China, Japan and Korea

[rockstream]

My understanding here is that Martial artists coming here are mostly Americans, Canadians and at least English friendly people. And this forum is for Hapkido. So I think few Chinese and Japanese martial artists visit this section because they are not HKDists, and not many Koreans HKDists come here because of language barrier.

These days in Korea many,many are almost dying to learn English from tots to grand parents. A big money market for native English teachers! Lots of English speaking people are coming here to make money. Anyway..!

Many modern and popular martial arts are from Japan. Japanese are very good in systematization. Not only in martial arts, but also almost every field. Anyway they are relatively better than the other two. That's why in martial arts terms there are so many Japanese terms, as you already know.

In the Asian culture, China is like Greece and Rome in the Western. For example, These three countries share the same chinese characters since their needs for recording.( Though Korea has it's own proud character system, however, which are only 500 years old comparing to 5,000 years old chinese one.)

The letters of Hapkido is written in the same chinese characters, and pronunciations are all different among them, Huhcheetao in Chinese, Aikido in Japanese and Hapkido in Korean. Dojang, Dojo and Taochang is the same and etc...

Traditionally in the old warfares of these three countries, Chinese were good in the spear arts, Japanese in the sword arts and Koreans in the archery arts. In unarmed situations, Chinese were good in punching, Japanese in throwing and Koreans in kicking. In korea, even small kids prefer kicking to punching in their street hot quarrels.You may imagine the current popular martial arts in these countries.

It could be one reason why in HKD there are so many kicking techniques, even though modern HKD is said that it is from Daitoryu Akijujits. Even more than those of Taekwondo specialized in kicking, which is also said it is from Karate.

I have no intention to talk about history of martial arts which could cause to bring serious disputes. Just hope to say that these three countries have their own characteristics in their favors.


Sungbook Bae
Ulji-Kwan HKD Master

 

[Xue Sheng]

In the Asian culture, China is like Greece and Rome in the Western. For example, These three countries share the same chinese characters since their needs for recording.( Though Korea has it's own proud character system, however, which are only 500 years old comparing to 5,000 years old chinese one.)

Sungbook Bae
Ulji-Kwan HKD Master

Thank you for posting this. But I have a question that maybe you can answer, I am sorry it is history, but it is not martial art history.

I will say right now that I have limited knowledge of Korean history, but it was my understanding that the Korean writing system was, over 500 years ago, very much the same as the Chinese system but the ruler of Korea at that time changed it to the system that is currently used. Is this true?

Although I am now a Chinese style martial arts practitioner I use to train Tae Kwondo with Jae Hun Kim but that was many years ago and I was rather impressed by how complete a system it was, as compared to what many Tea Kwondo schools in the US have become that is.

XS

 

[rockstream]

Thank you for your concern, Xue Sheng.

Yes, as you mentioned, the writing system in ancient Korea was same as that of China until 500 years ago. But as you guess, Korean language and Chines language are very different in grammer, almost reverse in somehow.

Pronunciations were a little similar when reading chinese characters as Koreans adopted pronunciation as well as characters. Same in Japan in that sense. For example, I can recognize your ID "Xue Sheng" as "a student", in Korean "Hak Shang", and in Japanese " Gak Sei".

And chinese characters are beautiful, but it is very difficult to learn. So Koreans have invented an easier and simpler but effective character system. However, it was not popular then. So called literete people prefer chinese system to show their nobility(?) like some are using Latin in your culture. Only it was common among relatively less-educated people, specially women. So it was called women's character till last century.

It is only half century to use Korean characters as official. However, still lots of chinese characters and words are used together in every day life. Only lots of chinese terms are substitued by English terms among younger generations nowadays.

Hope it could be a little help in understanding korean culture. Bye.

SungBook Bae
Ulji-Kwan HKD Master

 

[Xue Sheng]

Thank You for responding.

If I remember correctly to be considered literate in North China you need to know 2000 or 3000 characters and South China is was somewhere around 4000 characters. I currently know about 20 and 1, 2, 3, 5 and 10 are in there so I am very far from literate by Chinese standards.

Is there a similar standard in Korea with the Korean characters?

 

[rockstream]

ha ha ha..!

Korean characters are based on phonetic system like alphabets. So if you know only 24 characters, you can read any Korean writings and pronounce perfectly. Of course, understanding is another matter.

Some English words are different in their writings and sounds. But in Korean, never. So, many linguists say the Korean character system is one of the most perfects.

 

[Xue Sheng]

Thank you

A few more questions about Korean if you do not mind.

Chinese spoken language is tonal and in Mandarin there are 4 tones which can change the words meaning considerably. Even though to the untrained ear they may sound the same. All may hear 'Ma' but depending on the tone they can have very different meanings

Does the spoken language in Korea have tones?

It is also my understanding that at least the spoken language in Korea is more similar to Mongolian and Japanese than Chinese do you think this is the case?

 

[howard]

A few more questions about Korean if you do not mind.

Chinese spoken language is tonal and in Mandarin there are 4 tones which can change the words meaning considerably. Even though to the untrained ear they may sound the same. All may hear 'Ma' but depending on the tone they can have very different meanings

Does the spoken language in Korea have tones?

Hi, I believe I can answer this for you, even though I'm American.

No, not in the same way Chinese does. Just as in English, Korean uses different inflections and intonations to denote declarative, interrogative and imperative sentences, but it's not like the situation with "Ma" that you mention in Chinese.

Rockstream, please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here... you clearly know much more about this than I do.

Also, since your English is so good, would you mind if we asked you to translate English (martial arts) terms into Korean from time to time? There are a couple of terms that I just can't get a single Korean translation for. They have to do with Hapkido concepts, so I'm sure you'll understand them in context.

Thanks...

 

[rockstream]

Thank you Howard for your help. If I add a little, in spoken Korean there is no tone nor acceent. Just a little intonation to express mood, like anger or delight.

That is the most difficult side for Korean people who learn English. There are lots of Koreans who are good in reading and writing English. But only few are good in speaking and listening. We are not accustomed to that way of speaking. Same in Japanese.

Korean and Japanese are classified as Ural-Altaic language group. Mogolian, Hungarian and Turkish are also in that group. So, for us those languages are relatively easier.

Chinese is totally different from us, although we look similar in apperance. They don't have birth mark at the hip like us.

That caused lots of difficulties in our cultural identity, because, as I said before, China has been like Rome or Greece.

It's gonna be a endless story, if we go on this topic. So, excuse me to stop here.

And, of course I'll help if I could help, Howard. Feel free to ask me at any time.


Sungbook Bae
Ulji-Kwan HKD master

 

[Xue Sheng]

Thank you Howard for your help. If I add a little, in spoken Korean there is no tone nor acceent. Just a little intonation to express mood, like anger or delight.

That is the most difficult side for Korean people who learn English. There are lots of Koreans who are good in reading and writing English. But only few are good in speaking and listening. We are not accustomed to that way of speaking. Same in Japanese.

Korean and Japanese are classified as Ural-Altaic language group. Mogolian, Hungarian and Turkish are also in that group. So, for us those languages are relatively easier.

Chinese is totally different from us, although we look similar in apperance. They don't have birth mark at the hip like us.

That caused lots of difficulties in our cultural identity, because, as I said before, China has been like Rome or Greece.

It's gonna be a endless story, if we go on this topic. So, excuse me to stop here.

And, of course I'll help if I could help, Howard. Feel free to ask me at any time.


Sungbook Bae
Ulji-Kwan HKD master

Thank you and I apologize for getting this off post; my curiosity got the better of me.

 

[howard]

Thank you, Rockstream, for your generous offer.

I'd like to try to find the Chinese characters for a couple of Hapkido concepts, because I think that might make it easier for you to identify the Hangul equivalent... I'll see what I can find.

Thanks again, and it's nice to have your perspective here.

 

[howard]

Master Bae (Rockstream), I'm sorry to be a pest, but I would like to take you up on your offer, just for one term...

Here are the hanja characters for a very common term that is integral to Hapkido and all of the other aiki-based arts. The Japanese pronunciation of the characters is kuzushi.

崩し

I tried for some time to determine the Hangul equivalent for this term with our Korean kwanjangnim, but I'm not sure I succeeded, because of the language barrier. He translated what he understood from me as dan gi gi (단 기 기).

Does this sound correct to you?

Thank you in advance...

 

[rockstream]

Here are the hanja characters for a very common term that is integral to Hapkido and all of the other aiki-based arts. The Japanese pronunciation of the characters is kuzushi.

崩し

I tried for some time to determine the Hangul equivalent for this term with our Korean kwanjangnim, but I'm not sure I succeeded, because of the language barrier. He translated what he understood from me as dan gi gi (단 기 기).

That Japanese term means "pull down", I think. As you know, only the first character is a chinese character.The second is, of course, Japanese.

We use the first character as meanings of " A mountain collapses." or "A king dies.".

So, if this term is used in Aiki-class arts, it could be translated in Korean as "moo-nuo-tu-ri-gi (pull down)".

"Dan-gi-gi" means "pull toward me" in Korean. Thanks.

 

[howard]

Rockstream, thank you very much for that information. I appreciate it.