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From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: Korean-made characters?
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Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1996 04:38:06 GMT
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In article <slrn56pufr.2el.tc31@fandora.resnet.cornell.edu>,
Thomas Chan <tc31@cornell.edu> wrote:
>Are there any hanzi/kanji/hanja/honji/etc which were made in Korea and
>only used in Korea, and if so, could you provide me with some examples or
>pointers to resources on them?

	There are, but they are very few in number (especially compared to
the number created in Japan).  The only one I can think of offhand is
non-tap "paddy" {water (shui3) [full form]} above {field (tian2)}.  There
are at least one or two others in reasonably common use that I can't
remember right now.

	Martin's _Korean-English Dictionary_ (Yale, 1977) has a fairly
comprehensive listing of hanca/hanja and it specifies which are of local
coinage.  However, they are listed phonetically, so there's no easy way to
look up only those characters you're interested in.

>I know of the core character set (along with PRC and Japanese
>simplications) that is commmonly shared; Japanese-only ones ("hatake",
>"hataraku", etc); Cantonese-only dialectal ones ("lip", "mou", "fan", 
>etc); as well as derivative/inspired creations such as Japanese
>kana, Korean hangul, 

"One of these things is not like the others."  Hankul/Han'geul owes
precious little to Chinese script; perhaps only the custom of writing in
syllabic blocks.

>Jurchen script (I do not know what they are called),

Neither do I.

>Vietnamese script (I do not know what they are called; they are made by
>compounding two Chinese characters); 

"nom" (the character for which is, if I recall correctly, a modified form
of nan2 "south").

>so, have any ever been
>designed specifically for Korean usage?

	At least two systems of simplified Chinese characters (roughly
similar to Japanese kana) have been devised in Korea to write native
Korean words.  I don't think any remnants have survived into modern times.


-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
