At 3:46 PM -0400 6/4/01, Jungshik Shin wrote:
>On Mon, 4 Jun 2001, Ayers, Mike wrote:
>
>> > From: DougEwell2@cs.com [mailto:DougEwell2@cs.com]
>>
>> > For the Han characters, I have found in the past that people
>> > whose native
>> > language does not use these characters usually refer to them
>> > as "Chinese."
>> > Obviously (to us anyway), calling them "Chinese characters"
>> > is not adequate,
>> > so we search for alternatives.
>>
>> Consider:
>>
>> "Hanzi" -> "Chinese characters"
>> "Kanji" -> "Chinese characters"
>> "Hanja" -> "Chinese characters"
>>
Not exactly.
> > ...so it would seem that everyone but us agrees on what to call 'em.
That part is correct.
> My personal preference is also call them 'Chinese characters'
>(I wish the phrase 'CJK ideographs' had never been coined/used.)
Hear, hear.
>and I
>believe most, if not all, Koreans would have no problem with that.
>However, some other people somewhere else may not like that even though
>'Hanzi/Kanji/Hanja' are just different ways of pronouncing the identical
>words written in 'Chinese characters' meaning 'Chinese characters'.
Um, Han doesn't mean Chinese. It means the Han dynasty and its
cultural and ethnic successors. These are *Han* characters in all
three languages.
> Jungshik Shin
"Chinese" would be
zhongguohua zhongguoren zhongwen
jungkgukmal jungkuksalam
chukokugo chukokujin
or perhaps baihua, putonghua, or some other variation of
Beijing/"Mandarin" Chinese. Or, of course, the names for the
Cantonese, Hokkien, etc. dialects/languages as spoken or written in
each or any.
The term "Chinese character", literally "zhongguozi" "jungkukja"
"chukokuji" is not used.
--Edward Cherlin, Spamfighter <http://www.cauce.org> "It isn't what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you know for certain that just ain't so."--Mark Twain, Josh Billings, Edwin Howard Armstrong, Will Rogers, Satchel Paige (after Thomas Jefferson)
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