Subvertmsm

I found your edits at Hanja interesting. Since I don't know any Korean, I can't comment either way on their appropriateness. Since you've mentioned that there are no sources cited for the information you deleted, it is hard to argue against them.

Nevertheless, it seems that some useful information may have been deleted:

• The fact that Hanja are essentially the same as Traditional Chinese characters (i.e., have not been simplified as in China or Japan) has been omitted. This is extremely useful and relevant information.

• The 'hani' example is interesting in the light of how Chinese characters have been adapted to writing languages like Japanese and Vietnamese. Are you saying that this word doesn't exist, or that this phenomenon doesn't exist?

• Information on the way in which Hanja are combined in place names has been removed. This is of marginal importance, but I'm not sure that it is so marginal that it should be deleted. Perhaps it could have been placed in the article on Sino-Korean vocabulary.

I'm wondering whether it might not have been better to edit with an eye to improving, backing up, or providing better examples, rather than simply deleting.

Your edits also give the impression of being written from the layman's point of view, i.e., with rather unsophisticated or unscientific explanations of what hanja are. I refer specifically to this statement:

• More specifically, it refers to those Korean spoken language written using Chinese characters with Korean phonetics.

This doesn't make a great deal of sense, despite your claim that it represents a clarification. What are "Chinese characters with Korean phonetics"? What is "Korean spoken language written using Chinese characters"?

Would be grateful if you could explain.

Bathrobe (talk) 03:30, 21 February 2008 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for your comments. (I've also placed similar comments/questions, worded differently, at the Hanja talk page).

Actually, I've been mystified for some time by the confusion in what hanja actually refers to. At a superficial level, it seems equivalent to Hanzi or Kanji. But Koreans appear to use the term in a completely different sense, namely, to refer to a certain type of language, not the characters that are used to write it. In both Chinese and Japanese, hanzi/kanji refer only to the characters themselves, not to the vocabulary, style of language, or writing system as a whole.

If Korean usage in this regard is different from Chinese and Japanese usage, it's important to indicate that in the introductory paragraph. The current introduction is highly confusing because it's impossible to tell what hanja refers to. Your definition implies that hanja refers to the Korean spoken language (as opposed to what? a specific written style?), that it refers to the spoken language written in Chinese characters (so what happens when hanja and hangul are mixed together -- is this referred to as "hanja" or "hangul" or what?). The definition seems to imply that all Korean ("the Korean spoken language") can be written in Chinese characters, and when it is, that spoken language is called "hanja". It is totally confusing.

This confusion emerges in the following comment:

There are words of sino origin, more specifically words of religious and scientific origin. However it is patently false to say sino-Korean words are of sino origin. Sino-Korean words are simply words that can be written in Hanja."

Could you explain what Korean words can be written in hanja? That is, exactly what are the conditions for a word to be written in hanja? If they are not words of sino origin, then what words are we talking about? Native Korean words that someone has decided to write in hanja?

Incidentally, Vietnamese is not "written with French". It's written in a romanisation that was originally adapted from Portuguese.

Bathrobe (talk) 04:09, 21 February 2008 (UTC)Reply

I'll reply at the Hanja talk page.

Bathrobe (talk) 06:12, 21 February 2008 (UTC)Reply

Sorry, I reverted your changes again. You used some very confusing wording, such as hanja being "those Korean spoken language written using Chinese characters with their assigned Korean phonetics". This is nearly incomprehensible, and I don't have time to try to make sense of it. Although you did remove some unnecessary information, which was probably an improvement, none of it was really a problem, whereas some of your additions were. kwami (talk) 00:27, 22 February 2008 (UTC)Reply

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