Essays on Writing and Language in Honor - Sino-Platonic Papers

Sim-Platonic Papers, 27 (August 31, 1991)
of one language cannot possibly read connected discourse in another no
matter what units their writing systems share, Thirdly, the shapes of
the characters themselves have undergone different changes in Japan and -
China, making their "transitivity" even less viable. These facts
notwithstanding, the three languages share a large number of Sinitic
borrowings which, by and large, can be understood by educated readers in
any of the three languages, provided they are written in characters. Often
this will enable readers of one language to grasp the essence of headlines,
titles - or longer passages, For signs and other paralinguistic materials.,
their. transitivity is indisputable. The phenomenon parallels what literate
native speaJers of Ehglish can accamplish with Rench or Spanish materials,
for exactly the same reasons.
If characters are abandoned in Korea, Koreans would lose this marginal-
ability to decode parts of Chinese and Japanese texts, They would also
run the risk in the long term of being cut off from new Sinitic terms coined
in chi^ and Japan (although the Vietnamese experience suggests otherwise),
More importantly, many Koreans feel they would be isolated culturally.
This last argument leaves Ch'oe and Ho' stunned, since neither can imagine
why, in light of the region's history, any Korean would want to identify
with these neighboring countries. this point, Ch'oe is quite specific:
Korea's participatian in the so-called Chinese character cultural commmity
has always been as a juniar member, Do Koreans really need this (1946:71)?
HS asks if Koreans, one and all, should suffer for the sake of the tourist
industry (1974a:122), He also wonders why the same people who want Sinitic
loans written in CZzinese characters do not clamor for English loanwords
to be written in r-ja and mixed in directly with the hangul and everything
else (1 974a: 49). More to the point, Korea's foreign contacts are no longer
limited to East Asia, nor should they be. Koreans need to absorb ideas
from all over the world, and the writing system they choose should
facilitate this (ibid),
The above pertains to the characters' ability to close geographical
distances, There is also the question of what their abandonment would
mean for Korea's historical continuity. Cut off from its awn tradition,
could Korea survive? Ch'oe's and HZ'S approaches to this problem differ
in emphasis, reflecting their personalities and the times when they wrote.
ol'oe, as usual, pulls no punches, "We must regard the future as more
important than the past" (1946:54). Besides the direct benefits to be
gained by using a more efficient writing system, there are important
psychological side-effects to writing in all-hangul. European progress
began only after Latin was abandoned as the medium of written discourse,
Writing in their own "vulgar" languages, Europeans of various nationalities
were able to infuse their countrymen with a new vigor that had been stifled
by the old and . crusty conventions, Thus, the move to all-hangul is more
than an effort to rid the system of Chinese characters. By decreasing
dependence on foreign borrowings, the movement fosters attitudes of national
pride and self-reliance that will spill wer into all areas of society
(Ql'oe, 1970:234).
H is more solicitous of what he feels are genuine concerns, but