Template talk:ko-pos

Suggestion for modification of template
I have a suggestion for the modification of this template: as of now all of the romanizations and the names of the romanizations are in one long parenthetical line along with the hangul spelling. Can we please have the hangul on one line, then each of the romanizations on separate bulleted lines following, the way entries always were before? It's very jumbled the current way. Thank you, Badagnani 19:55, 11 November 2006 (UTC)


 * It may seem jumbled, but it is very consistent with many other 'inflection' templates we use here on en.wiktionary.org. Would a dual layout like  help?  --Connel MacKenzie 21:46, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Whatever the case, as a heavy Wikipedia user as well as editor, the old system of listing romanizations on separate bulleted lines was infinitely more usable and readable than this new template. It's just a mess. I can't see how the template you refer to above appears in real life from the link you provided. Badagnani 23:05, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Two alternatives (although in Chinese) for the clear presentation of multiple pronunciations can be seen at 管子 and 紅茶 (the former is the simplest and the latter is a more complex solution. Both avoid the long running parenthetical paragraph with italicized romanization names and lack of colons, which causes a great deal of confusion.  Badagnani 23:18, 11 November 2006 (UTC)


 * The problem here (if there is one) is entries with three different romanizations, when we usually use one (and SK Revised is our standard). Yale should probably go away, but it is still the most significant romanization in the linguistics literature. The other two examples you point to will change anyway, as the Cantonese, Mandarin, and Min Nan go in separate language sections. Robert Ullmann 13:40, 12 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Who decided that SK Revised is “our” standard? I'd like to see the discussion and the vote on it.
 * 2000 Rev is the most ambiguous of the three major romanisations and fairly useless to show a word's pronunciation. Let's think about the purpose of romanisations in Wiktionary entries, and then think about which system(s) best suit the purpose. Dustsucker 16:15, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

The objection is that the Korean template does not read easily the way it is designed, as described earlier: one long line with italics, lack of colons, everything run together in one long parenthetical line. It just is not easily usable. Yes, Yale isn't necessary but Revised and McCune-Reichauer are good to keep, but please, in an easily readable, easily usable format. The current format is not. Badagnani 23:04, 12 November 2006 (UTC)


 * What makes Yale unnecessary? If an entry only had Yale, it would still be entirely possible to deduce a word's hangeul (for all users who – temporarily or not – lack access to a system equipped with readable Korean fonts), SK Rev, McC-Rsr, and in many cases even its North Korean orthography as well as whether there was/is vowel length in its 20th century or dialectal pronunciation. It is not possible to deduce Yale from hangeul or from the other two romanisations. See Yale_Romanization, or Korean_romanization. Dustsucker 16:23, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Refining of template
I think I need to be more specific about my recommendations. If you see any Wikipedia entry on a Korean or Chinese topic you will see that the format used there for parenthetical explanations of Chinese words or names is presented in a much clearer way than in the current state of this template. For example, see the first line of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yunnan -- and see how the discrete bits of information are separated by semicolons in a very clear manner, also without the use of italics; and a colon separates the name of the romanization from the romanization. (I realize that the article is about a Chinese subject, but in order to apply this format to this template, one could simply follow the same non-use of italics, and use of colons and semicolons.) It would be very beneficial, I believe, to adjust this template at least to follow Wikipedia format which has been arrived at over time as the clearest expression of this information. I have looked inside the template code in this page but can make no sense of it. Badagnani 07:16, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

A different tack?
I like this template, particularly the inclusion of romanizations. Kudos to User:Robert Ullmann for taking what is definitely a step in the right direction. There are some problems I have with it, though (I'm picky)... It puts romanization and hanja information right in the main line (or whatever it's called), which in most languages is where the inflectional information would go. This is problematic, since I think that there is useful information we can put in that line -- at least for nouns, verbs, and "adjectives." For instance, most Korean dictionaries provide either three or four principal parts for verbs, e.g. 쉽다, 쉬워, 쉬우니, 쉽습니다. The last of these is often omitted, as in this entry, but would probably make sense to include here, since few EN users will be familiar with the rules for conjugating the formal style in Korean. Of course we will have to figure out what to call them... Likewise for nouns, though the particles 가/이, 은/는, and 을/를 do not form a proper declensional system, they are important and high-frequency, and the rules governing the choice within each pair are likely to be opaque to most users. (I'll concede that the case for this is weaker than with verbs/adjectives).

At the risk of treading on toes, I've been toying with a different approach; an example of this is at 원앙:
 * 1) Put the romanizations in the "Pronunciation" section, in a separate column from the phonetic hangul and IPA. (Template:ko-pron simplifies this).
 * 2) Use Template:infl for the inflection line.

A disadvantage of this approach is that the definition itself becomes buried yet further, sometimes dropping off the first screen if there's anything in the "etymology" section. Not happy about that...

Anyway, hope I'll be pardoned for rambling on about this here, since About Korean doesn't exist just yet. Cheers, -- Visviva 08:18, 8 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Oops, now it does. -- Visviva 08:36, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Category index
This template does not appear to allow a jamo-indexed category, so using this template categorizes the entry under the full hangeul character. Should there be a jamo index parameter here? Rod (A. Smith) 04:42, 10 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Looks like this is taken care of. I think, however, that we might save ourselves a lot of grief, especially in longer entries with numerous categories, if we just use the  magic word, i.e.  . -- Visviva 02:10, 25 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the trick.  Hadn't seen that.  Rod (A. Smith) 05:14, 25 May 2007 (UTC)