[KS] RE: Koreanstudies Digest, Vol 24, Issue 4

[jrpking]

Thanks to Roland for his comment. 

> However, I think you are a little too far into the Chomsky/Krashen camp on 
> this one.
> It is not being authoritarian for a government to set a standard on how 
> "their" language should be romanized or written in English.  

I should probably clarify a bit, and how amusing that I should be grouped with Chomsky on something linguistics-related -- I much prefer his politics to his linguistics (unless you were meaning his politics here, which is also conceivable, but he rarely combines the two in his published work). 

I am not necessarily opposed to the idea of government-legislated standards in language per se (although the way these have come about in the two Koreas and the politics and ideologies that come into play with them are a great story that has yet to be told in a comprehensive fashion). What I have a problem with is the notion that anybody writing about Korea in English and in a context not under the legislative authority of Korea should somehow be obliged to follow the official ROK system simply 'because the ROK government does it that way.'

Cheers,



--
Ross King
Associate Professor of Korean, University of British Columbia
and 
Dean, Korean Language Village, Concordia Language Villages