[KS] Seoul/Kyo^ngso^ng--a short(er) follow-up

[Stefan Ewing]

Hi again, everyone:

(I will use Han'gu^l in this posting; it will hopefully be visible in Korean 
text encoding.)

Okay, I will try to make this brief.  As I mentioned yesterday, a key issue 
here would seem to be that there is often no grammatical (or orthographic) 
distinction between common nouns and proper nouns in Korean: common nouns do 
not need to be--and often are not--modified by a demonstrative or other word 
(±× (ku^), ¸î °³ÀÇ (myo^t kaeu^i), etc.), and capitalization is not used as 
a device in writing to signify proper nouns.

Thus, ¼­¿ï (Seoul/so^ul) or °æ¼º (Kyo^ngso^ng/kyo^ngso^ng) could, depending 
on the context, signify either "(a/the) capital (of a country)" or "The 
Capital (of Koryo^/Choso^n/Korea, etc.)."  Or perhaps felicitously denote 
both simultaneously.  The NAKL's Ç¥ÁØ ±¹¾î ´ë»çÀü (_Dictionary of Standard 
Korean_) certainly supports this, as it provides definitions for "so^ul" and 
"kyo^ngso^ng" as both common and proper nouns.  
(http://korean.go.kr/uw/dispatcher/bbs/search/dictionary/dic_sear_detail.appl?att1=%EC%84%9C%EC%9A%B8&count=0&pcount=0&attr_oid=@58476|3|4&old_in=0 
; 
http://korean.go.kr/uw/dispatcher/bbs/search/dictionary/dic_sear_detail.appl?att1=%EA%B2%BD%EC%84%B1&count=0&pcount=0&attr_oid=@30732|2|4&old_in=0 
.)

Were a ³ª±×³× (nagu^ne) en route to Hanso^ng 200 years ago to tell someone 
he (or she?) met on the road, "¼­¿ï·Î °¡¿À" (Seoullo kao), one could 
translate the sentence into English as either "I'm going to Seoul" or "I'm 
going to the capital."  Both would be correct translations, and both 
would--in this case--mean the same thing.  (Is it conceivable that one might 
have spoken of ÝÁÌÈ (Beijing), for example, as "û³ª¶óÀÇ ¼­¿ï" 
(Ch'o^ngnarau^i so^ul"; "The Qing capital"?))

So thank again very, very much to Joshua Van Lieu, Gari Ledyard, Sun Joo 
Kim, et al., for pointing out that the use of Seoul and Kyo^ngso^ng to refer 
to Hanso^ng is a centuries-old practice.  Maybe this is ridiculously obvious 
to everyone, but I'd just like to point out that the use of those names to 
specifically designate the Korean capital appears to have arisen organically 
out of--and occurred contemporaneously with--the use of those words to 
signify _any_ capital.

...Oh, and thanks to Ed Rockstein for that exhaustive list of names.  May I 
point out, though, that between 1946 and 1949, Seoul was a Ưº° ÀÚÀ¯½Ã 
("Special Free City"), before receiving its current designation in 1949?  
(http://100.naver.com/100.php?id=156611)

Thank you for putting up with my long posts on this matter,
Yours sincerely,
Stefan Ewing

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