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<P>Dear List,</P>
<P>Earlier there was a query on Korean homophones, about which there is little available in the way of information on the web.</P>
<P>In the way of a reply to Professor Unger's reply regarding "Pro and Con of Restoring Hanja from Koreanists..," I thought it might be interesting to hit two birds with one stone.</P>
<P>Admittedly, I am in agreement with Professor Unger as to restoring Hanja, but not on account of the failings of Hanja as a writing system, but more on account of Hangul-only in Korea being a fait accompli, with prospect of Hanja returning in the writings being seemingly very far in the future, if ever.</P>
<P>There is now a website which addresses both issues.</P>
<P><A href="http://www.KoreanYes.com">http://www.KoreanYes.com</A></P>
<P>I hope the site will allow the Korean language students, whom I have been calling "Koreanists-in-training," to get a better understanding of the place of Chinese words in Korean and in their language study, even if the students themselves are not proficient in Chinese characters.</P>
<P>I have provided a nearly complete list of Common-Chinese homophones in Korean, as well as a similarly complete list of homophones in English.</P>
<P>I hope the students will be able to grasp the parallels between Chinese words in Hangul and the acronyms(or initialisms) in some unknown language.</P>
<P>The Hangulized Chinese words seem to offer many conundrums for the students of Korean language:</P>
<P>1) Notions of Partial Homophony, which occurs when you focus on any one syllable of a compound word of Chinese. Partial Homophony is somewhat of a misnomer as we are really dealing with complete/total homophony with every compound word of Chinese.</P>
<P>2) Degree of Homophony, such as 39th degree homophony, and multiplicative degrees of homophony resulting in compound words of Chinese actually having 100+ degree of homophony.</P>
<P>3) Why native-Koreans untrained in Chinese syllables are seemingly unaware of the massive internal homophony.</P>
<P>4) The place of Common-Chinese in the vocabulary that defines Modernity for Korea, indeed all of East-Asia.</P>
<P>5) How it is that the students of Japanese and Chinese seem to make great progress in learning the respective languages despite being "handicapped" by being forced to learn Chinese characters, whereas students of Korean language seem to lag: The data shows that the learning curve for Common-Chinese is 10 times faster than the learning curve for Hangul-only study of Common-Chinese words, even disregarding the characters.</P>
<P>6) Graphically details how a student who do not know characters can locate Common-Chinese words, and also illustrate the omnipresence of Chinese words in Korean to beginning students.</P>
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<P>I hope the site will be able to afford useful information to Koreanists-in-training. To this end I have refrained as much as possible from rhetoric, aiming for hard-nosed data analysis.</P>
<P>Any comment from the list would be much appreciated.</P>
<P>Thank You,</P>
<P>JooBai Lee</P>
<P><A href="mailto:jblee6952@hotmail.com">jblee6952@hotmail.com</A></P>
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<P>The <BR><BR></P></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>>From: "sung-deuk oak" <sungoak@adelphia.net>
<DIV></DIV>>Reply-To: Korean Studies Discussion List <Koreanstudies@koreaweb.ws>
<DIV></DIV>>To: <Koreanstudies@koreaweb.ws>
<DIV></DIV>>Subject: [KS] Sources of Korean Christianity
<DIV></DIV>>Date: Thu, 6 May 2004 10:27:54 -0700
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV>>Dear Friends,
<DIV></DIV>>A short note to announce the publication of an English sourcebook on Korean Christianity(Protestantism) edited by myself.
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV>>SOURCES OF KOREAN CHRISTIANITY, 1832-1945
<DIV></DIV>>Seoul: Institute for Korean Church History, Feb. 2004.
<DIV></DIV>>Series #37 of the Primary Sources of the IKCH.
<DIV></DIV>>ISBN 89-85628-48-3
<DIV></DIV>>hardbound, 509 pages (including 17 page index), 30,000won.
<DIV></DIV>>Most are transliterated from English materials, yet many are translated from the Chinese, Chinese-Korean or Korean texts into English.
<DIV></DIV>>See "Palhaengdoso" (Publications) at http://user.chollian.net/~ikch0102 for your order.
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV>>The second volume, which covers the 1945-2000 period, is not planned yet.
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV>>Thank you.
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV>>Sung-Deuk Oak
<DIV></DIV>>Visiting Assistant Professor of Korean Christianity
<DIV></DIV>>Center for Korean Studies, UCLA
<DIV></DIV>>oaksung@ucla.edu
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