本文发表在 rolia.net 枫下论坛Ok first of all that book isn't even written in grammatically correct English, hardly something I'd use as a tool if I were learning Korean. If a book is to convey the true essence of another language, it should first make a parallel with equal depth and clarity in the language being used to teach the foreign language. So if the book is for English-speaking people learning Korean, it should be equally as clear and articulate in its use of both languages. It make use of linguistic terms correctly such as vowels, prepositions, adjectives etc. But then again this book looks incredibly stupid. Korean is not superior to any other language, it is different. Here are some linguistic facts people should realize about Chinese, Korean and Japanese (I'll use these as the basis of my argument as they are all different Asian languages and I have seen them been brought up on threads like this one):
-Korean is considered a unique language. Although recently, some linguists have classified it in the Altaic Language grouping with Japanese, though for the benefit of this argument, I will separate Korean and Japanese as both unique languages.
-Korean uses two scripts. One is the dated Hanja script, or Chinese characters. In Japanese, it is called Kanji and in Chinese (duh) it's called Hanzi. Basically, Hangul (Korean letters) were created in the 1500s I believe and slowly replaced Hanja as a means of written communication. Unlike Chinese but similar to Japanese, Korean uses particles of speech to denote certain sentence and phrase structures. An example may be a subject marker, accusative marker and so forth. Chinese to my knowledge does not have this, instead it opts to use a Chinese character prescribed to that meaning (e.g. "de" means "of"). In Korean and Japanese, a sound is used to express this, but the particle of speech itself is written in such a way that it is not a distinct character like Chinese. To clarify:
Chinese uses a character to represent the particle of speech/grammatical marker. Korean and Japanese people found it difficult to use Chinese characters to represent their own grammatical structures and word orders, so instead, they used a combination of Hangul (Korean) and Kana (Japanese) to more accurately represent these sounds, which in fact have no "real" meaning. The markers are merely grammatical guides. I'm sure if an English person saw this sentence: "dog jumped over the log", they would easily figure out that it means "THE dog jumped over the log" without seeing the particle "the".
-Kana and Hangul had a purpose of expressing grammatical particles with more ease and simplicity and to a degree, they also promoted earlier literacy. In effect, ANYONE can learn Hangul and Kana with ease given that both simply represent a collection of sounds (Kana represent a particular sound such as "ta" and Hangul is broken up into smaller sections which then come together to form a "character" which fits in a neat square). Later I will provide some examples of this. Now I've learned some Japanese but not Korean, so at this point, if I've made any gross errors please let me know. If you learn these basic principles of Korean and Japanese, you will find that reading and writing at a beginner's level would not be as difficult as learning Chinese, where characters represent a concept, word or even phrase. Today, Korean and Japanese can be entirely written in their phonetic alphabet without the aid of Chinese characters, though it is considered more linguistically appropriate and educated to use them in Japanese though it has been phased out in Korea. While Koreans still learn Chinese characters, Chinese is generally omitted from modern writing.
-So to recap: Korean and Japanese use phonetic "alphabets" where Hangul and Kana represent sounds, basically letters, strung together to form a word. Chinese does not. Chinese uses pictograms or what is often described as ideograms to represent an entire word. Radicals in Chinese characters (common strokes) are not letters but particles of a larger character.
Example:
新 - Character/ideogram/pictogram meaning "new".
あたらし - The kana for "a-ta-ra-shi" which has the same meaning as the Kanji above, but is spelt phonetically using alphabetical means.
Korean and Japanese have had no difficulties whatsoever in expressing philosophical or linguistically complicated concepts. Just because an Asian language is different from an Indo-European language doesn’t not mean it has to use Chinese to be philosophical. Chinese characters have a deep meaning and because each character can represent an abstract comment, we find that three-character phrases can have a much deeper and lengthy meaning. That's Chinese. In Korean and Japanese, the same can be done using Chinese characters just as easily, though the only difference with using a phonetic alphabet is that the sounds need to spelt out (in which case it may appear less complicated as a single Kanji or simply a little longer when written out in a full sentence left to right or top to bottom). Big deal. Furthermore, philosophy is not based on one culture. English philosophy does not need to reflect Greek philosophy. I study Ancient Greek and an Ancient Greek sentence may not mean the same thing in English and neither will some English sentences be adequately translated into Greek. It's as simple as that.
Languages reflect cultures. They reflect social groups and intricate concepts related to specific groups. Not all Chinese cultural traits may be expressed in the same way through Korean or Japanese and vice versa. That's a simple truth all linguists must understand so whoever says Korean is inferior or superior is a fool. It is neither. It is merely different from the language you speak. I'm sure English people might say the same about English (or Europeans). They might say because we have a multitude of words, we can express things in deeper ways. WRONG. English has many doubled-up meanings for words because we borrow them from other languages such as Greek or Latin (which in turn also had their own words which we may not use today).
Examples include "autonomous" and "independent". Both mean a similar thing. "Freedom". However "autonomous" is borrowed directly from the Ancient Greek word "αυτονομους" which phonetically is EXACTLY the same as "autonomous". See how languages work? Chinese people may find Korean and Japanese easy to learn, whereas many Asians find German, Greek, Russian and English INCREDIBLY difficult to get their heads around. It doesn't imply that because a language is difficult to learn, it is therefore superior, it means the language is different to your mode of communication and grammatical/linguistic understanding. German is similar to English in many ways; we find this easier to contemplate than Arabic or Chinese, which are immensely different from the way we look at language. I hope I’ve explained to people generally how these languages work and why they differ, and why NONE can be considered superior and all must be considered unique in their own way.
Lone Gunman更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net
-Korean is considered a unique language. Although recently, some linguists have classified it in the Altaic Language grouping with Japanese, though for the benefit of this argument, I will separate Korean and Japanese as both unique languages.
-Korean uses two scripts. One is the dated Hanja script, or Chinese characters. In Japanese, it is called Kanji and in Chinese (duh) it's called Hanzi. Basically, Hangul (Korean letters) were created in the 1500s I believe and slowly replaced Hanja as a means of written communication. Unlike Chinese but similar to Japanese, Korean uses particles of speech to denote certain sentence and phrase structures. An example may be a subject marker, accusative marker and so forth. Chinese to my knowledge does not have this, instead it opts to use a Chinese character prescribed to that meaning (e.g. "de" means "of"). In Korean and Japanese, a sound is used to express this, but the particle of speech itself is written in such a way that it is not a distinct character like Chinese. To clarify:
Chinese uses a character to represent the particle of speech/grammatical marker. Korean and Japanese people found it difficult to use Chinese characters to represent their own grammatical structures and word orders, so instead, they used a combination of Hangul (Korean) and Kana (Japanese) to more accurately represent these sounds, which in fact have no "real" meaning. The markers are merely grammatical guides. I'm sure if an English person saw this sentence: "dog jumped over the log", they would easily figure out that it means "THE dog jumped over the log" without seeing the particle "the".
-Kana and Hangul had a purpose of expressing grammatical particles with more ease and simplicity and to a degree, they also promoted earlier literacy. In effect, ANYONE can learn Hangul and Kana with ease given that both simply represent a collection of sounds (Kana represent a particular sound such as "ta" and Hangul is broken up into smaller sections which then come together to form a "character" which fits in a neat square). Later I will provide some examples of this. Now I've learned some Japanese but not Korean, so at this point, if I've made any gross errors please let me know. If you learn these basic principles of Korean and Japanese, you will find that reading and writing at a beginner's level would not be as difficult as learning Chinese, where characters represent a concept, word or even phrase. Today, Korean and Japanese can be entirely written in their phonetic alphabet without the aid of Chinese characters, though it is considered more linguistically appropriate and educated to use them in Japanese though it has been phased out in Korea. While Koreans still learn Chinese characters, Chinese is generally omitted from modern writing.
-So to recap: Korean and Japanese use phonetic "alphabets" where Hangul and Kana represent sounds, basically letters, strung together to form a word. Chinese does not. Chinese uses pictograms or what is often described as ideograms to represent an entire word. Radicals in Chinese characters (common strokes) are not letters but particles of a larger character.
Example:
新 - Character/ideogram/pictogram meaning "new".
あたらし - The kana for "a-ta-ra-shi" which has the same meaning as the Kanji above, but is spelt phonetically using alphabetical means.
Korean and Japanese have had no difficulties whatsoever in expressing philosophical or linguistically complicated concepts. Just because an Asian language is different from an Indo-European language doesn’t not mean it has to use Chinese to be philosophical. Chinese characters have a deep meaning and because each character can represent an abstract comment, we find that three-character phrases can have a much deeper and lengthy meaning. That's Chinese. In Korean and Japanese, the same can be done using Chinese characters just as easily, though the only difference with using a phonetic alphabet is that the sounds need to spelt out (in which case it may appear less complicated as a single Kanji or simply a little longer when written out in a full sentence left to right or top to bottom). Big deal. Furthermore, philosophy is not based on one culture. English philosophy does not need to reflect Greek philosophy. I study Ancient Greek and an Ancient Greek sentence may not mean the same thing in English and neither will some English sentences be adequately translated into Greek. It's as simple as that.
Languages reflect cultures. They reflect social groups and intricate concepts related to specific groups. Not all Chinese cultural traits may be expressed in the same way through Korean or Japanese and vice versa. That's a simple truth all linguists must understand so whoever says Korean is inferior or superior is a fool. It is neither. It is merely different from the language you speak. I'm sure English people might say the same about English (or Europeans). They might say because we have a multitude of words, we can express things in deeper ways. WRONG. English has many doubled-up meanings for words because we borrow them from other languages such as Greek or Latin (which in turn also had their own words which we may not use today).
Examples include "autonomous" and "independent". Both mean a similar thing. "Freedom". However "autonomous" is borrowed directly from the Ancient Greek word "αυτονομους" which phonetically is EXACTLY the same as "autonomous". See how languages work? Chinese people may find Korean and Japanese easy to learn, whereas many Asians find German, Greek, Russian and English INCREDIBLY difficult to get their heads around. It doesn't imply that because a language is difficult to learn, it is therefore superior, it means the language is different to your mode of communication and grammatical/linguistic understanding. German is similar to English in many ways; we find this easier to contemplate than Arabic or Chinese, which are immensely different from the way we look at language. I hope I’ve explained to people generally how these languages work and why they differ, and why NONE can be considered superior and all must be considered unique in their own way.
Lone Gunman更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net
