhat strange to see Korean people are unhappy with “汉城”, because most of place / people names in Korea had been already “sinicized” a long time ago. A king of the Shilla (新罗, xin1 luo2) dynasty, 景德王, changed traditional Korean-style place names into Chinese-style ones to pay respect to the Tang dynasty (唐朝, tang2 chao2) and its brilliant culture in the 8th century. 

In my humble opinion, China doesn’t have to change its own place name “汉城” in response to other country’s complaint. For example, the Korean Peninsula is called “朝鲜半岛” (chao2 xian1 ban4 dao3) in China, North Korea and Japan, and is called “韩半岛” (han2 ban4 dao3) only in Korea. This is a very political issue, but anyway, every country has a due reason why they call it so.

首尔 is not so bad, but I still prefer “韩城” (not 汉城) to it…..joking!

Posted on: Seoul

Hi howard97

> there are no tones in Korean language
> no-one knows which HAN you are talking about.

Thanks for your interesting postings. I fully agree with you on this point. As you may know, Korean language has a tremendous number of borrowed words from Chinese and Japanese, which consequently results in the flood of many homonyms in Korean, just like Japanese. That’s really cumbersome.

Owing to the use of Chinese characters (kanji), Japanese people usually don’t have difficulties recognizing homonyms at least when reading (unless you don't know 汉字), but I think Korean language actually has the problem you pointed out, although I love 朝鲜文字 because of its easiness and cute forms!

I understand well why Korean people abandoned using Chinese characters a few decades ago. Hangeul (한글), this word also doesn’t have its Chinese transliteration, is a national pride for Korean people, and the use of Chinese characters was, in a sense, the symbol of obedience to China and Japan.

Hangeul is easy to learn and read, and this gives us foreign learners a real advantage, but at the same time, its easiness sacrifices the readability and recognizability to some extent when reading Korean. Learning Chinese characters is not easy, but it’s worth learning especially for Korean and Japanese people.

Posted on: Seoul

Hi theblindseer,

韩国 is the shortened form of 大韩民国 (da4 han2 min2 guo2), and it first appeared in the history in 1919, and 大韩民国 was adopted as the official name of Korea in 1948, three years after their independence from Japan.

The use of Chinese character “韩” has a long history. There were three ancient Korean countries, 马韩 (ma3 han2)，辰韩 (chen2 han2)，弁韩 (bian4 han2), in the southern part of the Korean peninsula around 2,000 years ago.

Posted on: Seoul

서울 (Seoul) is an indigenous word (not a borrowed word from China or Japan) in Korean language, which had been used by local people only in conversation. And therefore there was no Chinese character for the place name until “首尔(首爾)” was officially adopted as the Chinese transliteration of “Seoul” in 2005, which I think reflects the recent “Mandarin boom” in Korean society generated by the country’s close economic relationship with China.  

On the other hand, several Chinese-style names had long been used to indicate the city (or area) until 1945, such as 汉阳 (han4 yang2) in the Shilla (新罗) era, 杨州 (yang2 zhou1) / 南京 (nan2 jing1) in Koryo (高丽), 汉城 (han4 cheng2) in Chosun (李氏朝鲜), and 京城 (jing1 cheng2) during Japanese rule. The last one “京城” was also one of the Chinese names for “Seoul” used in the Chosun era. Seoul is located close to the Han river (汉江), and that’s why it was named 汉城.

Posted on: 理想女人

Hi shophie,

I have 胖狗知己！ "真爱"是 "pure love" 不是？And you still remember that difficult question, let me see, how about "fragile and lovely" for 小鸟依人? Anyway, let me leave it to native English speakers. My chubby dog is also very "胖狗依人"!