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Question to Member "Teasing the Korean"


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not that it's not ok to find things questionable and to want to find out what the deal is but then why not PM the guy or gal and not make it into a public inquisition?

Nobody expects the Public Inquistion?

oh wait..that is Spanish...

uh

nevermind

:crazy:

spaninq%20monty%20python.jpg

oh, wait, did you say pubic inquisition? :crazy:

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Did Japan Change Corea to Korea?

There is a fabrication about the spelling of Korea. Some Koreans say, "Japanese Empire change Corea to Korea to put it after Japan in alphabetical order." To an example I show Goldsea's explanation:

We at GoldSea choose to honor the more natural rendering commonly used in the English-speaking world prior to the Japanese annexation and colonialization of Corea beginning in 1905.

American and English books published during the latter half of the 19th century generally referred to the nation as "Corea" as recently as the years immediately preceding Japan's formal annexation of Corea in 1910. An 1851 map of East Asia by Englishman John Tallis labels the nation Corea. The same spelling is used in The Mongols, a 1908 history of the Mongol race by Jeremiah Curtin, the world's foremost Asia scholar of the day, as well as in several books by American missionaries published between 1887 and 1905.

Korea was spelt both Corea and Korea in the 19th century.

Japan's annexation of Corea didn't become formal until 1910, but for all practical purposes Japan had become the power that regulated Corea's relations with the outside world in 1897 when it defeated China in a war over Japan's ambition to exercise control over Corea. The only other power willing to contest Japan's supremacy in the Corean peninsula was Russia. When it was easily defeated by Japan at Port Arthur in 1905, the annexation of Corea became a fait accompli. Anxious to avoid a costly Pacific conflict, President Wilson ignored the pleas of a delegation of Corean patriots and their American missionary supporters and turned a blind eye to Japan's acts of formal annexation and colonization of Corea. During that period Japan mounted a campaign to push for the "Korea" useage by the American press. Why? For one of Japan's prospective colonies to precede its master in the alphabetical lineup of nations would be unseemly, Japanese imperialists decided.

Japan's colonial rule over Corea ended on August 15, 1945 when it lost World War II. Now that Corea is eagerly shedding the last vestiges of the colonial period, even demolishing public buildings erected by the Japanese (for example, the monstrously immense colonial governor's mansion), forward-thinking Corean and Corean American journalists, intellectuals and scholars are urging the American media to revert to the original, more natural rendering of Corea.

Look at Korean stamps searched by issued date/1884-1910 years. Although stamps printed in 1884 perforated with "Corean", they are marked as "Korea" or "Korean" after 1895. It stand to reason that the Korean government adopted the spelling of Korea without Japanese influence before annexation.

The changeover will pose a problem only in English-speaking nations as other western nations never accepted the "K" spelling. For example, France, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico, among many others, use the "C" rendering.

Not all western nations accepted the C spelling. Only the Romanic languages such as French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese adopt the K spellings. In Romanic languages the K is never used or is used only in loan words. Words started in K are commonly used in Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, German, Hungarian, Latvian, Slovak, Slovenian and Turkish. In addition, Greek (the Greek alphabet), Russian and other languages written in the Cyrillic alphabet use the K for the [k] sound.

English convention, too, is on the side of the Corea rendering. Non-European names are romanized with a "C" (Cambodia, Canada, cocoa, Comanche, Congo, and even old Canton, for example) except where the first letter is followed by an "e" or an "i", (as in Kenya). Other than that, the "K" spelling is used only in connoting childlike ignorance of spelling conventions ("Kitty Kat" and "Skool", for examples).

No. Look at a world map and you will find Karnataka (India/Former British India), Karachi (Pakistan/Former British India), Kalimantan (Indonesia/Former Dutch East Indies), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia/Former British Malaya), etc. It is worth noting that Calcutta (India) was renamed to Kolkata in January 2001.

Therefore, the American "K" spelling is

offensive from a historical standpoint (remember "Peking" and "Canton"?);

violates western rendering conventions;

suggests a lack of sophistication toward Corea; and

by connoting naivet?, imputes a lack of sophistication to Corea and its people.

The Corea rendering will ultimately become universal when more Americans are educated as to the offensive and relatively recent origin of the "Korea" rendering. he English-speaking world was responsible for agreeing to Japanese efforts to change the spelling of Corea's name in English useage. Who better than concerned Asian Americans to help change it back?

Well then, I think that if they really want to change Korea to Corea, they should do so without cooking up a story. It is not so rare a practice to change country names. For example, Zaire was renamed to Congo, and Bilma to Myanmer.

The Korean seem to consider alphabetical order as a measure of importance of countries. If so, Afghanistan may be the greatest country in the world. Some Koreans use "Zapan" instead of "Japan" ([j] and [z] are not distinguished in Korean.) By doing this, they can insult Japanese people, they may think. How childish they are!

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Here is another fiction. Koreans insist that Japan changed the spelling of Korea to put it after Japan in the Olympic Games. I can easily debunk it. Japan's first participation was at the 5th Olympic Games in Stockholm in July 1912. By then Korea had already been ruled by Japan. (Korea was annexed to Japan in 1910.) Changing the spelling would have been completely unnecessary.

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