Chinese languages

Recently,I saw there is a long debate on subject " who is the real inventor for chinese language" in newsgroups soc.culture.china & soc.culture.korean. below is the msg.


The so-called Chinese character was probably invented and
developed by Korean, although the populous Chinese also have used it as
their basic writing systems. I believe the number of population of any
ethnic group should not be a factor that obscures the origin. I explain some
evidences.

1. The original pictographs called 'gab-gol' (bone and shell) or 'bok-sa' in
Korean were certainly invented during the Yin dynasty (or Shang state, BC
1600~BC 1046), although it is uncertain who was the inventor. There is no
dispute regarding this matter between Korean and Chinese historians. There
are ample recent evidences that the dominant people of the Yin dynasty was
Korean, which some Chinese historians also acknowledge.

2. Among countries that adopted Chinese character, only Koreans use exactly
one syllable for one character. Chinese or Japanese used one or more
syllables for one character. A good example is the sounds denoting the
numbers. Only Koreans use just one syllable for one number. So, it is very
easy for Koreans to say any complex numbers quickly.

For another example, the sound for 'white' in Chinese character in 'baek'
(one syllable) in Korean but 'bai' (two syllable) in Chinese. Regarding the
character denoting 'head', it is 'doo' in Korean but 'tou' in Chinese. On
the other hand, it is the same for the character denoting 'mountain' -
'shan' in both Korean and Chinese.

Why have Koreans used only one syllable for one character, but Chinese one
or more syllables? It certainly shows that Chinese pronunciation system is a
variant from Korean counterpart.

3. Some basic pictographs reflect Korean life-style and customs.

For example, the character denoting 'house' (ga in Korean) contains a
character denoting a pig (hog) in the lower part. In the house, people live,
not a pig live. Why did they adopt a pig to denote a house? Only Koreans
raised pigs within their house.

Another example is the character denoting 'sun'. The character contains a
dot within a rectangle. Why did they contain the dot, seemingly
unnecessarily? The dot denotes a golden crow. Only Koreans had the legend
linking the sun to the golden crow.

Additional example is the character denoting 'surname' (ssi in Korean). In
Chinese, the character denotes only 'surname' while it denotes both
'surname' and 'seed' in Korean. 'Ssi' is a most common word in Korean and
compares the pedigree with the tree (i.e., the seed is a common symbol for
the original ancestor whose trace has been handed down by his surname).

4. Korean history book describes the origin of written systems, which is
inscribed in dolmens in Korea.

A Korean history book called Chun-bu-gyung records the origin of both
current Chinese character and Korean alphabet (hangul). Chinese character is
a kind of pictograph + ideograph, while hangul is the most advanced of
phonogram + ideogram in the world. Bone and shell inscriptions were a
pictograph, while hexagrams of I-ching invented by Fu Xi (Bokhwi in Korean)
are a kind of ideogram. The original character for both Chinese character
and hangul was 'Nok-doo-mun' (the most ancient writing system), according to
the Chun-bu-gyung. Currently, only Koreans still play a game called 'Yout',
which is believed to be very similar to the 'Nok-doo-mun'. The principles of
Yout game are essentially the same as I-Ching. Moreover, in Korea and
Manchuria, currently there are many ancient rocks (dolmen) in which various
kinds of primitive writings are inscribed (see some pictures at
http://myhome.shinbiro.com/~kbyon/culture/rokdo.htm)

Based on these four facts, I strongly argue that the Chinese character was
originated and developed by Koreans. The differences in pronunciation system
for numbers between Chinese and Korean clearly indicates it's Korean origin.

--- Footnote

I add my message on Fu Xi and I-Ching. Fu Xi (or Bokhwi in Korean) is one of
the candidates for the inventor of Chinese characters.

Han and 'I Ching'

The hexagrams of the I Ching were said to have been created by the
legendary emperor 'Fu Xi' after he had contemplated on a diagram
called Ha Do that was bestowed from the Heaven. Han scholars rewrote
many myths as fact to fill gaps in early Chinese history. Fu Xi was
declared to have been the very first emperor, ruling from 2852 to 2737
BC. He was said to have been the inventor of musical instruments and
Chinese handwriting [1].

Chinese legend says that Fu Xi is the most senior one among the three
ancestors. Together with N-Wa, the women who he married with, they
started the civilization of human being. The current Fu Xi's Temple in
Shandong was built on a 6-meter high terrace. In the main hall, Fu
Xi's state was placed and sacrifices are given. And in the back of the
hall, N-Wa's statue was placed [2].

It is said that the upper body of Fu Xi is that of a human being while
his lower body is in the form of a snake. Inferring from the
scientific nature of the I Ching, it may just be possible that Fu Xi
was an extraterrestrial. If Fu Xi was indeed the first ancestor of
Chinese, then how could the descendents describe their first ancestor
as a monster? Why did ancient Chinese historians initially consider Fu
Xi as just a legend? Ancient Chinese call their neighboring people as
"bugs" or"barbarians". The monster portrait suggests that Fu Xi might
have been from a neighboring country, not Chinese countries. What was
that country?

"Fu Xi came from the nationality called East Yi dwelling in the
Neolithic Age, along the coastal area of the present-day Shandong
Province and, therefore, Fu Xi turned out to have come from Shandong
Province" (quoted from a Chinese site [4])

What was "East Yi"? Of course, "Yi" means "barbarians" in Chinese.
Most Koreans know what is "Dong (east) Yi". People in 'East Yi' are
known to have been very good at archery, as Korean Olympic archery
teams are today. The Chinese character "Yi" indeed symbolize the
shape of a big bow. Surprisingly. the recently discovered Korean
history text titled "Han Dan Go Gi" describes the life of "Fu Xi"
(Bokhwi in Korean) [3].

It writes that he was the son of the 5-th emperor of the Baedal
(B.C.3898- BC 2333) and his surname was "Pung" as he lived in
"Pung-san". Although the surname "Pung" no longer exists in Korean
names, some related words survived to today such as "Pung-chae"
"Pung-gol" and"Pung-shin", all of which are terms for describing human
body shape. Another daughter name was "Yeo-wa" (N-Wa in Chinese) [3].

It writes that she was known to have a magical talent to make a human
being from mud and to be extremely jealous (these two points, together
with the sound, might may remind you of Jehovah) [5].

Unfortunately only a few Korean scholars in universities accept "Han
Dan Go Gi" as a history book, insisting that the book was fabricated
in some points. Some Koreans, while acknowledging that a few points
might have been fabricated while copying, decry the university
historians as too much contaminated by Japanese colonial view of
history that tried to disparage Korean history in the 1910-1945
period, as they deny whole text book. Anyway, East Yi was located in
Shandong Province...... What does this mean? I would rather stop here
for today. But the point is that it will not be awkward that I link "I
Ching" to Han.

Some References on this footnote

[1] Microsoft Encarta "Fu Xi"
[2] http://www.china-sd.net/eng/sdtravel/scenery/30.asp
[3]
http://www.sejongnamepia.pe.kr/name_before.html
http://www.shaman.co.kr/newspaper/09/mago.htm
http://www.jsd.or.kr/a/truth_sh/korhist/k_hist_05.htm
[4]
http://www.sbbs.com.cn/English/RE-EXPLO ... 20STONE.ht
m).
[5] http://www.hankooki.com/culture/200205/ ... 516030.htm
[6] http://www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Zh ... autumn.htm
"Later historians said it was intended to protect the original Chinese
states from the intruding barbarian tribes Man 蠻, Rong 戎
and Yi 夷"

http://www.xsenergy.com/theme.html
"Yi is known by a variety of names: The East Barbarian, Yi the Good,
Lord Yi, and Yi Lord of the Hsia. As a result of this ambiguity, Yi is
seen both as a hero who is favored by the Gods as well as a villain,
murderer, usurper and adulterer. In this myth Yi is the hero as he
shoots the Ten Suns to avert disaster.

quate from from soc.culture.china

1. korean used chinese characters all the while since they came into contact with china. they dont have their own writings until 1444 ad.

2. present korean pronouciation were adopted from shandong mandarin pronouciation during sung dynasty, which probably sounded like hokkien/minnan and teochew. in these 2 dialects, baek is still baek/baeh. and baek is an adoptation from chinese language. the korean language is of mongolian origin(ural altaric, same as japanese) and has little resemblence to chinese. just like for the japanese, they have 2 or more pronouciation for 'white', and probably only 1, 'haku', was adopted from chinese. the rest, like shira, shiroi, belonged to their mongolian origin.

3. ancient chinese raised domestic animals within the house too. and chinese had legends relating to the crow. the lengend of the hero houyi who shot down 9 of the 10 suns and left 1 to hang over the sky. the fallen 9 suns turned into the shape of 3 legged crows.

4. in chinese legends fuxi only invented the hexagrams. changjie is the one who invented writings. thats why the taiwanese named their chinese input system changjie. present studies also revealed that the hexagrams were a much later invention, possibly not related to fuxi.

others:
studies revealed that the legend of fuxi being a half human half snake is bcos the totem, or mascot, for their tribe is the snake. just like the mascot for the 1st chinese leader, the yellow emperor, or 'huangdi' is the bear, and the mascot for the manchus is a bird. thats why we see a feather signifying a bird's tail on the headress of the qing dynasty officials. fuxi and nuwa were said to be brother and sister, much like athena and apollo in greek mythology.

in ancient china, the distinction between the central plains and the surrounding 'barbarians' were very strict, and the people of the central plains will not adopt techs and cultures from the 'barbarians'. it was only until the warring states that 'zhao wuling wang' of the state of zhao introduced trousers from the northern barbarians for horse riding sees the beginning of adopting lifestyles from the nomadic tribes around the central plains.

the earliest ancient chinese writing were found in 'banbo site' near xi-an area, unearthed since 1954. not anywhere near the korean borders.

first off modern Korean is a phonetic language. http://www.omniglot.com/writing/korean.htm
^thats proof enough.

How can the Koreans have invented Hanzi (Chinese characters) when their history is shorter than the Chinese? Also the whole reason why Hangul (the Korean spelling system) was invented because you can fully express the Korean language by writing with only Hanzi. Japanese also adopted Hanzi, what they call Kanji, but since the Chinese and Japanese language structures are different, they had to incorporate their own kanas in order to able to write their language fluently.

Why introduce this crap here? It has already been thoroughly discussed and refuted using linguistic arguments with the author Sukgeun Jung of the piece in sci.lang and other newsgroups in which it has appeared. To summarise,

When one bases one's arguments on the validity of myths, you're going to get chided at.

It was pointed out that Chinese dialects all maintain a single syllable pronunciation of each Chinese character. The author of the long piece, SJ quoted Mandarin as being somewhat at odds with the one syllable per char situation, but it was pointed out that Mandarin had three types of medial, i, u, and u", whilst Korean has two, i and w. If you consider Korean medials as not contributing to a syllable being bisyllabic, there is no reason to consider Chinese medials as being so too.

Further, to prove that Shang was not a CHinese language, SJ produced a Shang inscription which reads

翌甲子不雨 甲子雨小

thinking it wasn't readable in modern Chinese perhaps. But the truth is, it is perfectly understandable.

It says "yi jiazi bu yu jiazi yu xiao" or

(On) Jiazi (day) no rain, Jiazi (day) rained little.

He claimed it was in a form close to modern korean as it did not have a "subjective" but it was pointed out that that was not a grammatical term, and if he had meant a subjunctive, then word order in Old Chinese is the only way of displaying the meaning. So, he was asked what the modern Korean was, and how this fit his claim, and he replied with a korean version as follows

내일 갑자에 안 비가 올 것 같다
naeil gabjae an biga ol geos gat da
(내일 갑자에 비가 안 올 것 같다).
(naeil gapjae biga an al geos gat da).
10 syllables

갑자에 비가 조금 왔다.
gabjae biga jogeum oassda
8 syllables

As one can see, Korean is a polysyllabic language unsuited to the monosyllabicity of Chinese characters. From a nine character Shang inscription, Korean uses at least 18 syllables.

When we discover he meant 'subject' of a sentence, and he said that Chinese rarely left out the subject, which caused the sentence to be more representative of Korean as it frequently omits the subject according to him, it was pointed out that in Chinese grammar, meteorological events did not need to have a subject. See Le Dejin and Cheng Meizhen, in their book, A Practical Chinese Grammar for Foreigners, p.379 on the Subjectless Sentence.

He then challenged us to come up with an example where a Chinese Shang inscription had a subject, and one was provided, on the date of a lunar eclipse

庚申月又食


geng shen yue you shi

On gengshen day, the moon was eaten

which is the the euphenism for a lunar eclipse. Here, it is clear that moon
is the subject of the verb.

This example is given in Professor Homer H. Dubs' aritcle "The Date of the
Shang Period", and was referred to by Professor Chou Fakao in a paper given in 1964 in a meeting of the American Oriental Society in New York and listed as chapter 10 of his book "Papers in Chinese Linguistics and Epigraphy".

Since this further demonstrates that there was the use of a subject, it decreases SJ arguments that Shang language was not Chinese. Everything else is myth.

In the Cantonese language forum, the article was rebutted by several people, and it was shown from the Handbook of Korea published in Korea that Shang culture was introduced into Korea, rather than Koreans being the prime movers in the Shang. This is due to Tangun founding Korean civilisation (another myth) and the coming of Kija into the domain of Tangun, which clearly indicates that the two cultures were distinct and separate.

The examples, of white, head and mountain are given in IPA below.

which SJ's article reproduced by Peter mentioned the following:

> 2. Linguistic evidence
>
> Among countries that adopted Hanja, only Koreans use exactly one
> syllable for one character. Although Chinese are technically
> monosyllabic, Chinese or Japanese used one or more syllables de facto
> for one character. A good example is the sounds denoting the numbers.
> Only Koreans use just one syllable for one number. So, it is very easy
> for Koreans to say any complex numbers quickly.



> This not about stupidify of other Chiense fellows who do not know so much
> Korean, but about your conscience, because you revealed that you have
taught
> Korean.


This is about how Korean handles syllables, and to prove this, here are the
examples, white, head and mountain in IPA for you to consider.


White

Mandarin /pai/
Cantonese /pak/
Hakka /p'ak/
Shanghai /b@/
Fuzhou /pei?/
Sino-Japanese GoOn /biaku/
Sino-Japanese KanOn /haku/
Sino-Korean /pEk/
Sino-Viet /bat,/

Head

Mandarin /t'ou/
Cantonese /t'au/
Hakka /t'eu/
Shanghai /d@u/
Fuzhou /t'eu/

Sino-Japanese GoOn /dzu/
Sino-Japanese KanOn /to:/
Sino-Korean /tu/
Sino-Viet /d,Au/

Mountain

Mandarin /s,an/
Cantonese /San/
Hakka /san/
Shanghai /sE/
Fuzhou /saN/

Sino-Japanese GoOn /sen/
Sino-Japanese KanOn /san/
Sino-Korean /san/
Sino-Viet /san,/

All the Chinese readings are monosyllabic contrary to Sukgeun Jung's claim.
Japanese utilises an extra -u to indicate a long vowel.


> Why have Koreans used only one syllable for one character, but Chinese
> one or more syllables de facto? It certainly shows that Chinese
> pronunciation system is a variant from Korean counterpart.

Chinese does not use more than one syllable for each character reading at
any one time. Chinese in the form of Mandarin utilises three medials, namely
i, y, and ü . In modern Korean, the medials i and w are used. If you equate
the use of medials to making of a two syllable sound, then Korean readings
must be judge equally on the same footing. As you don't consider medials in
Korean to make Sino-Korean readings of CHinese characters bisyllabic, then
Mandarin syllables are equally mono-syllabic.

Saying a reading of hanzi/hanja is monosyllabic does not indicate how it is
used within Korean itself. Korean has verb forms whose endings change to
indicate a meaning, in particular tense and/or mood. That means Korean is
polysyllabic.

Not one bit of linguistic evidence supports any claim that Shang inscriptions were not Chinese. Thus, Shang inscriptions are not a Korean invention.

Dyl.

If you claim that Korean (other than Chinese) is the only language that uses exactly one syllable for each character then you are an ignorant fool.

The very fact that Vietnamese used exactly one syllable for each character will make you look like an idiot who seriously lack common sense and simple knowledge.

dylan:
actually S.J. and Y Park main support point is dong yi refering to ancient korean and they are the predominant
in Shang dynasty.

surprising to me that many modern chinese scholars also
agree that dong yi or "yi"=ancient korean.

if this is true that we have to accept it.

<=This message was censored for offending content =>

Oh my
you Korean can even says that English is your invention

and even the earth is made of Korean ....