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Why did Korean abandon Hanja? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| ' Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5940 days ago 120 posts - 120 votes  Speaks: English*, Hungarian* | Message 9 of 116 02 September 2008 at 5:42am | IP Logged | ||
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but their new system allows for very early age literacy.
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| TDC Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6921 days ago 261 posts - 291 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, French Studies: Esperanto, Ukrainian, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Persian | Message 10 of 116 02 September 2008 at 5:57am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't think the homonym argument is valid at all for Korean or Chinese.
When people are sitting around and talking to each other they're not saying characters. They're saying syllables. It's the context that give the syllables meaning. The same way that I can differentiate between "see" and "sea" or "to" "two" and "too" when I hear them. Sure, there's that poem that's all "shi" BUT that's classical Chinese and no-one speaks that way now. I also seriously doubt it would be understandable spoken. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| TKK Groupie ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5948 days ago 55 posts - 58 votes | Message 11 of 116 02 September 2008 at 6:57am | IP Logged | ||
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TO: Mr/Ms TDC For example, "효제충신예의염치" Can you understand what it means? If you ask a Korean of younger generation what this 8 characters says, maybe many of them don't know the answer very clearly, and it's not easy to found out in general dictionaries, but if you write it as Chinese characters "孝悌忠信禮義廉恥", perhaps some educated youths could understand the meanings right away. Besides this kind of case, some homonymic words would not be distinguished very easily according to context relation, just look up in a Korean advanced dictionary and you'll find that, a great deal of Korean words are remarked with Chinese characters in the brackets, so that Korean would be able to make sense of the accurate meanings without any confusion. Of course, it's the human rights for Korean to abandon Chinese character - Hanja, but it's really a pity, and it gets more kicks than halfpence, in my humble opinion. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ChrisWebb Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6263 days ago 181 posts - 190 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean | Message 12 of 116 02 September 2008 at 11:16am | IP Logged | ||
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I think we need to recognise that in fact Hanja/Hanmun has in the past been a barrier to literacy and not some great bastion of clarity that has made the written form clearer to the average Korean. To be brutal, Hangul in essence exists because Hanja isn't and apparently never was a particularly good solution to Korea's need for a written form. It should not be a matter of sadness that what is really very good replaces that which is not so good, largely people, in this case the Korean people, benefit from such a process.
Edited by ChrisWebb on 02 September 2008 at 11:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Fat-tony Nonaglot Senior Member United Kingdom jiahubooks.co.uk Joined 6140 days ago 288 posts - 441 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian, Esperanto, Thai, Laotian, Urdu, Swedish, French Studies: Mandarin, Indonesian, Arabic (Written), Armenian, Pali, Burmese | Message 13 of 116 02 September 2008 at 11:45am | IP Logged | ||
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Looking to the future, what's the likelihood of Hanja becoming more popular? Let me elaborate, could the Japanese
input system (whereby the software offers you the most likely spelling, be it Hanzi, katakana or hiragana) be adapted to Korean, so that only a passive knowledge of Hanja would be necessary for typing in "mixed" script? From my very limited knowledge of Korean, using the Hanja could benefit the language because it would be easier to spot root words and may increase transparency with Japanese and the Chinese languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Makrasiroutioun Quadrilingual Heptaglot Senior Member Canada infowars.com Joined 6106 days ago 210 posts - 236 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Armenian*, Romanian*, Latin, German, Italian Studies: Dutch, Swedish, Turkish, Japanese, Russian, Arabic (Written) | Message 14 of 116 02 September 2008 at 1:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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It is quite unfortunate for the aspiring polyglots or philologists of this forum, but I doubt that the average (note, the AVERAGE, not a Ph.D. linguist or monk) Korean is terribly saddened by the gradual loss of Hanja. The featural alphabet Hangul is better suited to Korean, in my opinion, though sometimes Chinese characters can definitely clarify certain things.
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| Organik Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5994 days ago 52 posts - 52 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 15 of 116 02 September 2008 at 2:04pm | IP Logged | ||
I don't quite understand the relevance of the Japanese input system. You can type Hanja through Korean, and the Korean system of mixed-script character usage is significantly less complicated than that of Japanese because Korean (and Mandarin) generally employs only one reading per character, whereas Japanese characters tend to have multiple readings of various lengths. The Korean mixed-script system is actually far less complicated than Japanese, however the Koreans (unlike the Japanese) have at their disposal an alternative writing form which is both practical and far more accessible to "the masses." I know some will say the Japanese could simply write in kana and it would be the same as the Koreans writing in hangul; however this is not at all the case. It is difficult to explain the intricacies of the matter, but in short kana is effective as a supplement to Chinese characters; whereas Hangul is far more suited (than kana) for use as a standalone script. That said, as an enthusiast of the Korean language I do see significant value in Hanja for its value in removing ambiguity from Korean script. Even so, I must also disclose that I was initially drawn to Korean in part due to both the lack of Chinese characters (I began studying Korean as a sort of post-undergraduate vacation from Japanese, and I temporarily had no desire to study Chinese characters) and because of my initial fascination with hangul. Nonetheless, I have since found that hanja are in fact a very useful element to foreigners learning Korean and that their use provides an effective means of writing in unambiguous Korean as well (hence that hanja in modern usage in Korea is in large part maintained through academic and professional fields). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Fat-tony Nonaglot Senior Member United Kingdom jiahubooks.co.uk Joined 6140 days ago 288 posts - 441 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian, Esperanto, Thai, Laotian, Urdu, Swedish, French Studies: Mandarin, Indonesian, Arabic (Written), Armenian, Pali, Burmese | Message 16 of 116 02 September 2008 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | ||
I know there is a difference between the Hanja and Kanji but the point I was trying to make is that a system could be devised which would enable the Korean "masses" to ACTIVELY produce Hanja with only PASSIVE knowledge. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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