[Comments-korean-lgr-25jan18] Comments on "Proposal for a Korean Script Root Zone LGR"
HiroHOTTA
hotta at jprs.co.jp
Wed Mar 14 12:09:00 UTC 2018
Thanks for the opportunity for commenting on the draft proposal
made by Korean Generation Panel. Below are my comments.
[comment-1]
As Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (collectively called CJK)
languages use the same script (called 'Han' in Chinese, 'Kanji' in
Japanese, and 'Hanja' in Korean) as a part of their writing
systems, three generation panels have coordinated in defining their
respective repertoires and variants.
Through tough coordination, CJK Generation Panels (GPs) have
successfully agreed upon the definition of variants. All the
variants agreed upon were between Han characters. The implicit
assumption all the way through their coordination was that there
were no variants between Hanja and Hangul (in Korean case) and
between Kanji, Katakana, and Hiragana (in Japanese case).
However, I found that in the proposed Korean RootLGR draft, variants
between Hangul characters and Hanja characters are defined, which
have not been considered at all in those three GP's coordination
effort. In other words, although definition of variants between
Hanja and Hangul characters impacts Chinese users and Japanese
users, such effect (e.g., "blocking Chinese label by applying for
Hangul label") has not been investigated.
I don't imply that I do not agree on such variant definitions made
by KGP. I may respect KGP's strong wish to define similar-looking
characters as variants (although I personally am against it as in
[comment-2]). However, JGP needs time to assess whether such
definitions do harm or not through consultation with Japanese
community. I believe CGP is in the same situation.
[comment-2]
I have a general concern in defining variants between Hanja characters
and Hungul characters based on visual similarity. If Hanja
characters and Hungul characters can be mixed in composing a Korean
word (as proposed in draft LGR), it should be considered that Hanja
script and Hungul scripts collectively constitute "ONE Korean script".
as in the case of Japanese language, which has this kind of "ONE
Japanese script" status that consists of Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana
UNICODE scripts.
If this is the case for Korean writing system, defining variants
between Hanja and Hungul is equivalent to defining variants within a
script, i.e., mutually similar-looking Hangul characters, mutually
similar-looking Hanja characters, or even mutually similar-looking
ASCII characters should become the candidates for variants.
I think defining variants within ONE script based only on visual
similarity is not a good idea, especially when such similarity is
defined without universally acceptable criteria.
Hiro Hotta
JPRS and JGP
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