User talk:KYPark/block

Block
I am writing to explain the reasonings behind your one day block. First of all, let me say quite emphatically that the vast majority of your contributions are top-notch and are very genuinely appreciated. However, there are a number of issues which have been raised before that need to be addressed. The first (and most important) is your continuing persistence in pushing the theory of a genetic relationship between Korean and certain European languages. While it's possible (albeit unlikely) that historical linguistics may one day validate this, the fact remains that current theory considers this postulate to be absurd. As Wiktionary strives to be a respected dictionary, we simply cannot afford to have this on our site. Please desist in noting European cognates for native Korean words, and please go back and remove any you have inserted in the past. Secondly, Stephen has discussed with you the transliteration format for Korean entries, and you have chosen to ignore this. If you believe there is a better way to transliterate Korean words than the current standard, by all means bring it up in the Beer Parlour. However, until a different method is chosen, the method which Stephen has noted is the community standard, and should be adhered to. It is my hope that these issues can be resolved, as further behavior of a similar nature will result in longer blocks, and we do not want to lose such a valuable contributor to Wiktionary. Atelaes 05:48, 27 March 2007 (UTC)


 * my rely

Thank you so much for granting me such a one-day break that I absolutely needed indeed.

Recently I have edited a few Etymology sections, all related to a common Finno-Ugric root *walke, whence especially Finnish valkea, clearly suggesting possible ("arbeit unlikely" as you said) cognates with Korean 밝다 "to be bright" and 박쥐 "bat," from the Ural-Altaic perspective. Elsewhere I have seldom edited such sections to claim such cognates between European and Korean, but surely offered comparative data to serve for pure curiosity rather than cognate claim. I am far from being convinced why such pure, goodwill information, especially without any clear etymological claim, should be blamed for being "absurd." You can blame me as far as you remain reasonabe; otherwise you are to blame. May I refer you to the meaning of absurd as follows:


 * "ridiculously unreasonable, unsound, or incongruous"
 * "having no rational or orderly relationship to human life"

Surely I am personally interested in restoring the possible ("arbeit unlikely" as you said) Eurasian, especially Euro-Korean, connection that, perhaps together with paganism, may have been unfortunately disconnected self-deceptively by Roman Christianity. India is a highly convincing link that yielded both Indo-Europeanism and Bhuddism that has much affected Korea almost two millenia. No one could sanely deny some possibility of Euro-Korean cognates. The current total denial is thus most absurd and ridiculous, likely meddling with Christianity, Eurocentrism and the like, suppressing the opposing views by all means. This may be called, and due to, the Western premium, I am afraid.

The theory of single linguistic ancestry originated from the Bible. It is quite mystic but still influential. The idea of Proto-Indo-European and the like simply looks like a narrowed version. The worst seems to be self-contained, self-sufficient, self-sustaining, self-deceiving, and even self-defeating. How would it be possible for Indo-European to remain unaffected by the external forces, including Semitic Abrahamism. I wish PIE not to contribute to such a myth as pure IE. Instead, languages need be compared both within and without a family, say, beyond PIE! Simply I like to get such a missing job done. Nonetheless, I would like to remain cool and refrain from hurriedly claiming any congnates. My job is just to offer comparative data, while cognate judgment belongs to scholors. The [citation needed] tag or the like would be enough for readers to know that my data are not warranted by scholars.

The balance between action and reaction in the widest sense, or Yin and Yang, is indeed a cosmic nature in autonomy. Blocking or the like would serve as a shift, right or wrong. Most theses or theories are to be counter-balanced by anti-theses or anti-theories, hence "Conjectures and Refutations" (1963) in Karl Popper's terms, and the similar philosophy such as found in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (1962) by Thomas Kuhn, and "Against Method" (1975) or "Anything goes" by Paul Feyerabend. All these mainstream philosophers of science, especially Feyerabend, ask justice to be done to the minority theses. Most theories begin to emerge and evolve from such a minor state.

May I seriously ask here if Wiktionary would deny to do justice to the minority views so as to promote the majority only in view of its neutrality and respect? Then it would look like sort of totalitarianism that is so awkward in the free world now, I fear. And I would definitely like to fight against such an ahistoric monster. Even paganism is coming back, fortunate or not, from which Wikipedia would be the last to face away. It was regarded as such a monster and destroyed. Still it remains such, suffering minority.

Please leave the Wiktionary neutrality to the autonomy of pros and cons of editors, rather than the dictative blocking of any side. My edits, however problematic, is always subject to counter-edits. I cannot avoid. This is the royal road how Wik keeps neutral or balanced, and how it makes itself best of all, I guess. On the other hand, administrators may be so dictative as to be compared to the problematic traditional system of referees, as usual in academic journals, probably doing harm to the Wiktionary spirit and respect. Academics may be so familiar and happy with such a screen, designed to protect their own interest rather than readers' freedom of information. Wikipedia was born the very opposite, I guess.

Wiktionary is supposed to adopt the Revised Romanization of Hangul, and have much difficulty in suppressing the other systems. This would be because of the Wiktionary justice to the minority on the one hand and the editorial autonomy on the other. However, my own system, if any but not published, for example cannot be used here. Since Stephen, I have accepted his way and added it next to mine, which is not really mine but also derived from a special provision or requirement at the end of the RR, supplemented and inevitably contrasted to the general that he solely insists. My way is not without reasons, but to let Romanized roots always remain as such, that is, unchanged in actual uses as far as possibe. By doing so, I could do justice to those who ignore Hangul and read Roman letters only. Should I stop, or be blamed for, being kinder, serving more information of potential use than other editors?

Lastly, personally I do wish for a far better system for Korean Romanization. And I am sure it should be possible, depending on the needs in mind. The traditional systems paid too much attention to phonetics that most foreigners can pronounce Korean words closest. This objective is not so bad but tends to ignore orthography. Within Wiktionary, this could be better achieved by the phonetic signs than Romanization. On the other hand, Romanized orthography may be needed in addition to Hangul, however excellent and lovable it may be. Suppose such is a reasonable objective that we have to design a new system. I myself drafted one. And I would like to bring it to Beer Parlor, should Wiktionary be really interested in having a better system for its own sake.

--KYPark 09:38, 28 March 2007 (UTC)


 * You know, in Middle Ages naive scholars tried to "prove" that Latin and Ancient Greek somehow "descend" from Hebrew (which was termed as "Adamic langage" or "God's language"), by applying ad-hoc invented arbitrary permutations/elisions/additions of letters. Even when Sir William Jones discovered remarkable similarities between Avestan, Middle Persian, Sanskrit and old Europe's classical languages (in which he was educated), some still blindly claimed that "dirty Brahmins derived their own speech from Greek" (not the exact quote, but you get the point).
 * The term cognate: strictly refers to already established genetic relationship; when there is none, similarly sounding words whose semantic field partially overlaps are either borrowings, or arose by chance. You cannot claim that obvious borrowings like word for gong: and menu: are cognates, or try to masquerade it under the "Euro-Korean" category. Establishing a genetic relationship between languages requires a lot more than lists of words with similar phonetic values: it requires identifying isoglosses that were a result of common development, and cannot be explained away as borrowings or an areal feature (convergence/contact). No common development = no genetic relationship.
 * I strongly advise you to abandon any kind of Uralo-Altaic speculations in etymologies, justifying them as "minority views that need attention". They're not some "minority views", they're complete 19th century rubbish, just like are modern Sumero-Turkic, Albano-Illyrian and similar theories (notwithstanding the fact that they've been advocated by people with Ph.D.s). For a particularly fun side of these, see e.g. WT:RFD. Dušan is obviously not stupid, and knows his stuff, but his "Xur-Bel-Gon human speech formula" is just insane.
 * Historical linguistics is not an exact science, and communis opionio is essential for filtering nonsense.
 * Please don't push forward labeling obvious borrowings and similarly sounding words as "cognates", for it will result in blocks. --Ivan Štambuk 21:01, 14 May 2008 (UTC)