[KS] formal question (which version of Chinese characters?)
Frank Hoffmann
hoffmann at koreanstudies.com
Sun May 31 05:13:04 EDT 2015
Adam Bohnet wrote:
> Among them, Han SOngju, ChosOn chOn'gi sujik yOjinin yOn'gu (KyOng'in
> munhwasa, 2011)
Seeing how you use a computer and Unicode font as if you were working
on a 1970-ish typewriter to go around McCune-Reischauer I can certainly
see your point of wanting to stick with mono-everything :)
Seriously, except for the references to the bookshelf popes and
priests, your arguments certainly make a lot of sense. I do NOT find
the reasoning (e.g. of Marion, but not just her) convincing -- this
universalist approach to script while disregarding language and thereby
disregarding cultures that have developed diverse usages of the script,
that really seems a historic-traditionalistic point of view, that, to
me, seems then politically not anymore timely. But, yes, mixing all the
variants of traditional and two national abbreviated styles, that
indeed makes a text (especially if done on the same page) look quite
muddled. And who wants something muddled? The monolithic in itself does
have an aesthetic appeal to it, oh yes -- agreed. I do love watching
old b/w movies -- "He is like dogs. A dog looks at you, wants to talk,
and only barks." (La Strada) You just can't beat simplicity, it has its
rough charm while being just as eloquent as an inexhaustibly garrulous
Woody Allen dialogue. In terms of aesthetics I am all for it.
Even more serious, the most serious I have in petto for today, coming
back to your bookshelf popes and priests: if indeed East Asian authors
do not at all care -- is that really so??? -- (and we can disregard
authors from mainland China here, as that is a dictatorship and they
can't freely choose), then why should we care when writing texts in
Western languages with Chinese character insertions? No need to be
holier than thou. THAT seems a very strong argument for the use of the
traditional character set alone (only exception I would then still make
are bibliographic references). .... As you see, I find it very hard get
to a conclusion.
Frank
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Frank Hoffmann
http://koreanstudies.com
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