[KS] Korean found in translation, the Ten-fold way, and the American edge....

JooBai Lee jblee6952 at hotmail.com
Mon Nov 29 16:15:42 EST 2004


Hi,

I would like to announce several major updates to the website at
http://www.KoreanYes.com (http://www.KoreanYes1.net).
1) Korean found in translation
2) ShipBai Sajun (Ten-fold Dictionary) of Common-Chinese
                   available through Koryo Sujug
3) American edge: Americans learning Korean and
                   Korean becoming American



1) Korean found in translation

First, a section called "Korean found in translation(KFIT)" has
been added.  Subtitled 'a daily report from East-Asia', it
contains 25 articles originally in Korean from a major national
general circulation newspaper.  Attached to each Korean article
is the English translation, also from the paper itself.

The 25 articles cover a variety of writing style as well as a good
variety of levels of speech.  Topically, articles were selected from
business, trade, investment, politics, military, medicine, technology,
entertainment, celebrity interviews, opinions, editorials and movie
criticism, just about what you would find in NY Times or
Washington Post.  Indeed, were one to replace the Korean names, we
could just as easily be reading NY Times or Washington Post.

The student will be able to see at a single glance what is pure-Korean,
what is hangulized Common-Chinese(RED), and what is hangulized 
English(BLUE) in the context of a real-life discourse.  This analysis 
is available for both the Korean original and the English translation.

There is a third analysis of each article into X'ed-Korean, where all
the Common-Chinese(RED) and English(BLUE) are transformed into "X".
X'ed-Korean analysis brings into clear outline the fullness of the
pure-Korean frame.  The X'ed-Korean analysis should be useful as a
tool for assessing how far the student is along in understanding the
pure-Korean part of modern Korean.

I think it would surprise most heritage students and Korean-American
students, and I hope to the point of being very encouraging, that they
already know almost all of the pure-Korean frame, which is sometimes
referred to humorously as "kitchen Korean".

Indeed, a six-year-old Korean child would be hard pressed to find a
word he does not already know in "All Korean Words" section or the
structure in any X'ed-Korean analysis of the articles.

As for the non-heritage students, he should discover that these
"kitchen Korean" words and the X'ed-Korean structures are pretty
much what he has been struggling with over the last 3 years of
Korean language study, and precisely what is covered in his
textbooks.

2) ShipBai Sajun (Ten-Fold Dictionary) available:

"Character Problem/No-Character Problem" Resolved

Character Problem:

For the students of Japanese and Chinese, there is no escaping
Chinese characters, with the added complexity in the Japanese
case created by the peculiar Japanese habit of forcing the Chinese
characters into the role of ideograms, but a habit from which
foreign scholars greatly benefit from.

And at the level of written Chinese and Japanese, the student
will be a certifiable illiterate until he has mastered at
least 2 to 3 thousand Chinese characters.

It is a simple case of all or nothing, with no possibility
of "delayed learning of Chinese characters" in the case of
written  Japanese and Chinese.  And it is this absence of
"delayed learning of Chinese characters" which is responsible
for the horrific attrition rate among the western students of
Chinese and Japanese and the significant rate of real illiteracy
amongst the Japanese and Chinese themselves.


No-Character Problem:

After seeing how much of modern-Korean is a SEA OF RED
(or Common-Chinese), a serious student of modern-Korean
should realize that not mastering Common-Chinese is
basically not understanding 80% of modern-Korean, and
restricting himself to the embarrassingly childish
kitchen-Korean.

And since he can at best expect to see 3 to 6 Chinese
characters in any stretch of modern Korean text, and no
character at all in any conversation, he can at best
expect very little payoff from learning the Chinese
characters.  That is the dilemma posed by the hangulized
Common-Chinese in modern Korean.  And don't expect
the situation to change: no publisher concerned about
the bottom line is out to prove that their reading
public doesn't know the untaught Chinese characters.


American Advantage:

First advantage derives from the fact that the English
speaking Korean-Americans already know English.  And
almost all of Common-Chinese in red are meaning-translations
of precisely those English terms.  This fact should
be clear by looking at what is in RED in the English
translations.  Just about everything that is modern in
Korean is expressed in Common-Chinese, which are simple
meaning-translations of English words or phrases.  Law,
business, finance, trade, negotiation, business organization,
contracts, medicine, technology, mathematics, everything
that is taught with great difficulty in Korean is largely
translation of English words and phrases.

Actually, no Korean speaker can really hope to learn
English without having a full understanding and knowledge
of the syllables in Common-Chinese words that translate
English.  After all, Common-Chinese is as much foreign and
as much Martian to Korean as is English.  Right now,
most Koreans are learning English using a language,
Common-Chinese, which they know only as a string of
meaningless sounds.


ShipBai Sajun (Ten-Fold Dictionary) Advantage

But the real advantage that the Korean-Americans have over
East-Asians in learning Common-Chinese is the 10X learning
curve identified in the KoreanYes.com website.  Basically,
the student can multiply his command of Common-Chinese
ten-fold with each word he masters.  After learning just
700 words, he will fully command 7,000 words of Common-Chinese.

Basically, by organizing the study of Common-Chinese words
in a way implemented by <ShipBai Sajun (Ten-Fold Dictionary)>
the Korean-Americans can learn Common-Chinese ten times
faster than anybody in East-Asia, and this can be done
with and without learning the Chinese characters.  

The work is structured to be equally useful to Koreans in
learning English, but until they manage to overcome the
irrational sensitivities about sharing Common-Chinese
with both the Chinese and Japanese, and accept the fact
that their modernity is reflected in the translations
of English modernity into Common-Chinese, they can only
continue their English-lament(yung-u ta.ryung).




Best Wishes to All the Students,
 
JooBai Lee

11/29/04






More information about the Koreanstudies mailing list