The Problem with Taekwon-Do Terminology / Happy Independence Day

[Sanko]

Today is Victory Over Japan Day, or Independence Day in (South) Korea,
celebrating the independence of Korea from the Japanese occupation.
But this post is about something different.

In my two latest posts on the Soo Shim Kwan blog I discuss the problem
with Taekwon-Do terminology.

The first problem is the terrible pronunciation of Korean by foreign
speakers and related to this the inconsistency with which Korean words
are written in English. In the post I explain why this is the case--
for instance that there are many different ways of writing Korean in
English and that the ITF Encyclopaedia is not consistent in its
rendering of Korean into English either. One suggestion is that
national governing bodies should decide on one official system to
write Korean words in English, so that at least the writing can be
uniform nationally.

Read more here: http://sooshimkwan.blogspot.com/2011/08/problem-with-korean-terminology.html

In the second post I discuss the problem with using English
terminology. Often the English terms (even those in the ITF
Encyclopaedia) are not properly translated from Korean causing
confusion. Furthermore, the original Korean terms are usually very
technically descriptive so that a knowledge of the Korean terms can
sometimes illuminate technical nuances in a technique that may not be
so clear from the English terms.

Read more here: http://sooshimkwan.blogspot.com/2011/08/problem-with-english-terminology.html

Happy Independence Day! (Read more about this day on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangbokjeol)

Sanko