[KS] Hangul to hanja conversion online and the fate of cherry trees Nipponica

Werner Sasse werner_sasse at hotmail.com
Fri Jun 1 08:54:49 EDT 2012








Dear colleague,
thanks for patting me on the back...
A few remarks:1. The link  GLOBALISATION AND CONCEPTUAL BIODIVERSITY made wonderful reading, thanks. Much to think about, thank you, especially if you made the decision to live and work in Korea like I did...!     2. > "최남선(崔南善)'s statement that "'나막신'은 '나무신'이 와전된 것"(Namaksin is NamooSin distorted) may have to be inverted/upturned to "나무신은 나막신이 와전/진화된 것'(NamooSin is NamakSin distorted/evolved)?"Yes, and I wonder why Choe Namseon of all people ever came up with that idea. 3.>"Justas an aside, I don't recall ever seeing 나막신(NamakSin) or Koreans portrayed as  wearing wooden clogs in any modern portrayal of  pre-modern Korea, across movies, illustrations, or historical  dramas(straw and leather shoes yes, but no clogs).  I wonder if Namaksin did not suffer the same fate as the post-WWII cherry trees which   were hacked, chopped, and burned down to ashes immediately following  liberation from Japan because of their association with Japan(Cherry tree=Japanese), despite  having been very much a Korean favorite by tradition all through its  history.  This account is provided in Prof Ramsey's The Korean Language(2000).  I guess I am  thinking of the way Japanese are always portrayed as wearing Geta(Clog Nipponica), whether in thongs or kimonos." Interesting observation (and new to me who does not like to go to cinemas or look TV) When I read this, immediatly the fact came to my mind that most Japanese building have been erased, too. Plus , I stopped eating 야끼만두 and nowadays eat 군만두 sometimes... 3. > "One wonders if same fate did not fell the Kanji in Korea, by association with the first introduced general public education under Imperial Japan." Well, I think it rather had to do with the fact that N-Kor had done this and S-Kor language policy wanted to keep N- and S-Korean from drifting too far apart. Vague memory, but was this not one of the arguments? Also, the N-Kor language policy followed Hangeul-hakhoe policy (look at who was in charge of the implementation in the academy and the university), and there was also a sizable part in the S's linguistic community, where these ideas were favoured.[Another nasty idea: the N wanted to train the minds of the people to be in conformity with official ideology by streamlining the language ( later 문화어 ) - would not some people in the S also find it convenient to forcably erase traditional thinking by cutting access to traditional texts? - o.k., sometimes my brain comes up with horrible ideas...] Best,Werner Sasse


 
Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2012 20:23:00 +0900
From: kc.kim2 at gmail.com
To: koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
CC: werner_sasse at hotmail.com
Subject: [KS] Hangul to hanja conversion online and the fate of cherry trees	Nipponica

Dear Professor Sasse,

I would be happy to trade your sketchy( and impressive) memory any day for my regrettable slip-of-the-finger which created  the non-existent Prof.
 Harbmeir and left the real Prof.C. Harbsmeier and his famous Coca-colanization presentation before the Union Académique Internationale in a limbo, (Link here : GLOBALISATION AND CONCEPTUAL BIODIVERSITY.)



Thank you for your interesting post.  Your 木曰南記 citation seemed to be a case of "the exception proving the rule," 
 with the proposition , regardless of Heavenly bidding, that  "ANY
 Korean word would be writable with Chinese characters."



Interestingly, "the exception proves the rule" stands
 in the exactly the same relationship to the Latin "exceptio probat regulam in casibus 
non exceptis" as Prof Harbsmeier's modern EA languages' 
relationship to modern English.  Placed against the German "Ausnahmen bestätigen die 
Regel" or the French "L'exception confirme la règle," the English version seems oddly less immediately sensible.


In light of your post, I guess 최남선(崔南善)'s statement that "'나막신'은 '나무신'이 와전된 것"(Namaksin is NamooSin distorted) may have to be inverted/upturned to "나무신은 나막신이 와전/진화된 것'(NamooSin is NamakSin distorted/evolved)?



Just
 as an aside, I don't recall ever seeing 나막신(NamakSin) or Koreans portrayed as 
wearing wooden clogs in any modern portrayal of 
pre-modern Korea, across movies, illustrations, or historical 
dramas(straw and leather shoes yes, but no clogs).  I
 wonder if Namaksin did not suffer the same fate as the post-WWII cherry trees which  
were hacked, chopped, and burned down to ashes immediately following 
liberation from Japan because of their association with Japan(Cherry tree=Japanese), despite 
having been very much a Korean favorite by tradition all through its 
history.  This account is provided in Prof Ramsey's The Korean Language(2000).  I guess I am 
thinking of the way Japanese are always portrayed as wearing Geta(Clog Nipponica), whether in thongs or kimonos.

One wonders if same fate did not fell the Kanji in Korea, by association with the first introduced general public education under Imperial Japan.





Regards,

Joobai Lee

6/1/2012

On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 2:14 PM, Werner Sasse <werner_sasse at hotmail.com> wrote:








Response to the following (sorry to be so late, I was travelling...), and sorry to be a little sketchy, but I am writing from memory...
 
>Prof. Harbmeier recently noted that most recently modernized languages despite sounding "native," are actually mirroring English concepts and >rhetoric, under the guise of native sound.  "나막신" appears to be just such an instance, only Chinese replacing English. It is puzzling that 나막 is >used instead of 나무 to calque "tree" 신 as "wear"?  "

 
==> 나막 is a fossilized form of an old Korean word. The development was 나막 > 남ㄱ (남기, 남ㄱaㄹ, 남ㄱaㅣ [a = arae-a]) . 나모 is the Middle Korean form without suffix and before -와. ModKor 나무 comes from the latter...
鷄林類事 has 木曰南記dial. also 남구, 남게, 낭게, 낭기, 냉기... ==> 신 is Middle and Mod Korean for "shoe" 
No Chinese involved here Best wishesWerner Sasse 
 
Date: Mon, 28 May 2012 19:02:55 +0900

From: kc.kim2 at gmail.com
To: koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
Subject: Re: [KS] hangul to hanja conversion online


Yes indeed! Heaven forbid, that "ANY Korean word would be writable with Chinese characters."

There was a news item last year describing a wondrous program capable of making this automatic conversion from hangul to hanja.  Not surprisingly, Korean media's and the public's response can best be described as "so what," and "means nothing to me" and "does nothing for me."  All quite true!  While 92% may sound good, if you imagine that 8% of your text is gobbledy-gook, you really can not avoid ending up with gobbledy-gook.  Not surprising and quite necessary.  But looked at from another perspective, that is from the view of Chinese or Japanese students, wives, husbands, children, etc (the only two hanzi countries remaining), who must wrestle with Korean text, it could be a heaven-sent.  While the hanja to hangul is easy as cake, hangul to hanja is not a trivial problem and still looking for a solution.  It is also not so unimportant a problem as every translation software's accuracy is just as equally determined by the performance of hangul to hanja conversion.  Every time you look at the translate.google or any translator and wonder why the output is gobbledy-gook, this is always a large part of it.  



Prof. Harbmeier recently noted that most recently modernized languages despite sounding "native," are actually mirroring English concepts and rhetoric, under the guise of native sound.  "나막신" appears to be just such an instance, only Chinese replacing English. It is puzzling that 나막 is used instead of 나무 to calque "tree" 신 as "wear"?  Yoo Kwang-on shows prescience with his recent post about 지렁이 which he glossed as 地龍'이.



Altaic question?  Just how many words are we talking about here?  What percentage of modern Korean?

On Sun, May 27, 2012 at 12:02 PM,  <gkl1 at columbia.edu> wrote:


Hi List,



Admittedly a huge number of Chinese words and compounds have become part of Korean's vocabulary, just as a huge number of Greek and and Latin words have become a part of the vocabulary of English (and the other European languages too). But it's distressing to learn that people might think ANY Korean word would be writable with Chinese characters. If that were so, then Korean would be a language in the Sino-Tibetan family. It's hard enough to get scholarly agreement on what language family CAN claim Korean's ancestry, but any linguistic reference work would make it clear that it's not a Chinese-type language.





Gari Ledyard



Quoting Clark W Sorensen <sangok at u.washington.edu>:




Caren,



Namaksin is a native Korean word, so it doesn't have corresponding

Chinese characters. However, any of the on-line dictionaries will give

the characters for Korean words such as at naver.com. The problem is

you have to input the Korean in hangul.



Clark Sorensen



On Fri, 25 May 2012, Freeman, Caren (cwf8q) wrote:






I’m asking this question on behalf of a colleague who is a sinologist.  He asks:







“i want to see what chinese characters correspond to korean "Namaksin"  wooden clogs.  Namaksin (나막신)







Is there an online dictionary that gives the classic readings for korean words entered in pinyin type western alphabet?”







Many thanks for your recommendations,



Caren Freeman




























 		 	   		  



 		 	   		  
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