Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Oldest Cookbook in Korean

atlasobscura.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 66 posts

Re: The Oldest Cookbook in Korean

#51

Post by fidelramos »

bane wrote: post #41
supernova87a wrote: post #13

I think it took me a while to understand (after being told by native speakers) that Korean and Japanese are a bit of a linguistic evolutionary puzzle, especially if you thought that because their characters look like Chinese, their spoken languages are related to Chinese. They are not. The languages must have come first / evolved independent of China, and then a wave of foreign commerce / scholarly / government influ…

A close analog to the place Chinese has with Koreans and Japanese speakers is the place ancient Latin and Greek have today with English speakers. Lots of loan words, many of which aren't even recognized as such by native speakers, and uses in prestige modes like philosophy, science, etc. One difference is that Rome fell and the Normans brought a highly changed Romance language with them into England. While Korea and…

You are right that Japanese as a language existed before Chinese writing system was introduced. Learning details of how this happened is fascinating when you know some Japanese, it explains many of the quirks of the language, and why it's so complicated. I will try to make a summary.

Chinese language was introduced mostly between 4th and 7th centuries [1]. Japanese had no writing system at that time, so they adopted Chinese ideograms (hanzi) and vocabulary, but changed the pronunciation to fit the much (much!) simpler Japanese phonetics. They also started to use the ideograms for words that already existed in Japanese, with their Japanese reading. That's why Japanese ideograms (kanji) have two kinds of readings: Chinese readings (onyomi) and Japanese readings (kunyomi). To make it even more complicated many kanji have multiple readings, and you have to learn which to use depending on the context or the word it's part of.

Later some ideograms started to be used purely for their phonetic, ignoring the semantics, to better match Japanese grammar. With time these ideograms were simplified and they became two different syllabaries: hiragana [2] and katakana [3]. These are not ideograms, but letters that represent a full syllable. Hiragana is used for grammar particles, to spell out kanji and for some words. Katakana is used for borrowed foreign words, or sometimes as a sort of "italics", to emphasize words.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_influence_on_japanese_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana#Table_of_hiragana [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana#Table_of_katakana

Re: The Oldest Cookbook in Korean

#52

Post by johnwalkr »

smallnamespace wrote: post #38
supernova87a wrote: post #13

I think it took me a while to understand (after being told by native speakers) that Korean and Japanese are a bit of a linguistic evolutionary puzzle, especially if you thought that because their characters look like Chinese, their spoken languages are related to Chinese. They are not. The languages must have come first / evolved independent of China, and then a wave of foreign commerce / scholarly / government influ…

> but it may not necessarily have relation to what the sounds are in Chinese if someone were to read the characters as if Chinese But they are quite similar for this example: Korean: Eumsik dimibang (like 'Eyumsik dimeebong') Mandarin pronunciation: Yinshi Zhiweifang (sort of like 'Yinshur Jurwayfong') Cantonese pronunciation: Yamsik Jimeifong (like 'Yumsik jimayfong') Korean Hanja (chinese character - 汉子) words most…

There's a handful of kanji called kokuji[1] created in Japan, and a few of those became used in China too. And I can't think of any off-hand, but there's a few interesting mistakes, like a kanji for a species of fish assigned to a different species in Japan.

[1] https://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/kokuji-list.html

Re: The Oldest Cookbook in Korean

#53

Post by b34r »

> she describes how the noblewoman would look down at the village during dinnertime, to see which homes did not have smoke rising from the kitchen, meaning the household had no rice to cook. She would then invite families in need to work on her land so she could feed them.

What a wonderful person. I’m glad her work is being preserved and honored.

Re: The Oldest Cookbook in Korean

#54

Post by magicsmoke »

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #28
gibolt wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion. Words can independently change and evolve over time, while still using the same base. As a Chinese speaker, Korean very much sounds closeish and Japanese is often similar enough to realize a distant split. It is important to remember that all branches of a tree grow. China has thousands of dialects all co-evolving and we don't know which the others could have split from a…

Although there are a tremendous number of borrowings out of Chinese into both languages, there aren't many structural similarities between Chinese and Korean or Chinese and Japanese. For example, Chinese has no system of verb conjugation, whereas Korean and Japanese both do, conjugating for the past and present, among other aspects. Chinese also does not have a system of adjective inflection, whereas Korean and Japan…

The null hypothesis we use in the absence of proof reflects our cultural assumptions, and I think this is a case where Chinese and European assumptions collide. From the European standpoint, "we don't know the origin of this language, so our null hypothesis is that it developed independently" contrasts with China's "we don't know the origin of this language, so our null hypothesis is that it's related to another language nearby." Given the long documented history of various Chinese languages and culture in East Asia and the lack of competing origins with equally dense documented history, it's quite common for a laymen to assume that everything is linked in some way to Ancient China. Old Chinese has records dating back to 1000 BC, while Old Japanese and Old Korean both have their oldest writings from post 700 CE. That's a 1700 year gap for our null hypothesis to fill. In a 1700 year gap where we only have records of Chinese, then suddenly we start getting records of Korean and Japanese, the idea that there's some kind of cross pollination from Chinese we aren't aware of in that undocumented period isn't too big of a leap.

Another language origin could have been nomadic peoples to the north traveling across the Eurasian steppes, and frankly I'm more inclined to believe that's where Korean and Japanese actually originate from. However, despite the growing study of these peoples that have been neglected in traditional Chinese historiography, they don't leave behind enough archeological evidence for us to prove something like the Altaic language family convincingly, so we're back to null hypothesis and cultural assumptions.

Re: The Oldest Cookbook in Korean

#55

Post by solidsnack9000 »

magicsmoke wrote: post #54
solidsnack9000 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although there are a tremendous number of borrowings out of Chinese into both languages, there aren't many structural similarities between Chinese and Korean or Chinese and Japanese. For example, Chinese has no system of verb conjugation, whereas Korean and Japanese both do, conjugating for the past and present, among other aspects. Chinese also does not have a system of adjective inflection, whereas Korean and Japan…

The null hypothesis we use in the absence of proof reflects our cultural assumptions, and I think this is a case where Chinese and European assumptions collide. From the European standpoint, "we don't know the origin of this language, so our null hypothesis is that it developed independently" contrasts with China's "we don't know the origin of this language, so our null hypothesis is that it's related to another lang…

The logical fallacy of "argument from ignorance" is not about a null hypothesis or culturally accepted default. It's a way of reframing things to lend credibility to any hypothesis without actually providing evidence in support of it.

When we look at the grammar of Chinese, Japanese and Korean, it raises a lot of doubts about the possibility of lineal descent -- about the idea that Japanese and Korean are a kind of Chinese. These differences provide positive support for the idea that Chinese bears no especially close relationship to the other two, while discouraging the idea that they are close descendants. Evidence is often like that: supporting what is true while disconfirming what isn't.

Re: The Oldest Cookbook in Korean

#56

Post by magicsmoke »

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #55
magicsmoke wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The null hypothesis we use in the absence of proof reflects our cultural assumptions, and I think this is a case where Chinese and European assumptions collide. From the European standpoint, "we don't know the origin of this language, so our null hypothesis is that it developed independently" contrasts with China's "we don't know the origin of this language, so our null hypothesis is that it's related to another lang…

The logical fallacy of "argument from ignorance" is not about a null hypothesis or culturally accepted default. It's a way of reframing things to lend credibility to any hypothesis without actually providing evidence in support of it. When we look at the grammar of Chinese, Japanese and Korean, it raises a lot of doubts about the possibility of lineal descent -- about the idea that Japanese and Korean are a kind of C…

Let's leave aside whether Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are related because I think we're both in agreement they're not.

My point is that what the "unsupported hypothesis" is depends on your cultural viewpoint. It could be that "not descended from Chinese" is the unsupported hypothesis if you grew up in an environment where most things you experience are descended from Chinese.

Or as another example, if we got into a discussion about whether the sun will rise tomorrow, it's expected that I would have to prove that sun won't rise tomorrow instead of proving that the sun will rise tomorrow. There's no evidence either way until tomorrow arrives. But our baseline assumption is that the sun will rise tomorrow because that's what it's done every prior day. Our null hypothesis are informed by everyday experience, and that's very much a part of our cultural background.

Re: The Oldest Cookbook in Korean

#57

Post by solidsnack9000 »

magicsmoke wrote: post #56
solidsnack9000 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The logical fallacy of "argument from ignorance" is not about a null hypothesis or culturally accepted default. It's a way of reframing things to lend credibility to any hypothesis without actually providing evidence in support of it. When we look at the grammar of Chinese, Japanese and Korean, it raises a lot of doubts about the possibility of lineal descent -- about the idea that Japanese and Korean are a kind of C…

Let's leave aside whether Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are related because I think we're both in agreement they're not. My point is that what the "unsupported hypothesis" is depends on your cultural viewpoint. It could be that "not descended from Chinese" is the unsupported hypothesis if you grew up in an environment where most things you experience are descended from Chinese. Or as another example, if we got into a…

In the structure of an argument from ignorance, the unsupported hypothesis is the one that someone is trying to support with negative information, which is to say, with an argument like "We don't know that isn't true...". It's a form of argument that we should be wary of.

The unsupported hypothesis in argument from ignorance doesn't have to be any particular hypothesis, or a culturally supported hypothesis. Argument from ignorance is a way to frame any hypothesis for which we're not offering positive evidence in a speciously credible way.

Re: The Oldest Cookbook in Korean

#58

Post by magicsmoke »

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #57
magicsmoke wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's leave aside whether Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are related because I think we're both in agreement they're not. My point is that what the "unsupported hypothesis" is depends on your cultural viewpoint. It could be that "not descended from Chinese" is the unsupported hypothesis if you grew up in an environment where most things you experience are descended from Chinese. Or as another example, if we got into a…

In the structure of an argument from ignorance, the unsupported hypothesis is the one that someone is trying to support with negative information, which is to say, with an argument like "We don't know that isn't true...". It's a form of argument that we should be wary of. The unsupported hypothesis in argument from ignorance doesn't have to be any particular hypothesis, or a culturally supported hypothesis. Argument…

I think this is just semantics. I could have easily stated the unsupported hypothesis as "Korean has an independent origin from Chinese."

Re: The Oldest Cookbook in Korean

#59

Post by solidsnack9000 »

magicsmoke wrote: post #58
solidsnack9000 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the structure of an argument from ignorance, the unsupported hypothesis is the one that someone is trying to support with negative information, which is to say, with an argument like "We don't know that isn't true...". It's a form of argument that we should be wary of. The unsupported hypothesis in argument from ignorance doesn't have to be any particular hypothesis, or a culturally supported hypothesis. Argument…

I think this is just semantics. I could have easily stated the unsupported hypothesis as "Korean has an independent origin from Chinese."

The form of an argument is the opposite of semantics. If someone made an argument like "Korean has an independent origin from Chinese. You might doubt it, but what evidence do you have that it's not true? If we don't know that it's not true..." then that would be argument from ignorance, as well: notice how no supporting evidence is mustered for the hypothesis.

Re: The Oldest Cookbook in Korean

#60

Post by magicsmoke »

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #59
magicsmoke wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is just semantics. I could have easily stated the unsupported hypothesis as "Korean has an independent origin from Chinese."

The form of an argument is the opposite of semantics. If someone made an argument like "Korean has an independent origin from Chinese. You might doubt it, but what evidence do you have that it's not true? If we don't know that it's not true..." then that would be argument from ignorance, as well: notice how no supporting evidence is mustered for the hypothesis.

P1: "Korean has an independent origin from Chinese."

P2: "I don't believe this is true" (because my background assumption is that things originate from China)

P1: "What evidence do you have that Korean isn't independent of Chinese"

P2: "None, we have no evidence from this time period."

P1: "Therefore, Korean has an independent origin from Chinese."

P2: "That is argument from ignorance."

P1: "Here are differences between Korean and Chinese."

P2: "I don't believe this is sufficient evidence to enough to revise my doubt about your hypothesis." (because of the strength of my belief in my background assumptions)

What I'm pointing out is that P2's background assumptions and strength of belief in such is inherent to his culture and life experience. This could have easily gone

P1: "Korean has an independent origin from Chinese."

P2: "Okay" (because my background assumption is that things have independent origins.)

Or in an alternate universe

P1: "Korean originates from Chinese."

P2: "Okay" (because my background assumption is that things originate from China)

Post reply on HN