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Koreans Seek More Chinese Character Education, Reactions

by on Tuesday, March 30, 2010 186 comments

On Tiexue, the post title is: “Korean assembly shouts ‘long live Chinese characters‘, demanding attention for Chinese character education”. On Mop, the title is: “This is not a dream! Korean students scream ‘Long live Chinese characters!’”

Koreans at a rally in support of Chinese character education.

A crowd of Koreans rallying for Chinese character education.

A Korean woman holds up a sign for Chinese character education.

A Korean woman holds a sign for Chinese character education.

A Korean crowd in support of Chinese character education.

Comments from Tiexue:

箭毒木:

They’re not thinking of telling the world that Chinese characters were created by them again, are they?

13893136409:

Agree with the above, I’m thinking the same thing~ However, it is right…we’re all Chinese. They’re our descendants after all.

w125512928:

This is just the bangzi preparing a rally to steal Chinese characters, and soon will say Chinese characters were also created by them, that they first used them. A shameless country is capable of anything.

duovo:

Who told you guys to abandon Chinese? Now you know how serious the consequences are, right? Without Chinese, you can’t even completely express yourself in speech, unable to express yourself. Learn from the Japanese, the Japanese applying to be civil servants all need to learn Chinese ancient history, memorizing the four Confucian classics. Those who do not learn Chinese in Japan are considered lacking in character, unable to even become a civil servant.

zjc2134990:

I won’t say anything, but if they truly dare to say they created Chinese characters, I will go become a human bomb tomorrow.

timmao:

Actually, we should all learn complex/traditional characters. That is the true Chinese characters…

having evolved through culture/time.

gphome:

Why learn Chinese characters, just learn your own. After all, you guys are the world’s originators of culture/civilization.

半条毛毛虫:

The Koreans are thinking, in the future, Chinese characters will become a common language in the world, so now they are preemptively claiming that it is their own country’s ancestral language.

1401855:

It’s over! It’s over!!!

Chinese characters will soon become their’s too!!!

pogongsis:

Korean bangzi are not much different from lunatics. Even the Japanese scorn them.

qqoozhuang:

Deny them learning Chinese culture, Chinese characters, everything Chinese.

Learn new languages. chinaSMACK personals.

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186 Comments

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  1. Jarot
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 12:43 am

    Can it be? First!!

    The netizens comments are funny though.

    Reply
  2. JW
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 1:02 am

    is all the masks normal these days?
    or are they going to go violent?

    Reply
  3. shengguo
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 1:15 am

    long live traditional characters!!!

    Reply
  4. wogziwogzi
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 1:15 am

    It’s funny that the editorially chosen comments in this post, chosen for their inanity, are still better than the ones offered here, in these very comment boxes.

    Reply
  5. 先生
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 1:16 am

    If you want to learn, then learn, but no PRC simplified shit please.

    Reply
    • TheOrz
      Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 1:34 am

      Why do people bash simplified so much? I think simplified is better, especially given that many traditional characters can not be rendered properly without using a large font. Also what is with this ‘natural’ argument? Do you think traditional characters were plucked from Hanzi Trees or something?

      Reply
      • 先生
        Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 2:44 am

        I acknowledge your point of view. Here is mine:

        Traditional inspires people, it has inner beauty plus the historical and symbolical meaning.

        Simplified characters “simply” enrages me, these characters didn’t evolve with time or through some kind of academic exercise, they (communist party) just randomly take (or put) some strokes on the originals.

        Reply
        • 水溶C100
          Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 3:03 am

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_Characters

          “Although most of the simplified Chinese characters in use today are the result of the works moderated by the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the 1950s and 60s, character simplification predates the PRC’s formation in 1949. Cursive written text almost always includes character simplification. Simplified forms used in print have always existed (they date back to as early as the Qin Dynasty (221 – 206 BC), though early attempts at simplification actually resulted in more characters being added to the lexicon).
          One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lufei Kui, who proposed in 1909 that simplified characters should be used in education. In the years following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, many anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China. Traditional culture and values such as Confucianism were challenged. Soon, people in the Movement started to cite the traditional Chinese writing system as an obstacle in modernising China and therefore proposed that a reform be initiated. It was suggested that the Chinese writing system should be either simplified or completely abolished”

          Oh I can read traditional characters I’m soooo greeeaatt. I’m better than all of you and that’s why I have a high horse!!

          Learn both and stop acting like you know shit.

          Reply
          • 殘體字
            Friday, April 2, 2010 at 5:55 pm

            That’s right, you should learn both simplified and traditional Chinese. However, modern simplified Chinese is full of nonsensical characters that lack all aesthetic value, just as those botched characters of the Japanese language. BTW, the modern simplified character of the word “country” is not Chinese: it is borrowed from Japanese. According to wiki, about 30% of CCP simplified Chinese match Japanese Kanji. Why didn’t they just use the traditional simplified Chinese that us Chinese developed?

            Also, the May Fourth Movement was a leftist mistake. Dr. Sun did not subscribe to it because the movement threw out the baby with the bathwater: the movement went too far and sought to eradicate all traces of Chinese culture, which let to the communist movement and culminated in the humongous mistake of the Cultural Revolution. Let’s just be glad that we are on the right track again, rediscovering and reclaiming our Chinese cultural heritage.

        • aquadraht
          Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 3:43 am

          While traditional characters may look more “traditional” (what else), it is a pain in the ass to write some of them by hand.

          Your hatred against the Communist Party is not only disgusting (it reminds fascism with its murderous and irrational anti-communism), it is simply inappropriate, here. Most of the simplifications stem from reform movements and proposals originating in the late 19th and first half of the 20th century. Many of the reformers were ways more radical in their proposals than what the CCP realized. Ok, there was a second stage of the reform which was (fortunately) cancelled .. but that is a different story.

          Not all of the character reform is perfect. Some of the combined characters should’nt have in the first place, some of the newly generated obfuscate the graphical hints the traditional characters offer for sound as well as meaning.

          Everybody learning Chinese seriously has to learn both, fantizy and jiantizi, in the end. But it is not a bad idea to start with the simplified characters unless you’re learning Ja

          Reply
          • aquadraht
            Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 3:44 am

            ..panese, too :) (sorry).

            a^2

          • SISU
            Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 4:19 am

            Great post aquadraht!

            I’m Chinese and I support simplified Chinese. Languages around the world are supposed to evolve, for example modern English from Old English. Switching to simplified has greatly improved literacy in China and is one of the greatest things done by the modern Chinese government. Plus, I think simplified Chinese looks much cleaner/less cluttered than traditional.

            Personally, I doubt if MR even knows how to write Chinese.

          • Tortue
            Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 10:52 am

            “While traditional characters may look more “traditional” (what else), it is a pain in the ass to write some of them by hand”

            Check out the probability that you’ll have to write chinese (simp or trad) with an old good pen and a sheet of papers ? Almost none…

          • Tortue
            Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 11:27 am

            @SISU

            Going backward you call that “evolution” ?

            “Switching to simplified has greatly improved literacy in China ”

            Really ? And why HK & TW has a better literacy rate ?

          • Tony
            Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 8:07 am

            Seeing people saying writing traditional is painful, all i got say is this. Writing Chinese is painful in general why don’t we just stuck with english. Best yet, writing is more painful than typing, why don’t we type instead of writing.

            Many of the classic Chinese texts is written in traditional and while the CCP translates many Chinese characters to simplified, much of them aren’t translated.When you get to higher lvl of education in Chinese classes (may it be history, medicine…etc), you will find out everything became traditional Chinese. Simplified Chinese can only get you somewhere.

            Moreover, many people who know traditional Chinese can read simplified while the vice versa usually doesn’t exist. Moreover trad character have alot of intrinsic meanings that make it easier to understand and its also the character thats spread to japan and korea. Knowing trad chinese make it much easier for me to learn japanese.

            Traditional characters are more formal and sincere, and this is why people should learn it first before going to simpified. Simpified is just a quick and informal way to do things, i hav nothing against it but traditional have its benefits. In todays society, everything is do with typing anyways, and if you find learning 4 or more lines hard, its not becuz trad is hard, is just you are lazy.

          • liang
            Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 12:20 pm

            I hate to read simplified characters. Every time I read it, I feel sorry for those characters. They look like sick man.
            By the way, How often do you write it by hand now? Do you feel smarter when you write in simplified chinese?

        • johnny depp
          Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 6:10 am

          You’re not writing in Traditional .Sry.

          This is traditional.
          http://www.bjchinese.bjedu.cn/adminmanage/article/UserFiles/Image/1%28150%29.jpg

          Reply
          • too yellow
            Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 1:20 pm

            why stop there, these are so traditional people are debate whether they are actually words.
            http://www.sdmuseum.com/museum/Kid?req=showNews&id=449

          • Tony
            Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 8:13 am

            You are funny guy, but let me get some facts straight.

            There was never traditional Chinese until simplified Chinese was created by the CCP. Traditional Chinese refers to the original Chinese character at the time simpified Chinese is created. Before then there were never trad/simpified Chinese diff, there were only “Chinese characters”.

            Those links you posted are ancient Chinese text and not traditional Chinese as those are not the Chinese language used at the time Simplified Chinese is created.

        • PING
          Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 7:46 am

          To 先生, this is a misunderstanding, the Simplified System was not started by Communist, it started by normal people long before the Communist take over. Can you imagine a simple worker write hundreds and thouthands of labels and then recorded the same things in their ledgers again and again in the complicated formate of Chinese characters? No, they did not. Anyone repeat something thousands of times you will find a better way to do it. And the the simplified Chinese is the way to do it. Communist just happend to extend and finished the job. By the way the traditional character used by Taiwan are not so traditional either. Like the word “with” 与 it is not only in the simplified format but also is the one use by real ancient Chinese. I have to say the traditional format is good in calligraphy but If anyone love traditional so much wait till you see the prehistorical writing on the bones and sells.

          Reply
          • Tortue
            Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 10:56 am

            “If anyone love traditional so much wait till you see the prehistorical writing on the bones and sells”

            Woud ya be apy if we simp de eng gramar lik dis ? It sucks right ? Now you understand what we feel when we se simplified characters.

            The point is that no one is able to read old bones scripture but virtually any chinese in the world are able to read traditional form.

        • Xav
          Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 12:32 pm

          Yeah right “teacher”!!!
          If that so you could have choosen better and more poetical 漢字‼

          Reply
      • Tortue
        Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 10:50 am

        “…that many traditional characters can not be rendered properly without using a large font”

        Obviously you don’t hang out much on Taiwanese/HK website, there is not such “using larger font” thing.

        I bash simplified just because it sucks and useless. Of course Simplified is faster to write but, honestly, I (virtually) haven’t touched a pen for the last 6 years, I only type on a computer or on a phone, so what’s the point now?

        ” Also what is with this ‘natural’ argument? ”

        This also is a sentence from someone who obviously never learn trad chinese. They are certainly annoying to write but easier to learn, mainly because there is still a logic that disappeared with the simplified form.

        Reply
        • 水溶C100
          Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 10:42 pm

          “I bash simplified just because it sucks and useless.”

          Your comments make you look ignorant. If you had anything good to say you would be encouraging language learners to master both.

          Reply
          • Tony
            Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 8:22 am

            水溶C100,

            You may wanna deny it but simpified and traditional chinese is more a political question than anything else. Its just that “majority” Chinese from China want to impose their ideals on the smaller “minority” Hongkongers and Taiwanese, who believed they are culturally superior.

            I will cut out all the conspiracy involved with the invention of simplified. But one thing for sure, if China was going back to traditional, it will make Chinese unification much more easier.

          • johann (aka bronwyn)
            Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 11:50 am

            you know, the ancient egyptians were able to get over writing with pictograms…

            furthermore, the purpose of a written language is to make mass communication MORE available, not so you can tout your elitism in the face of people who don’t have hours and hours to spend memorizing character because they have LIVES

            [Note from Fauna: Please do not use multiple names.]

          • Tortue
            Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 1:37 pm

            @Johann : About egyptians, there is a huge difference between “get over something” and being imposed an another languages + scripture + culture by invadors (here Arabic and Arabians).

            Also, Trad characters are longer to write yes (which is no more a problem) but definitely not longer to be learnt, it’s about the same (it can be even easier with radicals and decomposition).

        • Tortue
          Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 11:57 am

          When you see a bad movie, you just say it sucks because it’s a bad movie, you don’t need to explain your opinion in a thesis right ?

          Having mastered most common trad and quite a few simp, I arrived at the conclusion that people who set up that system weren’t totally sane. it was just one stage before the full “pinyinization” of the chinese languages (which never happened…)

          Reply
          • 水溶C100
            Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 11:24 pm

            @TONY

            That’s well and all, I never suggested TW and HK give up traditional characters. Actually, I support the diversity. But saying simplified characters are stupid and useless is ignorance at the highest degree.(I know YOU do didn’t say that).

            @Tortue

            “I arrived at the conclusion that people who set up that system weren’t totally sane.”

            THIS IS JUST HOW YOU FEEL. Tortue it’s okay to prefer one to the other, but claiming that simplified is “stupid” and “useless” and that the people that created it are “insane” is not only hyperbolic but completely unfounded and ignorant. Oh wait, your opinion is fact? My bad.

  6. FYIADragoon
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 1:35 am

    Traditional characters are the true cultured characters. I’m laughing at the fact that most of the posters talking about how great Chinese culture is, and how the Koreans don’t deserve it probably don’t even know any traditional.

    Reply
    • bobiscool
      Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 1:23 pm

      lol… I”m laughing at the fact that you think you’re so smart while you’re so ignorant.

      99.99% of people who know simplified can at least read traditional if not write it as well.

      The same cannot be said the other way around.

      Reply
      • Tortue
        Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 1:27 pm

        Are you kidding ? I’ve never met any HK/TW that weren’t able to read simplified but I met tons of chinese who had a real problem reading trad.

        Reply
        • 水溶C100
          Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 10:45 pm

          Your opinion does not a fact make.

          Reply
        • bobiscool
          Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 12:54 pm

          I’ve never met any HK/TW that were able to read simplified but every mainlander I know can also read traditional.

          Reply
          • Tortue
            Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 1:00 pm

            Hongkies are trained at school to read/write simp, so you will have to explain where did you found your HK people not being able to read simp.

            It was true for Taiwan few years ago (but still able to “guess”) but website such as Youku/Tudou and VeryCD helped a lot. When I was student in NCCU we had case studies (from Fudan, Tsinghua) all in simplified and obviously I was the only one who needed a dico.

        • anne
          Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 8:42 pm

          I’ve seen the opposite, where I’m from most TW/HK can’t read a lot of the simplified characters. My friend who is a Hongkie can’t read simplied, she can’t even guess the meaning she’s was taught traditional in school in Hongkong, she’s in her 20s…maybe the simplified learning in HK is a recent thing? All our Chinese newspapers here are written in traditional characters and no mainlander has trouble reading them.

          Reply
    • bobiscool
      Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 1:24 pm

      Oh, and btw, you know that not all characters were simplified, right? noob.

      Reply
  7. GermanChinese
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 2:35 am

    Hopefully the Vietnamese will realise this too and banish the barbaric latin script they use today.

    Korea and Vietnam are like Japan subcultures of China, so they should use Hanzi and not own made scripts or scripts of foreign, non-chinese origin.

    Reply
    • ｂｌａｅｈ
      Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 9:18 am

      The Chinese business men in Vietnam looking for cheap labour, cheap surgery and cheap women would be delighted.

      Reply
    • cdn icehole
      Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 10:08 am

      Why do you care what writing system the Korean / Vietnamese uses? It’s one aspect that makes them unique. However, I agree life would be a little bit easier if everyone on this useless planet use one writing system and language.

      Reply
  8. Hei_Bai
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 2:44 am

    Flimsy ass masks have been proven to prevent all forms of diseases and viruses.

    Reply
  9. zun
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 3:55 am

    waiting for pusan playa

    Reply
  10. ST
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 4:02 am

    FTA: “… However, it is right…we’re all Chinese. They’re our descendants after all.”

    And if you take that logic a bit further you could say “… we’re all African. We’re their descendants after all.”

    Reply
  11. jdkjfkdj
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 4:11 am

    “Traditional characters are the true cultured characters.”

    Fools. Traditional characters slowly evolved to become overly complex as a means of preventing literacy amongst the peasants. It was a cultural tool to oppress. The CCP rightly chose to reverse this trend so more could read and write.

    Reply
    • Tortue
      Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 10:59 am

      五毛?

      If I follow your logic, mainland chinese people are too dumb to learn traditional ? Thus HK, TW and overseas chinese people are much smarter right ?

      Reply
      • bobiscool
        Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 1:26 pm

        It means it’s easier as a stepping stone for peasants, which proved to be effective. Your hate for mainland China, which I bet is from exaggerated western sources, and you yourself actually have not come in direct contact with China.

        Regardless, it has tainted your views on even the language.

        Get off your high horse. YOu’re not superior to Chinese people.

        Reply
        • Tortue
          Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 1:34 pm

          I don’t hate mainland china, I’ve been living in the greater area (cn/hk/tw) and just keep thinking that simplified chinese hurt eyes and are quite useless nowadays (as we type most of the time)

          “which proved to be effective”

          The HK/TW/Overseas experience showed that it wasn’t the simplification that had increased the literacy rate but some other (free school…etc) policy that helped it.

          Reply
          • whichone
            Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 2:10 pm

            Not everyone type most of the time for their written correspondences, and simplified Chinese is admittedly easier to use. My personal experience as been that almost everyone in mainland China can read traditional characters with ease and often use them in ceremonial settings where the aesthetic appeal of traditional characters are called for. Either way I don’t see this is that big a deal as there are far more similarities between the scripts than differences.

            Perhaps if you wrote more with a pen instead of typing you’d see that the complicated strokes of traditional characters are often simplified in handwriting and they are not that different/ugly compared to the standardized simplified characters.

          • Tortue
            Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 2:36 pm

            Everyone is using a simplified for it’s own written languages (I, for instance, do not use any vowels If I have to handwrite some stuff in French or English) and even Taiwanese themselves use simplified (which still remain différents than the one used on the mainland) but what is the point to keep them on printed stuff ?

          • 水溶C100
            Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 10:50 pm

            Tortue,

            You’re an ethnocentric dick-head. Hong kong and Taiwan are both wonderful places but your great experiences there does not make China and it’s *stupid* language bad.

          • Tortue
            Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 11:51 am

            @水溶C100: Who talked about languages ? Since when 簡／繁 are languages ? And who the heck talked about “china” the country ? I was just expressing the fact that 簡 are useless in a almost 100% computerize worlds.

          • bobiscool
            Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 12:50 pm

            Just so you know, taiwan wants to change to simplified…

          • Tortue
            Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 12:53 pm

            Really ? Since when ? I live in Taipei and the only characters that I can before the word 簡體字 is 幹.

    • joeching
      Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 12:44 am

      culture, as the finest of all arts, must be deep, not popular and shallow.

      who say everyone needs to learn the language. we should be willing to sacrifice a million in order to produce on great artist, in order to advance our culture.

      dont buy in the western barbarism of deMOBcrazy.

      Reply
  12. LOLZ
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 4:12 am

    The ever so nationalistic 棒子 must be pissed.

    Reply
  13. 马修
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 4:38 am

    Every country has the enemies they deserve.

    Reply
  14. ChinaGeeks
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 5:10 am

    Wow, not a lot of love for the Koreans on this one, eh?

    Reply
  15. PUSAN PLAYA
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 5:35 am

    The Hangul vs Hanja debate is an old and emotional one and I don’t really feel like getting into it.

    Maybe if the Italians were just as hateful and insecure as the Chinese they’d freak out and start frothing at the mouth every time people somewhere in the world debated the merits of using the Latin alphabet, luckily they aren’t. That’s probably one of the reasons why it’s so widely adopted, it doesn’t carry the taint of national identity politics that Chinese characters have.

    Reply
    • ｂｌａｅｈ
      Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 9:29 am

      And the Latin alphabet is somewhat based on Old-Greek alphabet…

      Reply
    • Jay K
      Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 1:18 pm

      another good point by PP. although some of the things u say i dont agree too, but then again u make good points.

      Reply
    • whichone
      Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 2:12 pm

      Luckily all the countries that adopted Latin did not feel culturally insecure enough to concoct a whole new alphabet, only to find it somewhat lacking and must be occasionally supplemented with Latin. Thus they were spared a topic of recurrent and emotional debate difficult even for the most jingoistic idiot to articulate.

      Reply
      • Alikese
        Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 1:12 am

        The same thing happened with the Japanese using Chinese characters, hence the creation of katakana and hiragana. Chinese characters aren’t perfect, neither are Korean, or the Latin or Cyrillic alphabets.

        However, the Latin alphabet is the most flexible which is why many languages adopted it (from Vietnamese to Tagalog to Quechua). Chinese is harder to read, harder to learn, and less flexible and that is why it will never be the international writing system.

        Reply
        • Tony
          Friday, April 2, 2010 at 3:19 am

          Alikese,

          Flexible or not depends on the people. Many academics in the world actually considered English the hardest language to learn and mastered.

          Latin alphabet is used most commonly only becuz the European nations expand their influence throughout the world in the past centuries.

          It have nothing about is it easier to learn or not easy to learn. Vietnamnese to Tagalog to Quecha all were conquered by European nations and forced to adopted the writing; it is not that they found it easier to learn. Eventually they got used to it, and all those who know the original language die out, and this is why they decide to keep the language after independence.

          Reply
          • Johny-5
            Sunday, May 9, 2010 at 9:33 am

            how long would it take u to learn the roman alphabet? less than an hour..? how about learning chinese characters?

    • whatever
      Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 6:04 pm

      latin alphabet actually comes from chinese characters..hardcore semplification

      Reply
    • I live in China
      Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 10:46 pm

      this comparison is complete nonsense. The Chinese characters are very definitely a Chinese thing, the Latin ones aren’t just an Italian thing anymore, no one calls them the Italian characters

      Reply
    • anne
      Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 8:56 pm

      Never knew there was a debate. And also a very weird comparison.
      Normally I’d think the Chinese reactions above would be far fetched, if not when I was 15, my Korean friend told me “You know, Chinese characters were actually invented in Korea.” So some these skeptical comments aren’t too off the mark.
      I have also been told by my other Korean friends that sushi was invented in Korea, evidence proves otherwise. Heck, I’ve even been told the black ghetto hand shake was in invented in Korea, since that was how the generals back in the day use to greet each other. (I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP) I’m thinking insecurity runs both ways.

      Reply
  16. Singer Wang
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 5:57 am

    We should just all learn Klingon.

    Reply
  17. ｂｌａｅｈ
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 9:11 am

    Back to the Reich?

    Reply
  18. ｂｌａｅｈ
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 9:32 am

    Look what I found:

    A video by the Voluntary Agency Network of Korea describing how “Hangeul is the best invention throughtout the Korean history.”
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSaaTOE1yJg

    Reply
  19. Yin
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 9:40 am

    *sigh* Does no one want to point out the context of the photos? It’s not the Korean assembly singing praise to Chinese characters. A quick google turns out:

    “They’re protesting against the possible removal of Chinese characters from KSAT in the upcoming revisement. The test makers are considering the complete removal of all subjects other than Korean, Mathematics and English and have colleges rely on school grades for the removed subjects in order to simplify the test, lessen the burden on Korean students, and make schools more relevant while putting a break on Korea’s overblown hakwon industry.”

    Sounds like people who learned Chinese characters bitching about its removal from Korean university entrance exams => they wasted their time.

    Reply
  20. GermanChinese
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 10:32 am

    Hm, it seems that the huge majoritiy of the protesters are young women, and most of them even look not that bad.

    Reply
  21. fireworks
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 10:51 am

    Good on the South Koreans as they still use traditional Chinese characters for most cultural relics and historical places. Hangul is also beautiful. It has its own distinctive style and writing techniques. There is enough room for both Hangul and traditional Chinese characters. As China become more influential around the globe, South Korea can take advantage of their close historical ties and culture to do business in China.

    Reply
  22. 汉文
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 1:01 pm

    汉字是韩国人发明的

    Reply
  23. Spore
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 1:57 pm

    As China develops, the economic livelihood of the Koreans will become increasingly interwined with China. Not a good idea to overlook Chinese language education in favour of English.

    But why are many people interpreting the news negatively? I find the sentiments kinda puzzling.

    Reply
    • Anon
      Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 2:57 pm

      Because Chinese netizens are the world’s worst, most reliably abrasive people?

      Reply
      • B. Prichard
        Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 3:20 pm

        The suggestion that Chinese netizens are the worst, most abrasive people on earth is going to piss off some people at 4chan, if they notice it.

        Prepare to have your computer turned into a zombie.

        Reply
        • Zhegezhege
          Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 3:25 pm

          B. Prichard, you think you know what you’re talking about. You don’t.

          Reply
          • B. Prichard
            Friday, April 2, 2010 at 1:48 pm

            Really? For making a joke about 4chan?

          • Zhegezhege
            Sunday, April 4, 2010 at 5:36 am

            Nah, not that.

            It’s that you just (once again) proved yourself to be a faggot-for-hire that doesn’t respect anything beyond what you perceive to be “Chai-na”; a pussy who gives himself away almost as fast as he creates new accounts, with his medieval thought processes.

          • box
            Monday, April 5, 2010 at 1:03 am

            It’s pretty clear that either you don’t really understand what B Prichard said or don’t care. Way to be hostile!

            Highly suggest reading some /b/. Good times!

          • B. Prichard
            Tuesday, April 6, 2010 at 12:25 pm

            I would be very curious to find out which other names you think I’m using. As you may have noticed, Fauna tends to call people out on that. You may notice that she has not done so in my case. You don’t seem too bright, so I’ll give you a chance to apologize.

          • Zhegezhege
            Tuesday, April 6, 2010 at 11:49 pm

            Maybe my comment looks aggressive given that it’s a thread with an original post about some losers pretending to be Koreans. But I stand by what I said. Arguing with these guys reminds me of that Venture Brothers episode with Brock talking to Hank’s shaggy haired friend. “What? Kid? Are you serious?”

            No shit you’re interested in what accounts I think you use, Sha B Prichard. No apology.

          • Sin
            Wednesday, April 7, 2010 at 1:43 am

            Lol I can only imagine Zhegezhege’s rage face after he realizes the extent of his fail.

            In b4 FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

          • B. Prichard
            Wednesday, April 7, 2010 at 10:46 am

            Sin, I think that realization is going to be pretty slow in coming.

  24. Jeff Douter
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 8:47 pm

    South Koreans are insecure delusional morons who think they “invented” everything.

    Personally I 100% agree with the mainlanders on this. Frankly I don’t find Chinese nationalism all that annoying, but I absolutely can’t stand the stupidity of Korean nationalism. Plus those Korean morons think fans can kill them!

    Reply
  25. Spore
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 10:32 pm

    If something belongs to us, nobody can take it away from us.

    To me, being the bearers of “huaxia wen ming”, means having the self-confidence to avoid strident nationalism and the generosity of heart to accept one’s neighbours/brethren into the folds of huaxia.

    Little brother can say what he want, there is little reason for big brother to get touchy all the time.

    Reply
  26. Spore
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 10:35 pm

    If something belongs to us, nobody can take it away from us.

    To me, being the bearers of “huaxia wen ming”, means having the self-confidence to avoid strident nationalism and the generosity of heart to accept one’s neighbours/brethren into the folds of huaxia.

    Let little brother say what he wants.

    Reply
  27. HawaiiKai
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 11:31 pm

    why would they want to learn stupid Chinese character? I would rather learn Hindi.

    Reply
  28. kimboslice
    Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 1:53 am

    While interesting culturally, the system of representing the sounds of a word with an aphabet is more effecient than symbols as in Chinese. I can believe that in the past it was uncommon for normal people to be able to read or write. Could this have been a way to maintain a social heirarchy in China? Either way, neither Chinese characters nor Mandarin will ever become an international language. Western inventions are useful and practical, and English is among them.

    Reply
    • Tony
      Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 8:29 am

      Now what do you considered “international”? If theres more than one country who used it as an official language or writing, then it is alrdy international right?

      Btw, ppl not knowing to write. Hope you know =] literacy rate in the West is just as low in the past. Poor communication/transportation, difficulty of getting into schools all contribute to this low literacy rate. Its really a matter of indifference over anything else. And if you havent notice the same thing is happening to many countries today as well.

      Reply
  29. Captmidnight
    Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 2:30 am

    Yes I agree. The amount of study required to become literate in either simplified or traditional is immense. Chinese students are still learning how to read and write well into their university careers and still people often forget exactly how to write some characters. This is a massive waste of time and brain power. It also makes the language, which in the spoken sense is not THAT difficult, less accessible to foreigners and would increase literacy rates in the mainland within a generation. I’ve perfectly intelligent Chinese people who are illiterate simply because of their class background, busy workloads and lack of education beyond primary school. A fully alphabetized (not necessarily latinized) version of mandarin would be an extremely prudent move. Pingying and that other one that I can’t remember of are merely direct representation of sounds and don’t pass muster. However, in China old habits die hard…

    Reply
    • Captmidnight
      Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 2:37 am

      Hmmm… not “and would increase literacy rates in the mainland within a generation.”

      but “decreases the literacy rate on the mainland”

      Reply
    • whichone
      Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 12:58 pm

      fully alphabetized writing system is probably not a good idea for Chinese, due to the enormous amount of homophones.

      Reply
      • Tortue
        Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 1:02 pm

        I agree with you. However the guy from http://pinyin.info/news/ has some interesting arguments about that.

        Reply
        • whichone
          Friday, April 2, 2010 at 3:05 am

          Thanks for the link, I read this counterargument on Romanization however I did not find them convincing. His whole point was that by using diacritics and different spacing between characters one can visually distinguish polysyllabic homophones, it would still be incredibly difficult to read.

          I feel this is probably the same issue with Korean, which also have large amount of homophones, creates ambiguity in using only a phonetically based script, which is why they sometimes append Chinese characters or more syllables to simple words.

          Reply
  30. Chinese
    Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 9:52 am

    I am an old man. Denied of Chinese education when young. Five years back, I started self-teaching Hanyi and Hanzi. Simply because I have my roots in mainland China. And, it is a lovely language.

    Reply
    • john
      Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 1:38 pm

      In elementary school they taught us that characters were like ancient Egyptian pictograms — an inefficient, outdated writing system. What bullshit!

      Chinese really is a lovely language.

      Reply
  31. Real Korean
    Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 9:00 pm

    Every single one of those “koreans” women in the photos are actually Chinese women.

    No sane Korean wants to learn Chinese. There is no advantage to memorizing 2349082309529384525 characters just to be able to read.

    Its hilarious how Chinese people actually believe that Koreans cannot express all words in their language without Chinese characters. What a load of crap. As if Ching chong knows anything about the Korean language.

    Reply
    • joeching
      Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 11:53 pm

      i agree with you.

      our focus should be into getting chinese to learn korean, instead. now, once that’s done, then we can talk about koreans learning chinese, so that both side can communicate.

      the first step is for both sides to speak their own language. well, if only each could have the ability to understand the other side says, then we got communication. while at the same time, we be teaching the other side to learn the full language.

      my korean friends are working with me to make korean into a computer language that humans can use to talk to computers. this would avoid korean language’s risk of being marginalized. but our effort is really to see if korean could replace english, which is what my group is using to communicate with our automated computing environment, robacus.

      Reply
      • Master C
        Friday, April 2, 2010 at 2:50 am

        The focus cannot be ‘TO GET’ anyone to learn anything. There can be no national policy without tint of chauvinism on either side in any manner. This group, whoever they are can’t decide for everyone else.

        Whatever North East Asian race, it’s an individual’s choice. A sufficient supply of affordable government registered career translators/attaches (affordable and practical priced translators, not glorified Phd holders or so called language experts) or translation officers should however always be present, especially at airports/ports/commerce/customs related government buildings as well as for hire to private sector or personal guides or group tour guides to new arrivals from any foreign nation as well.

        Reply
        • joeching
          Saturday, April 3, 2010 at 12:38 am

          master c, i m talking about a more fundamental objective of getting people to interact not just physically, but mentally thru verbal dialog. each country should make an extra effort with its major neighbors to learn at least be able to make out what each is saying, buy just learning the 1st easy step of listening.

          this is the only effective way to shift concentration on arms race and even the global warming problem. we need enough understanding in this world among the people to combat the misunderstanding.

          anyway, my own experience of learning korean is already giving me a deep understanding and respect for my korean brothers.

          Reply
      • Zhegezhege
        Sunday, April 4, 2010 at 5:40 am

        joeching, there is no way you have friends, let alone Korean friends.

        Reply
        • joeching
          Monday, April 5, 2010 at 4:44 am

          u need to start thinking about what the western barbarians had done to us asians, then u would remember that the koreans and japanese are more than our friends, they are our brothers and cousins.

          we can hang together, or we can hung separately — like what’s happening to us, thanks to the american monkey.

          Reply
    • Johny-5
      Monday, April 5, 2010 at 7:02 am

      yea, i was thinking something similar. i guessed those people are either ethnic chinese in korea or possibly they are foreign born koreans from china (gyopo).

      Reply
  32. joeching
    Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 11:28 pm

    asia’s destiny based on our common root culture is full unification, starting with china, japan and korea. we need to go back to our traditional culture, that has given us 5000 years of the greatest civilization on earth, but was trashed by the western barbarians in recent years.

    so, korea needs to pick up the han characters, within which is the embodiment of asia’s greatest treasure.

    and china needs to revert back to the full-body writing characters, as the simplified ones symbolize the same simplification of our moral standards caused by barbarism.

    Reply
  33. kimboslice
    Friday, April 2, 2010 at 1:11 am

    Whichone makes an excellent point.

    Reply
  34. B
    Friday, April 2, 2010 at 11:27 pm

    BTW， there r too many korean here in bj, plz return to ur fuckin country, rude ppl,ugly electric bike rider,retarded.

    Reply
    • joeching
      Saturday, April 3, 2010 at 12:41 am

      i need to learn korean to become a bit more civilized, as a chinese.

      Reply
      • Master C
        Saturday, April 3, 2010 at 3:38 am

        This joeching is either being controversial or subversive . . . Chinese people are civilised even without learning Korean. And Koreans are civilised too without learning Chinese. Those who need to, will learn the lingo. The rest need not.

        Reply
        • joeching
          Saturday, April 3, 2010 at 6:39 am

          i m replying to “B”‘s bad mouthing the koreans. this is not very chinese.

          if all chinese are exposed to korean language a bit, like i m doing, they ll have more appreciation how the koreans have combined science with literature in their language.

          after a decade of looking into chinese history, i v found the chinese are much less civilized now then what we once were, especially during the song dynasty. and now, the koreans and japan retained more chinese culture. koreans from the han dynasty, when she was part of china, and japanese, the tang dynasty.

          why asian cant continue to expand and unify like during the yuan and qing dynasty. this is the mission of our culture.

          Reply
          • Master C
            Saturday, April 3, 2010 at 9:53 am

            Since you put it that way . . .

            (1) ” The chinese are much less civilized now then what we once were ‘

            That was due to the constant barbarian attacks, like the 1206 Mongol and Manchu 1644 and Cultural Revolution.

            ” the koreans and japan retained more chinese culture.”

            Have to reconstruct from the body of knowledge the Koreans and Japanese preserved yes. CCP however is still gaining it’s bearings and footing in the Pacific with Australia and America, and has not deemed it necessary to invest in this reconstruction yet. Try these groups for a start.

            http://ja-jp.facebook.com/group.php?gid=29595494968
            http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=32664919942

            ” why asian can’t continue to expand and unify like during the yuan and qing dynasty. ”

            Why Chinese rather? And no. Mongols (Yuan) and Manchu (Qing) are nomads with the military/expansionist way of thought – that is the mission of their culture. That is not the Chinese nature. Chinese are mercantilist/isolationist in nature which is good for survival in a modern or peaceful world but was bad in the barbaric past or world war conditions, though they have built up some military deterrant now although when I hear about Milimeter/Mind Weapons, ‘Spooky Physics’, or shooting needles across the Atlantic with that Hadron Collider, it bothers me that Chinese tech is still quite WW2 in nature and possibly inadequate for a WW3 if any.

            ASEAN+3 is a comfortable grouping as of now. Lets hope North and South Korea finally re-unify and stabilize the +3 portion for the benefit of unity in North East Asia.

            I guess you’re for the Korean language thing cos of your investment in the Robacus Linguistic system you’re developing, well don’t confuse the people because you want a sell a product, right? Consumerism causes the fall of all nations . . .

            Being a traditionalist, I still prefer a small army of translators in every nation at critical locations, create jobs not kill them. Translators should be paid minimum wage at most and have studies 2 or more languages from young, maybe also have transport allowances from government to be affordable.

            The mission of China is to become Human Rights Compliant and Exemplary in time. There really isn’t much else to aim for except acquisition of tech otherwise.

          • Sin
            Wednesday, April 7, 2010 at 1:53 am

            Jesus Fuck stop talking now.
            I respect your good intentions in the value of learning a bit of other languages.

            But dear god.
            as soon as you started talking about whose more civilized than who you became one dumb motherfucker.

  35. joeching
    Monday, April 5, 2010 at 5:05 am

    u v given the asian root culture much less credit than it deserves. if u study the song culture, u ll find the mongols and manchus were really attracted by it to merge with what they thought were the southern part of asia, which the historians, influenced by the westernized chinese, sun yat sen and chiang kai shek, called “china”. the asian history in the northern part is recently found to be 8000 years old. also, pls note, korea was part of the han dynasty. anyway, china’s communist leaders are trying to revise this part history that was distorted by the han-uprising of the 1911,which some called the formation of a new china. no, it was the destruction of china, which was revived in 1949 by mao.

    my technology, robacus, or robotic abacus, will be by gift to asia. it’s “open computing” environment would be based on knowledge communism. it came out of the university of california, where i taught from 1977 to 1982, to support the world’s nuclear power industry. it’s applications, however, range from analysis of a pingpong match to optimization of nuclear space reactor(a contract i did for general electric company and lockheed/martin).

    i m 66. and i retired at 41. so, i v divorced from money longer than i could remember. i just want to start something that i know i wont be able to finish before i die, so i can take the dream into my grave. th something is asia unification.

    Reply
  36. joeching
    Monday, April 5, 2010 at 5:25 am

    hi Master C, i m fascinated by the idea of reviving the qing monarch, which actually had a good relation with my ching(zheng of the 17th village) family of ningpo, when we lend the government some money for the payment of “war damage” in the opium war, and cixi later repaid us back after the 8-nation coalition ransacked all the banks in beijing, of which we are the largest.

    actually, i wrote something to address the same issue but from a history-revision objective. here it is:

    HISTORY REVISION STARTS WITH “SANBA ATROCITY”

    Asian contemporary history, thus far, is a debate on who did what to whom. But the period between 1911 and 1949, won the prize as the most disastrous, and a masterpiece of cover up. This 38 years, or in Chinese, 3 is pronounced “San”, and 8, “Ba” years, so the “SanBa Atrocity” turned China upside down and Japan and rest of Asia into a free-for-all killing field, and punctured humanity’s march toward doomsday with the dropping of two atomic bombs in Japan.

    Japan was reduced to the land of the dying. And the SanBa Atrocity sealed its fate forever for the new living to forever live in a Little America.

    China was bad enough before 1911 as the foreigners could take whatever territories they want, where, in them, the Chinese were reduced to the rank of dogs. But after 1911, things got so bad that these lands of intolerable humiliation to China all turned into “Safety Zones” free from ravaging by China’s own Christian Liberators and bandit warlords. Even the sole defending peasant force under Mao had to run for their lives in the Long March or to hide in remote caves so they would not be caught in conspiratory massacres that were quite frequent in the parts of cities that were not “Safety Zones”.

    The most conspicuously barbarous series of events have cost upwards of 30 million Chinese lives. They began at the end of the murderous Long March during the Xian’s Mutiny. Instead killing the major culprit of the entire SanBa Atrocity, Chiang Kai Shek, this Mutiny fizzled out unexplainably due to probably some Christian brotherhood bonds. But Chiang was reputed to be one who would left none of his mistreatment unrevenged, with multiple compound interests.

    What the topsiturby Xian Mutiny really did was planning the seed for a long lasting series of massacres, that only ended when Mao was able to stop it with weapons he received from the Japanese.

    Xian Mutiny superficially stopped the cleaning up part of the Long March and get Chiang to fight the Japanese instead. What a laugh it was, as Chiang was still a undischarged Japanese soldier. Chiang must had hoped that the Japanese would teach those mutineers a lesson in Shanghai. But, it turned out to be the other way around — the lesson was taught to the Japanese.

    That just could not be so for Chiang — the humiliation to his beloved Japanese partner in opium traffics. So, he had to scheme up something that must be so brutal that the victims would be so shocked and awed that they and the whole world would not even imagined that a Chinese could really do such a thing to his own people. Well, he did visibly showed how pleased he was, as described by his Australian advisor and publicized by author J. Fernby, when he was leaving Nanking with his wife destined for Chungking — with all his conspiracy thoroughly planned out.

    He managed to got 300,000 Chinese killed in Nanking in the Winter of 1937 and 250,000 converted to Christianity overnight by the Nanking Safety Zone, borrowing the bloody hands of the Japanese. As describe in Iris Chang’s book, the Rape of Nanking, Chiang simply, by way of 3 utmost urgent phone/telegram calls, forcefully pulled out the Commanding General Tang, unannouced to the defending troops, just before the fighting started. Then in the following Spring, he caused 30 million Chinese to be drowned or starved by breaking the dykes of Yellow River where the relatives of General Tang’s troop came from, again, without any warning to the local residents. This flooded the farm lands in Henen, Anwhey and Jiansu, which stayed barren from 1938 to 1942. It just got to be the greatest holocaust in human history based on in situ reporting by a Mr. White of Time Magazine and documented by J.Fernby in his book, “Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek, How He Lost China”. Things got so bad that “Mothers were said to exchange babies, saying, ‘You eat mine; I’ll eat yours.’ ”

    After that, Chiang continued his extermination of Chinese defenders, using the American weapons to do the bidding for America, with the aim of making China one day as the Big America. The tide, however, turned only after Mao got the weapons from the surrendering Japanese, who actually had earlier rejected Chiang’s order to kill some more Chinese in northern China.

    Chiang’s troop, instead of fully concentrating in fight Mao’s force, put greater effort in looting China of her most gold and national antiques and later brought them to Taiwan. He even requested the Soviet Union to help stick around to keep Mao from seeking sanctuary and resulted in the Russians’ robbing 2 billion dollars worth of heavy equipments from China.

    But the worse of all was Chiang’s propaganda campaign to distort what really happened in China. He self-claim to be the legitimate successor to the American puppet non-government of the Americanized Christian non-President Sun Yat Sen and smeared the sole defender of China, the peasant communist army, as “Commie Bandit”. It was the greatest and most successful history twisting campaign of all time.

    To show how preposterously this period could have been overlooked today, just imagine the major instigator, the bald Chiang, once had all Chinese school kids shave their heads to look like him. Well, that’s when you were well behaved. If you were not, he would cut the hair a foot below it’s root.

    The ensuing suffering after the SanBa astrocity was also of unbearable proportion due to the total depletion of assets in China by Chiang and the continued harrassment by America on China’s border, in Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam respectively. Up until now, many permanent deep scars were left in the minds of the Chinese and shameful carryons in Chiang’s Americanized Taiwan, all because they still do not know what really hit them.

    It was the SanPa Atrocity!

    Reply
    • Master C
      Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 10:33 pm

      Glad to see you have retired early and are able to pursue your interests. Do pardon the directness of this suggestion, but how about throwing the apparently considerable influence you appear to have, into something abit more meaningful and interesting than linguistics?

      As in the premise given in the group I mentioned, I would support a Manchu Monarch but only in the form of vassal under an ethnic Han Monarch.

      Regardless of your family’s history of relations with the Qing Dynasty, would you rather not support a Han Monarch instead? Also are you familiar with the current situation with the splittists in Manchuria? Are you aware of the nepotistic trends going unchallenged in Chinese government today?

      Please join the group earlier posted if you feel you could contribute in some way, though the group itself is geared towards the revival of the Imperial Chinese Court and not a Manchurian Court (of relevance to the State of Manchuria only) as you mentioned or even appear to prefer, your opinions/experience should enable some helpful and alternative insights into the intended inclusive proposal that would see all Dynasties represented.

      Thoughts?

      Reply
      • joeching
        Thursday, April 29, 2010 at 10:27 am

        ur idea of a monarchy strikes home the asian ideal of a hierarchical society. this is where our meritocracy would bring order into the current de-mob-crazy system.

        but u han-separatist notion, inherited from sun yat sen’s han uprising he and chiang kai-shek distorted as a revolution to create a new china is total a negative impact of the western barbarism. in asia, our notion of nations is subordinated to the fundamental asian cultural nation of one family under the heaven(tien shia). our culture is guiding our civilization to expand and unify among all people with the same root culture, which loosely consists of confucianism, buddhism and taoism.

        actually, in modern terms, who are exactly the hans. the recent research in harvard univ. revealed that the japanese are genetically han race. and china’s own archeological finds have shown that even south the southern “hans” claim that we have 5000 years of history, the northern hans actually have 8000 years of history. it’s just the the sun/chiang gangs have so distorted history, on behalf of their western barbarian masters’ scheme of divide and conquer, that we r all now brainwashed to think the south is more chinese than the north, and being patriotic to china means hating the japanese and excluding the koreans.

        but koreans were already china during the han dynasty.

        and japanese have been struggled and starved on a barren volcanic island for so long that for most part of their history, they and other asians actually thought they were midgets. it’s our fault for not helping our asian cousins, the japanese.

        finally, if we reevaluate contemporary asia history, we’ll find that the japanese made the greatest contribution in kicking out the western barbarian colonists from asia. and the chinese puppet government of chiang (now the taiwanese) did the most sabotage to asians’ indigineous struggle against the western barbarians, led by the xtians.

        Reply
    • Johny-5
      Sunday, May 9, 2010 at 10:05 am

      why do we let people like you into our country? i have to report your id to immigration. maybe they can have u banned from the country.

      Reply
  37. Johny-5
    Monday, April 5, 2010 at 6:51 am

    having lived in korea for many years, i’d say that they are wearing masks cause they don’t want to be identified. there must be more to this story than meets the eye cause koreans are VERY proud of their own system of characters (hangeul) which is quite efficient, and it seems unlikely that they’d make any significant steps backwards to using a less efficient form of writing.

    Reply
    • joeching
      Monday, April 5, 2010 at 7:57 am

      the chinese pictorial characters after couple thousands years of use have become symbols, or icons if u like, of the asian culture, especially the ones that represent morality. the koreans actually know all of the most important ones already, and are practicing them in their lives more than any other country. why not also “write” what the do?

      my experience with many my students at uc,berkeley and even my own recent adventure of learning korean is that multi-lingual people have stronger brain muscles.

      Reply
      • whichone
        Monday, April 5, 2010 at 12:48 pm

        I have a hard time believing you are a professor at Cal…

        Reply
        • joeching
          Tuesday, April 6, 2010 at 2:22 am

          actual i almost forgot about that, until someone treat it as a big deal. yes, in 1977, cal had a hiring freeze for 25 years, and most minority prof. had to be nobel laureates or just about. i was only the best software automation guy around, but looked like an undergrad and chinese cooliesh. anyway, to cut the chase, it’s the low point of my career. i had to do it to repay the full tuition and living expense during my undergrad.

          but i did produce hireable students out of the nuclear engineering deptment.

          Reply
    • Ken#2
      Tuesday, April 6, 2010 at 2:19 am

      damn J-5 , after posting my comment and now reading yours – we are on the same frickn page. at least i know some1 hear knows whats up. take care
      또봐

      Reply
    • joeching
      Thursday, April 29, 2010 at 10:07 am

      i am digesting the HANDBOOD OF KOREAN VOCABULARY right now.

      it consists of 292 pages of scripts with roots of chinese origin and 86 pages of native korean origin.

      korean is basically a dialect of chinese. but its script, like the japanese ones, are definite contribution in term of potential contribution to producing a language that we asians can use to communicate with the computer.

      Reply
      • baishr
        Friday, April 30, 2010 at 2:17 pm

        i’m sorry but i was going to stay out of this but your comment is just ignorant. korean is a chinese dialect? are you serious? korea’s grammar ain’t anything like chinese grammar and the core of the korean language is korean. listn to any korean pop song and you hear almost exclusively korean words. that shouldn’t be hard to do since you chinese people seem to be in love with korean entertainment. that, btw, is why you hate us.

        man, the chinese people sure got a big chip on their scrawny shoulders!

        Reply
  38. gobblegog
    Monday, April 5, 2010 at 12:02 pm

    You can’t actually write a full sentence in Korean by using Hanja – topic particles, “and”, shit like that – have to be written in Hangeul. So to switch Korean over to Chinese characters would be a massive undertaking. Also, as Johnny-5 mentions, Koreans are extremely proud of Hangeul and they would never get rid of it. I like it – it’s very easy to learn – but I don’t think it’s particularly beautiful.

    Reply
    • joeching
      Tuesday, April 6, 2010 at 2:31 am

      my points are:

      1.languages must be used to link people, especially among neighboring countries, and even more so if they have the common root culture, which was designed to unify them in the first place. confucius demonstrated that by plant the seeds of unification amount the many warring nations.

      2.china needs a digital, or alphabetical, language for computing and science. ultimately we should use korean and japanese, with english being the intermediate.

      3.korean and japanese prides would fade away with their coming marginalization. but even today, what’s in a pride when the countries are still under occupation by their deadiest enemy, the americans.

      finally, my major thrust is to promote chinese’s learning of korean. and the 1st test of interaction is for both side to speak their own language, but try to understand what the other side’s saying. if this is all possible, it’s a start for the whole world to communicate, thru listening.

      Reply
  39. Ken#2
    Tuesday, April 6, 2010 at 2:15 am

    if its not phonetic, then fck it!!
    look at how many years chinese kids waste learning to read and write. The K’s and J’s are an intelligent bunch but i dont know wtf they were thinking when they decided to borrow & use CHN characters. And the original poster waay above who said without chinese you cant fully express yourself, obviously never studied latin, french or english!! Im native ENG but from what I hear French trumps english when it comes to clarity and being able to express more in one sentence.
    I stopped studying chinese (not to say i wont start again one day) for the sole reason that I keep forgetting how to read and write – one of the basic fundamental abilities for westerns to increase their vocabulary (casual reading). If you ask me, Chinese characters are fairly useless and make up an ineffecient language system.
    For christ sakes, at least put a space between words. WTF!

    Reply
    • joeching
      Tuesday, April 6, 2010 at 2:32 am

      we asians expect most westerners cant learn any asian language.

      Reply
      • gobblegog
        Tuesday, April 6, 2010 at 10:55 am

        내, 맞아 – ain’t this the truth. It literally blows people’s minds when I bust out the 한국어.

        Reply
        • joeching
          Tuesday, April 6, 2010 at 11:19 am

          i m only starting to learn korean. but already i realize the language is trying to be very rational. the only problem is much of the rationality is based on a knowledge of learning the chinese root characters(as well as 40% of native korean characters).

          now, about learning chinese… well, u get what i mean.

          Reply
        • Ken#2
          Tuesday, April 6, 2010 at 1:46 pm

          same here with the japanese, korean, cantonese and mandarin that i bust out when the occassion warrants —

          What did joeching say above?? i thought so!!
          but i do agree with him hehe

          Reply
          • joeching
            Wednesday, April 7, 2010 at 6:39 am

            for now, asians are in conflict resulted from western barbarians’ technique of divide and conquer. look how the monkey love to divide our countries into halves. so, our goal must be to unify thru culture and learning each others’ languages.

    • joeching
      Tuesday, April 6, 2010 at 2:34 am

      chinese especially is very deep. so, even if westerners learned it, they cant appreciate it.

      Reply
      • Johny-5
        Sunday, May 9, 2010 at 10:13 am

        joe ur just a racist with a bias for anything chinese. maybe u didn’t get what u felt u deserved while in america and now u are jaded and bitter.

        Reply
    • AusChin
      Wednesday, April 7, 2010 at 6:29 pm

      //look at how many years chinese kids waste learning to read and write. The K’s and J’s are an intelligent bunch but i dont know wtf they were thinking when they decided to borrow & use CHN characters.//

      Well, basically the Koreans and Japanese had no other culture to look up to. Basically before the scientific revolution, China was a world power, with the highest advance in engineering and technology. In fact, before Xu Fu arrived in Japan during the Qin dynasty 210 BC, they were a tribal stone age society, no better than the Filipinos or Indonesian tribes.

      //And the original poster waay above who said without chinese you cant fully express yourself//

      You can fully express yourself in English with the Latin Alphabet, but not Chinese. Chinese is so interwoven with the characters that to separate them is to end the language.

      //If you ask me, Chinese characters are fairly useless and make up an ineffecient language system.//

      All information can be expressed in 1′s and 0′s. Lets talk like this: 101010010101010…..

      //For christ sakes, at least put a space between words. WTF!//

      Now you are just showing your extreme ignorance. The Thai language does not put space between words. The abugida (alphasyllabary) has certain characteristic that makes it easy to identify syllables. Infact they only use space to indicate start of new sentences. Likewise, due to characteristic of the Chinese characters, no space is necessary.

      Reply
      • joeching
        Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 6:41 am

        “Well, basically the Koreans and Japanese had no other culture to look up to. … In fact, before Xu Fu arrived in Japan during the Qin dynasty 210 BC, they were a tribal stone age society, no better than the Filipinos or Indonesian tribes.”

        this view had the stench of the separatism of western barbarism. we chinese inherited this mostly from the barbarian wannabe, chiang kai-shek and sun yat sen gang, who overthrown china with a han-uprising.

        japan is tang dyansty, korea is han dynasty, while china is hard holding on to her song dynasty’s culture. my personal in situ observations say that we need our korean brothers and japanese cousins to lead us back to the asian root culture of confucius, taoism and buddhism.

        anyway, our culture DEMANDS that all its believers unify as one family.

        Reply
        • AusChin
          Friday, April 9, 2010 at 3:43 pm

          //we chinese inherited this mostly from the barbarian wannabe, chiang kai-shek and sun yat sen gang, who overthrown china with a han-uprising.

          japan is tang dyansty, korea is han dynasty, while china is hard holding on to her song dynasty’s culture. my personal in situ observations say that we need our korean brothers and japanese cousins to lead us back to the asian root culture of confucius, taoism and buddhism.

          anyway, our culture DEMANDS that all its believers unify as one family.//

          I thought Sun Yat-sen was a good man. He failed to achieve many things, but I think his ideals are worth looking up to. His revolution was important. The Manchus had to go.

          //anyway, our culture DEMANDS that all its believers unify as one family.//

          Don’t be ridiculous, I personally don’t think Japan can be unified with China. They are just too weird. Look you have to accept that it has never happened. What is there to ‘unify’. Not to mention some of them are sick bastards who would try to invade China again if given the chance. Korea is a far more reasonable candidate. Although its pretty clear they are pretty nationalistic now. That said, learn from them, S. Korea is impressive.

          Enough with ideologies please.

          Reply
  40. Rabbitsmoon
    Tuesday, April 6, 2010 at 4:08 pm

    I gotta say, this board really makes me want to weep. I bet the main reason all of you feel the need to argue this bigoted trash on the internet is because you’ve really never had the chance to in a classroom. I can excuse and even appreciate talk like this in the back of some dingy bar, really late at night, but you guys don’t even have the excuse of being drunk. I really hope this is all some joke that I’m just on the outside of, if not, I dread the future.

    Reply
    • joeching
      Wednesday, April 7, 2010 at 6:25 am

      LANGUAGE, LANGUAGE, LANGUAGE?

      Chinese gives you the depth. Korean shows you the logic. English help you to lie.

      Chinese is so mystifying to learn because it’s a picture of humanity.

      Korean is impossible to track down because everything has roots in the eternal past.

      English is the most profitable to scoop up because it allows you to covered any truth with lies.

      So, now, Chinese has been trashed for a century, but still standing.

      Koreans are more protective of their language than their lives, even though they are covered by a nuclear umbrella.

      And English has convinced the world that the killing machines are for peace and wars are glorious means to attain peace. It’s most popular book, the Christian Bible, even made the most sexually perverted and savagely violent family out to be the role model for us all.

      Reply
  41. Rabbitsmoon
    Tuesday, April 6, 2010 at 4:16 pm

    I have a(some) question(s) for you guys:

    Do you think it’s necessary to strip down old history to prepare for a better future? How much of a burden is the culture of the past? Do we need to destroy, or modify, in order to rebuild?

    Reply
    • joeching
      Wednesday, April 7, 2010 at 6:36 am

      we asians are timeless and spaceless, thru generation lineage and marriage, respectively. the past IS the future and all under the sky is one family, with the same root asian culture.

      u have to get rid of the armaggeddon mentality before understand what asia is about.

      Reply
    • AusChin
      Wednesday, April 7, 2010 at 2:08 pm

      Yes, why don’t we have another Cultural Revolution? Lets destroy all Chinese Culture, its holding the country back!

      Better yet, why don’t the whole of China learn English?

      /Sarcasm

      Reply
      • joeching
        Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 5:44 am

        the cult rev saved china by scaring the american monkey to get off china’s back. look at iraq and afghan. their problem is they r having cultural revolution AFTER the monkeys already landed. so let’s give thanks to mao, lin biao and my friend tzung tse tong of the pingpong diplomacy fame.

        yes, cult rev destroyed some chinese culture. but the all out destructive campaign was aimed at thoroughly cleaning out the western barbarism and purging all the chinese barbarian wannabes. as the chinese traitors, like chiang kai shek and sun yat sen, did hypocritically borrowed some chinese culture to smear the communists in the “new life movement”, i dont blame the red guards at mao’s instruction take revenge on all suspicious fake chinese cultures of the barbarian wannabes, which u ll find a lot in taiwan, hongkong and among the oversea chinese, especially the lost soul christian converts.

        we need to go back to our culture. one thing we must do is go back to the full body writing characters(even though i probably would not get to it before i die). but i could replace all english, for computing and scientific use, by some korean and japanese characters.

        Reply
        • AusChin
          Friday, April 9, 2010 at 3:27 pm

          Now you are just talking crazy. Seriously, China was fucked up. With the barbarians or without. Not all the things that happened as a result of the communist revolution was a good thing. My own grandmother suffered a lot under the hands of communists. And she wasn’t even a “capitalist”. Just someone who got on the wrong side of the ideology, in a time where injustices and lawlessness were rampant. I am not a Christian and don’t care too much for western culture. Although as a Software Engineer I agree that some very great and smart western people who have changed this world. I can appreciate that at least.

          Its fine to detest western snobbery & ignorance. But don’t glorify the communist revolution, a lot of screwed up things happened back then.

          Reply
  42. Vastard (aka Real Korean)
    Tuesday, April 6, 2010 at 10:38 pm

    Koreans going back to Chinese characters is like humans devolving into monkeys.

    Reply
    • joeching
      Wednesday, April 7, 2010 at 6:32 am

      monkeys are the americans with weapons who r occupying korea. humans should be people learn each others languages and communicate — hearts to hearts.

      koreans are using han chinese characters. it’s from the time korea was part of the han dynasty.

      koreans need to learn the sino-koreans’ root characters, and chinese need to learn both sino- and native-koreans. this is because both koreans and chinese have the ability to do so, but not the monkeys and westerners.

      Reply
  43. AusChin
    Wednesday, April 7, 2010 at 3:41 pm

    I actually think having the Chinese character is what gave the Han Chinese people a unifying cultural identity for so long. You have to remember that Cantonese, Minnan (Hokkien/Taiwanese) and Mandarin are languages that have more difference between Italian & Spanish, and Thai to Laotian. Yet the script enable my Teochew grandmother who doesn’t speak a word of Mandarin, to read the newspaper. Awesome in its own way.

    If Chinese has adopted/invented its own alphabet from the outset, the languages would have evolved in very different directions. (Much less homophones for one thing). And they have had many opportunities to do this, remember that they translated Buddhist canons from the original Pali into Han characters as far back as the Han dynasty. China could have been as fractured as Europe. Not saying better or worse. But there would be a lot more ‘Us versus Them’ mentality. Hell its already happening with the Taiwanese. Perhaps the Han characters is part of the reason why the Han Chinese are the world largest tribe. Unmatched. (India does not compare, its a federation of thousands of nations). That or maybe we are just awesome ;)

    Also, note that the Indians who use a plethora of alphabets/semi-syllabary systems still have a much lower level of literacy as a nation. But maybe thats just India. Note that if they attempt to resolve that by standardizing Hindi, that will also the whole accusation of ‘cultural genocide’ against thousand of other cultures. Every small cultures suffer this consequence I suppose.

    Also, the consequence of adopting an alphabetic language is that your language become impure and change very quickly, look at Shakespearean English. Thats just a little over 500 years ago, and its “Early Modern English”, not all that ancient, but is already difficult to decipher to the modern man. If you go as far back as Middle English (12th-14th century), it became incomprehensible. No need to go further to Early English to know that your language is unrecognizable. I lived in Thailand, and I noticed that even the politicians are now peppering their speeches with English words. They are ‘losing’ their culture.

    On the other hand, Chinese characters lasted for thousand of years. The phonology changes, the meaning remains.

    I say, use the right tool for the the right job. Chinese characters are for the Chinese language (and perhaps to supplement others linguistically in the sinosphere). Nothing else.

    Reply
    • joeching
      Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 6:00 am

      “alphabet from the outset, the languages would have evolved in very different directions. ”

      yeah, like the north and south koreans. excellent point!

      “I say, use the right tool for the the right job. Chinese characters are for the Chinese language (and perhaps to supplement others linguistically in the sinosphere). Nothing else.”

      my software automation computing environment, robacus,or robotic abacus(i want it be more chinese) would refute ur idea. chinese is just not flexible enough. in software automation, every key or button u push, thousands of words could be created, based on a dozen simple rules.

      in my own learning of korean, i found the 60% of korean is formed from chinese root characters(also the rest, from native korean roots). and the way they did it is conceptually identical to what robacus been doing for the last 30 years.

      so, asia needs a unified language consisting of the culture language of chinese and computing language of korean/japanese characters. the chinese language should be considered an art, so not everyone needs to learn to write it, but when they do get to that stage, we want see the most splendid art capable of human beings.

      most asians should just get by with pinyin or korean/japanese characters. so, will the computer. this will make it possible for us asians to finally make the game of technology rivalry childplay.

      Reply
      • AusChin
        Friday, April 9, 2010 at 3:19 pm

        //my software automation computing environment, robacus,or robotic abacus(i want it be more chinese) would refute ur idea. chinese is just not flexible enough. //

        I already said that Chinese characters are for Chinese language only, nothing else. There’s no refutation of ideas here. Don’t know much about your software systems though. Clearly if you program or write mathematical equations, you don’t use English, that is also insufficiently clear and not appropriate for the job.

        Reply
  44. Tchinry
    Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 4:20 am

    Great!! Just English & Chinese in the world.

    Reply
    • joeching
      Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 12:43 pm

      no, the computing language has 2 potential candidate:

      1. trashed(just like simplified chinese, but amputated much more dramatically but systematically) english, which is already being used in my software automation computing environment. about 3000 words only is necessary to do any kind of computing, all in english.

      2. a unified sino-korean-japanese alphabetical language.

      basically, it’s a race to see which language can first become popular on the software automation computing environment

      Reply
  45. joeching
    Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 6:01 am

    LEARNING CHINESE AND KOREAN

    Do what the kids do — hear, listen, speak and write, in this order. Spend an hour a day for one year each, on hear, listen and speak. And the rest of your life to write.

    To hear, go buy the Pimsleur’s CD’s. For me, it’s my key to open the Korean language’s door. I presume it would be the same for Chinese learning. But don’t believe the marketing pitch that you can master it in one hearing session. It would take 5 to 10 times, if not more.

    To listen, find some Korean person who wants to learn English. So, you each speak your own language, Korean and English respectively, and try to jot down words as homework for next encounter. An alternative or preliminary preparation is to watch a lot of movies and TV series, hopefully with subtitles.

    In memorizing Chinese characters, besides the pinyin for pronounciation, it might be help to get some pictorial instructional books, unless you have extraordinary imagination on you own. For Chinese to learn Korea, it’s a must to get some vocabulary dictionary for Sino-Korean root characters. And for everyone learning Korea, the Korean characters must be thoroughly mastered before memorization begin.

    To speak, just switch to each’s using the other’s language. But the best is to stay couple months in the country when your listening ability is adequate for survival.

    To write, in both learning Chinese and Korea, one is really aiming at writing the Chinese characters. It should be considered a great privilege. So, do it when and only when you feel like it.

    Reply
  46. henrytan
    Tuesday, June 29, 2010 at 8:13 pm

    there’s nothing to debate here, because the one who invented language system is chuck norris

    Reply
  47. bronwyn (aka johann)
    Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 11:53 am

    “just saying” is not an acceptable substitute for “i’m being a dickhead”

    [Note from Fauna: Please do not use multiple names.]

    Reply
  48. Park,kyungBeom
    Sunday, November 20, 2011 at 11:29 pm

    向白宫送的書信
    Dear Mr. President Obama

    I am a plain writer in South Korea. I heard from newspaper that You President praised on Korea’s education system several times.
    Today I heard again that you emphasized American education should follow Korean eduction. Although as a Korean people You Great President praise about Korea felt not so bad, now I become inevitable to say about Korean education.
    You should have heard about so-called Chinese character. Today most of world people would consider this as really China’s own character, in Japan also pretty used.
    But in fact at Korea until 1910 this character used more than at Japan. All of the Korea’s historical record and intellectual culture are by this character accumulated.
    However today’s Korean education not teach this character at public education. Eventually most Korean people don’t know the true meanings of intellectual words of their language, even educated superficially high.
    Hence many Korean high class parents – including high government officers that made this education policy – make their children to learn ‘Chinese character’, so that their children have no difficulty in high level study and have global mind between Japan and China.
    Nevertheless so many students in plain family become lack in intelligence as people of civilized society. And they grow up to an ‘inevitable patriot’ who cannot find general opportunities in Japan or China. They become people for national leader easy to deal with.
    As people cannot read intellectual words, only frivolous writer can be popular. So writers became very destitute.
    If America really need to follow Korean eduction system, that is not difficult.
    Let African-American children and American-Indian children not learn English because English is the language of those who persecuted our ancestors, and try to overcome the traces of invasion by using pure our own tribe’s language. As this education scheme adopted in public school, white children in poor family also will be included.
    In education, competition is a requisite. But study what is more important that study competitively. America’s friend nation should be a nation in which real freedom and equality of opportunities are guaranteed. Please consider Korea’s situation and help to become not a little bit shameful to be America’s friendly nation.
    Your friend coutry’s people Park, Kyung Beom/ 朴京範 / 박경범

    向白宫送的书信2010年09月30日 星期四 下午 07:15
    尊敬的奥巴马总统先生
    我在韩国是一个普通的作家。 我从报章上听说你多次赞扬韩国的教育系统。
    今天，我又听到你，强调美国教育应遵循韩国教育的方式。 虽然作为一个韩国人，你大总统对韩国的称赞觉得不那麼糟糕，但现在我必须谈谈韩国教育。
    你应该听说过所谓的汉字。 今天，世界上大多数人真的会认为这是中国自己的文字，且在日本亦很广泛使用。
    但事实上，1910年之前，在韩国使用此文字超过日本。所有的韩国的历史记录和知识都是通过此文字积累。
    但是，今天的韩国，在公众教育中，不教此文字。 最终，大多数韩国人，不知道他们的语言词汇的真正含义，即使在表面上拥有高学历。
    因此，许多韩国高阶层的父母——包括制定此教育政策的政府高级官员，让他们的孩子去学习汉字，以让他们的孩子有在高等教育上没有困难，并对日本和中国，拥有全局上的认识。
    不过，在更多普通家庭中的学生，缺乏作为文明社会的人所需的知识。 他们成长为一个“不可避免的爱国者”，因为不能找到在日本或中国的平等机会。他们成为国家领导人容易处理的民众。
    随著人们无法读取知识语言，只有轻浮的作家可以成为流行。 所以，作家变得非常贫困。
    如果美国真的需要按照韩国教育系统，这并不困难。
    让非裔美国人儿童和美国印第安人儿童不学英语，因为英语是迫害我们祖先的人所用的语言，并设法克服入侵的痕迹，用纯我们自己的部落语言。由於这项教育计划在公立学校中通过，在贫穷家庭中的白人儿童亦将被包括在内。
    在教育方面，竞争是必要的。但是，学习什么比竞争地学习更重要。美国朋友的国家，应是，让真正自由和平等的机会得到保障的国家。 请考虑韩国的情况，并帮助其，对於美国这个友好国家，变得少一些不可耻。
    你友好国家的人 朴京范

    (我写的是英文的。汉文的是个网友翻译写的。)

    Reply
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