Week 9. My Recent Wikipedia Edits - Jeong seolah (정설아)
I made several edits to the Wikipedia page for 'Hanja'.
Hanja is a traditional system of Chinese characters used to write the Korean language and is also known as "Hancha." Originally introduced for writing in Classical Chinese, it gradually began to be used for expressing the Korean language as early as the Gojoseon period. Each character carries its own sound and meaning, playing an important role in clearly conveying the meanings of Korean vocabulary. Although its everyday use has declined today, Hanja remains a valuable academic asset for interpreting historical texts and understanding vocabulary.
The Korean alphabet is the modern writing system used for the Korean language. In North Korea, it is called Chosŏn'gŭl (조선글), while in South Korea, it is known as Hangul (한글). The shapes of the five basic consonants were designed to represent the position and shape of the speech organs used when pronouncing them. These base letters are then systematically modified to reflect different phonetic features. Similarly, the vowels are also formed in a logical way to represent related sounds. This makes Hangul a featural writing system, where the design of the letters reflects how they sound. Hangul combines aspects of both an alphabet and a syllabary, so it's often described as a syllabic alphabet—a system where alphabetic letters are grouped into syllable blocks.
Below is a summary of the changes I contributed.
1) Summarize and link
1. "Do not stretch final consonant horizontally" →
Correction: Added “the” → “Do not stretch the final consonant horizontally”
Reason: Added definite article “the” for grammatical correctness.
2. "Do not stretch initial consonant vertically" →
Correction: Added “the” → “Do not stretch the initial consonant vertically”
Reason: Ensures the sentence is grammatically complete.
3. "between initial" →
Correction: Added “the” → “between the initial”
Reason: Needed definite article to specify the noun properly.
4. "Beside the letters" →
Correction: “Beside” → “Besides”
Reason: “Besides” means “in addition to,” which is the correct usage here. “Beside” refers to physical location.
5."to enlarge" →
Correction: “to enlarge” → “for enlarging”
Reason: “For enlarging” is more natural and clearer in this context.
6. "from the elementary education" →
Correction: Removed “the” → “from elementary education”
7. Reason: “Elementary education” is a general concept and doesn't require “the.”
"with Standardized System" →
Correction: Added “the” → “with the Standardized System”
Reason: Referring to a specific system requires a definite article.
8. "begun to be merged" →
Correction: “begun” → “began” → “began to be merged”
Reason: “Begun” is the past participle; “began” is the simple past — the correct tense here.
9. "lower class" →
Correction: “lower class” → “lower-class”
Reason: Used as an adjective, it requires a hyphen.
10. "many lower class uneducated" →
Correction: “many” → “much” → “much lower-class uneducated”
Reason: “Much” is used with uncountable nouns like “uneducated” (used here as a mass concept), and hyphen added for compound adjective.
11. "fourth king of the Joseon dynasty" →
Correction: Added “the” → “the fourth king of the Joseon dynasty”
Reason: Proper grammar when using ordinal numbers before titles.
12. "with the goal of eliminating" →
Correction: Changed to “to eliminate”
Reason: “To eliminate” is more concise and direct than “with the goal of eliminating.”
13. "memorize the native Korean pronunciation for the Hanja’s" →
Correction: “for” → “of” → “pronunciation of the Hanja’s”
Reason: “Pronunciation of” is the correct prepositional pairing.
14. "There are some pronunciation" →
Correction: “are” → “is” → “There is some pronunciation”
Reason: “Pronunciation” is uncountable and takes a singular verb.
15. "Compare to the parallel development" →
Correction: “Compare” → “Compared” → “Compared to the parallel development”
Reason: Proper past participle form needed here.
16. "which including a banner" →
Correction: “including” → “included” → “which included a banner”
Reason: Proper past tense needed for consistency.
17. "recorded in both Hangul and in Hanja." →
Correction: Removed extra “in” → “in both Hangul and Hanja.”
Reason: “In both A and B” does not require repeating the preposition.
18. "Hanja are generally used rarely" →
Correction: “are” → “is” → “Hanja is generally used rarely”
19. Reason: “Hanja” is treated as an uncountable singular noun in English.
20. "Hanja are used most frequently" →
Correction: “are” → “is” → “Hanja is used most frequently”
Reason: Same as above — subject-verb agreement with uncountable noun.
21. "Hanja are often also used" →
Correction: “are” → “is” → “Hanja is often also used”
Reason: Maintains subject-verb agreement.
Here is the link.
2) Any new, interesting, or unusual items learned
One interesting thing I learned is that North Korea once tried to make the Korean script perfectly morphophonemic by adding new letters in 1948, and South Korea’s first president, Syngman Rhee, attempted to revert to the colonial orthography in 1953. I was surprised to learn that both reforms were short-lived. It was also new to me that President Park Chung Hee’s 5-Year Plan in the 1970s actively promoted Hangul exclusivity, which significantly reduced the use of Hanja in South Korean writing. Despite this, Hanja remains important in academia, especially for reading historical documents and understanding Sino-Korean vocabulary. I found this balance between modern simplification and historical literacy particularly fascinating.
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