A master's pet-peeves

[IcemanSK]

I saw this & wanted to share with you all.

Taekwondon’ts By Master Wang
Masters Whang, as told to Bora Chang

10 - Improperly Washed Doboks:
There’s nothing worse than huffing and puffing in class near someone who smells like a damp, old sneaker. Since every class should make you sweat with exertion, you should wash your dobok after every class, or rotate through a clean one every time you work out. Respect your uniform, and those around you.

9 - The “Running Bow” In and Out of Workout Areas: (Closely related to this is “From the Neck-down Bow.”)
Bowing properly is an acknowledgment of respect for Taekwondo, as well as to the instructors and fellow students. A proper bow is performed from the waist up, not from the neck, and it is unrushed. Besides, what’s the hurry? The mat’s not going anywhere, ten push-ups if you’re late is the worst that can happen, and if you’re in that much of a rush you’re probably late and doing pushups anyways!

8 – “Kiyaps” Spoken As Such:
Imagine if every time you punched or kicked, you screamed, “Yell!” During drills, you would proceed up and down the mat, screaming, “Yell! Yell! Yell!” This is what we hear when you literally say, “Kiyap,” which, in Korean, means “Yell.” We suggest you actually yell, rather than say “Yell!”

7 - “Taekwondo” Pronounced “Tie Kwan Doe”:
You might as well call it “Twye Condo” if you’re going to butcher it like that. That’s what my sons Derek and Dylan call it when they’re trying to be funny. “Tae” is pronounced as in “Ted”. “Kwon” is pronounced as it is written. “Do” is pronounced with a short “o” sound. If you still don’t understand, please ask us. (Related note: See Taekwondon’t #5.)

6 - Improper Punching:
Making you do knuckle push-ups isn’t solely to inflict torture (well, it’s the main reason, but not the only one); it’s so that you learn how to punch correctly. Avoid at all costs punching with bent wrists, or punching with the last two knuckles. This is dangerous to your wrists, as you can sprain or even break a wrist when punching a hard target. Always punch with a straight wrist, with the index and middle finger knuckles reaching their target first.

5 - The Number Six, Mispronounced: Six, in Korean, is “Yeosut.”
When pronounced “Yasut,” it just grates on our ears. It might sound cute coming out of a 5 year-old – the first time - but it gets old quickly. Please ask us if you’re having trouble pronouncing it.

4 - We Are Not Masters Yang, As We Were Once Called:
It is common courtesy to know the names of your instructors! If you’re confused because we happen to look alike, please ask who is who, and we’ll give you some clues to help you tell us apart!

3 - The Joonbi That Takes Forever and a Day:
The ready stance starts with your fists directly under the chin, then ends in front of your belt in one swift motion in a quick one-two count. There is no such thing as a “3-point joonbi”, the one that makes you look like you’re pumping your bicycle pump.

2 - Yawning in Class: Especially in our classes.
This is a sign that you’re not exerting yourself enough, or that you’re bored. If the latter, we can solve this by many, many more push-ups!

1 - Calling Taekwondo ‘Karate” and a Dojang a “Dojo”:
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, many Taekwondo practitioners (even Korean masters) referred to their martial art as “Korean Karate.” That’s because there wasn’t enough awareness of Taekwondo per se, so in order to simplify it for non-Koreans, people referred to the one martial art everyone knew. Today, Taekwondo is the world’s most widely practiced martial art, and although we have utmost respect for Karate and other types of martial arts, no self-respecting Taekwondo practitioner, and especially those of Korean descent, should refer to it as “Karate”, or as their training hall as a “dojo”. That would lead to a LOT of pushups – more pushups than you could ever count in Korean OR English!

 

[FieldDiscipline]

Very good. Might have to make a note of those.

 

[MBuzzy]

This is GREAT! There should be a copy of this in every Dojang!

 

[IcemanSK]

I'm especially guilty of #7.

 

[FieldDiscipline]

I'm especially guilty of #7.

Number 5 I'm afraid I dont know why either as my instructor definately gets it right.

 

[terryl965]

Number 1 is what kills me, I hate it when people say Karate od Dojo those are Japanese words not Korean.

 

[FearlessFreep]

6 - Improper Punching

This is easily fixed by actually punching.

If you're punching the air, you are not learning to punch. Punching in forms is not training you to punch correctly. Break out the hand mitts or the heavy bags and get punching for power against resistance. The more you punch something for real, the better your form will be when 'punching' for motion

 

[StuartA]

I enjoyed the list.. but also enjoy playing devils advocate, so I will say this... not everyone is Korean and thus not everyone speaks with a korean accent. Terminology given by an organisation and written in English is their phonetic translation of the way it sounds.. therefore, people will say it as they read it until they learn differently!

If Gen Choi or anyone else expects someone to read the word "Tae" and prounce it "Ted".. they should have written it as such perhaps! Funnily enough it also says "kwon" is pronunced "kwon" where-as I have heard many korean pronounce it as "Gwon".. same with "Kup" & "Gup"!!

Personally, I find it worse when people write it wrong and write "Ti" or even "Tea" lol!

:whip:

Stuart

 

[MBuzzy]

I enjoyed the list.. but also enjoy playing devils advocate, so I will say this... not everyone is Korean and thus not everyone speaks with a korean accent. Terminology given by an organisation and written in English is their phonetic translation of the way it sounds.. therefore, people will say it as they read it until they learn differently!

If Gen Choi or anyone else expects someone to read the word "Tae" and prounce it "Ted".. they should have written it as such perhaps! Funnily enough it also says "kwon" is pronunced "kwon" where-as I have heard many korean pronounce it as "Gwon".. same with "Kup" & "Gup"!!

Personally, I find it worse when people write it wrong and write "Ti" or even "Tea" lol!

:whip:

Stuart

The Korean pronunciation thing is one of MY big pet peeves.....so I agree with the Master's list. That is true that most people do their best to make a phoenetic translation, but many don't try - even after they are told. How many TKD practitioners pronounce it wrong, even after they know?

Also, maybe I'm misunderstanding the comment, but when TKD is written in Hangul, it is right. If you can read Hangul, it is easy to pronounce....but when subjected to the McCune Reischauer romanization system, the first character translates to "ae." It is just up to Americans to know what they sounds like.

As for Kwon/Kwan and Kup/Gup....most of that is simply the sounds that exist in the Korean language. There is one letter for k/g, it is not two separate letters, so it sounds very slightly different depending where it appears in the character. The words Kwon and Kwan are actually spelled differently (one meaning school, one meaning strike). In both of these cases, it simply comes down to the very subtle differences between certain Korean letters and sounds. In many cases, english speakers simply can't perceive the difference.

 

[K31]

I've got two issues with this list. Firstt, if the student is doing something wrong, you expect him to ask you what is the right way to do it? If you have already corrected them okay, otherwise, that is just backwards. Second, I've had instructors use the words, kata, gi and dojo. Two of the upper belt helpers didn't even know the uniforms name was dobak.

 

[StuartA]

but many don't try - even after they are told. How many TKD practitioners pronounce it wrong, even after they know?

Oh.. this I agree with wholeheartidly.. unless it means we have to fake an accent to get it to sound right! Its always made me laugh watchig westerners trying to fake Korean or Japanese accents to sound more martial!

Also, maybe I'm misunderstanding the comment, but when TKD is written in Hangul, it is right.

You are.. most (even the orgs) go off the english translations.. in the ITF case, that by General Choi.. who spells it "Tae" not "Ted" and thus it is pronounced that way!

If you can read Hangul, it is easy to pronounce....

And 99.9% of students cant!

but when subjected to the McCune Reischauer romanization system, the first character translates to "ae." It is just up to Americans to know what they sounds like.

Sorry, lost me a little here.. are you saying it should sound "Ae Kwon Do"!! Also, whats the Americans got to do with it.. the Hangul to English translation is univerally written that way (as in Tae)!!

As for Kwon/Kwan and Kup/Gup....most of that is simply the sounds that exist in the Korean language. There is one letter for k/g, it is not two separate letters, so it sounds very slightly different depending where it appears in the character.

As I said above, most would not know this, nor should they be expected to unless informed by a Korean speaker. Therefore, to berate someone for something they cannot possibly of known is wrong! (Point noted again) about if they have already been corrected)

Stuart

 

[exile]

My understanding is that Korean has two classes of distinctive stop consonants: very lightly aspirated voiceless stops and heavily aspirated ones. The lightly aspirated ones, even though they're voiceless, sound voiced to English-hearing ears, because aspiration is a major clue to voicelessness in Engish when the sound is in initial position in a syllable. If you say 'pill' and suppress the aspiration, someone listening to you will hear 'Bill', even though there's no vocal cord vibration. When I first was learning French, I thought the word père 'father' was pronounced the same as English bear. So the kup/gup, kwon/gwon confusion probably represent our own language-specific phonetic processing strategies: voiclessness in stops is so closely tied to aspiration in English that without that strong aspiration, we hear voiceless but only lightly aspirated stops (at the beginning of syllables, anyway) as voiced... or something very close to it.

 

[Tito]

I don't think #2 should be punishable in a dojang; I remember reading an extensive study on yawning, with no evidence that it is caused by tiredness, boredness, or even low oxygen levels. (things that most people relate to yawns). I found the article on digg, it was pretty interesting.

 

[YoungMan]

Anyone who uses Japanese terminology in a Tae Kwon Do class (kata, gi, dojo etc.) should have to do 20 pushups per offense.

Also, people who execute Charyet stance with their fists tucked into their hips should do pushups as well. Charyey is done with the arms straight and the hands balled into fists.

I agree-there is NO reason or excuse for calling Tae Kwon Do "Karate" or "Korean Karate". Tae Kwon Do is not and never has been Karate.

 

[exile]

Anyone who uses Japanese terminology in a Tae Kwon Do class (kata, gi, dojo etc.) should have to do 20 pushups per offense.

Also, people who execute Charyet stance with their fists tucked into their hips should do pushups as well. Charyey is done with the arms straight and the hands balled into fists.

I agree-there is NO reason or excuse for calling Tae Kwon Do "Karate" or "Korean Karate". Tae Kwon Do is not and never has been Karate.

Really, YM? Then what were four of the five original Kwan founders teaching when they came back from Japan at the end of the '30s, with no demonstrable previous training in any other martial art, with their shiny new black belts in Shotokan or Shudokan karate, set up their schools during or after the liberation teaching the Kichos, move-for-move copies of the Taikyoku katas introduced by Gichin Funakoshi, the Pinan katas, the Naihanchi katas, the Bassai kata, the Empi kata, and taught the Korean translation of karate (tangsudo= China hand, kongsudo = empty hand) as the name of the MA they offered? When they gave one of their schools the name Shotokan translated into Korean (Song Moo Kwan)? When every single upper body tech and core lower body tech taught in TKD comes from Okinawan/Japanese karate?. And when every single trained, competent and responsible KMA historian identifies the sources of TKD as not only overwhelmingly rooted in karate, but impossible to link to any other martial system anyone has ever heard of (as per the citations given here, most of them in the only MA periodical peer-reviewed to normal standards of academic scholarship)?

TKD was never karate, eh? :lol:

If you want to object to calling TKD Korean Karate, that's your privilege or the privilege of Master Whang. It was good enough for Gms. Sihak Henry Cho and Gm. Duk Son Song, two of the founders of TKD in Korea and North America, when they titled their books Korean Karate, both of them explaining carefully why they described TKD that way. If Master Whang wants to ban that description in his own dojang, for his own reasons, that's his perfect right. But there's all the reason and excuse in the world for calling TKD Korean karate—that is, the development of karate in Korea, just as Shotokan, Shudokan and so on are the Japanese development of karate in Japan—if you acquaint yourself with even a bit of the past twenty years of responsible, documented historical investigation (as vs. nationalistic mythmongering) of TKD.

 

[YoungMan]

Exile, I'm not going to go down this route again.
GM Won Kuk Lee stated that he called his art Tang Soo Do as a reference to China, NOT because he felt it was Koreanized Japanese karate.
It is well known that for years, Tae Kwon Do was called Korean Karate as a marketing ploy, not because it was simply Japanese karate in Korea. People knew the name Karate, unlike Tae Kwon Do which, although established in 1955, had yet to market itself.
Again, the techniques I learned in Tae Kwon Do and the way I learned to do them are simply not present in karate. They are native-born Korean.

 

[exile]

Exile, I'm not going to go down this route again.

You did go down this route again, by making a claim that has been sliced and diced into little pieces by every qualified, careful historian of the KMAs since the early 1990s. So it's a bit pointless to deny that you're doing so, eh? If you don't want to go down that route, as you say, then don't embark upon it by making statements that you can't support.

GM Won Kuk Lee stated that he called his art Tang Soo Do as a reference to China, NOT because he felt it was Koreanized Japanese karate.

China?? When the content of Kwan era KMAs was straight linear techniques, with almost no resemblance to any of the CMAs? When the name itself, of all the ones he could have chosen, represents one of the two Japanese transliterations of the work karate, which he learned directly from his teacher, Gichin Funakoshi? And when the original CDK curriculum taught the Taikyuko, Pinan and other Japanese karate kata sets just as the other Kwans did, and as Gm. Kim emphasizes?

It is well known that for years, Tae Kwon Do was called Korean Karate as a marketing ploy, not because it was simply Japanese karate in Korea. People knew the name Karate, unlike Tae Kwon Do which, although established in 1955, had yet to market itself.

It's 'well known?' That's your evidence?? When even many Korean Gms, such as e.g., Gm. Kim Byung Soo, identify the original martial practices they learned and taught as the karate that they brought back from Korea? (as per Gm. Kim's Black Belt interview with Rob McLain, one of our own members, in the January 2008 Black Belt, also available in our own MartialTalk magazine here). You haven't said one word in reference to my citation of the early Kwan curricula, as described in the extensive documentation I've cited, which was straight Japanese karate, with the names still recognizable in their Korean translation in many cases: Pyong-Ahn (= Pinan), Eunbi (= Empi), Kong San Koon (= Kushanku), while the old Chulgi were the Okinawan Naihanchi set, and Balsek was Bassai. The old Okinawan Rohai kata, somewhat modified, is still taught in certain Song Moo Kwan lineages. These weren't ditched from TKD curricula, in some cases, until the middle of the 1960s, twenty years after the liberation and well after the establishment of the modern KMAs.

Nor do you appear to recognize the profound irrelevance of your point about TKD marketing. Whether or not TKD was marketed as Korean karate has nothing to do with the historical question of whether it is an outgrowth of karate. Trying to say that TKD can't be an outgrowth of karate because it was marketed as Korean Karate makes as much sense as saying that the city of York in the UK can't have been the ancient capital of England, because the city's tourism office markets York as the ancient capital of England. Well, the fact is, it was, and they do—both are true. Exactly how does the historical emergence of TKD from karate, well-attested in the detailed historical sources I've repeatedly cited, come into question because TKD was marketed as Korean karate? How is this point about marketing you're insisting on evidence of anything?

Again, the techniques I learned in Tae Kwon Do and the way I learned to do them are simply not present in karate. They are native-born Korean.

Another comment with no bearing on the actual point at issue. What you said first was,

Tae Kwon Do is not and never has been Karate.

And in support of this you now say that what you learned wasn't karate. Well, what do the two things have to do with each other?? French was once a dialect of the Latin vulgate. If you say, well, I learned French, not Latin, how is that in the least relevent to the fact that French is the development of Latin in France—that once upon a time, the ancestor of French was the Latin of that particular part of the world? What you're doing is exactly parallel to someone saying that French didn't come from Latin because they learned French in school, not Latin. The historical question of where TKD came from and the question of what you learned, many decades after the Kwan era, are entirely different things in exactly the same way as where French came from vs. what I studied in school. Your experience in school doesn't have the slightest bearing on your claim that TKD never was karate. Again, something with no bearing on the point.

I myself wouldn't particularly want to study with someone who says, at the threshold, that referring to now well-documented historical results is forbidden in his school, but that's just me, I guess... It strikes me as rather strange to equate maintenance of a robustly defensible view of the status of TKD, on the one hand, with dojang discourtesy on the other, as per some of the other things in the list. Master Whang is entitled to his pet peeves, just as we all are, but on this particular point, it's apples and oranges...

 

[Fluffy]

Nice! Lov'n it! :ultracool

 

[Logan]

Makes sense except for a few things -
1. There is a difference when people speak korean in normal conversation and shout it in a class - accents etc.

2. joonbi - I think direction on this differs depending on the dojang. Some groups employ a 3-4 second lifting of the arms.

3. Yawning - is a biomechanical reaction to increase energy levels. Also, if one person yawns, others inevitably will as well. Doesn't necessarily mean they are bored or not giving energy. Whether or not it is polite is up to the instructor.

 

[IcemanSK]

Nice! Lov'n it! :ultracool

Yup.