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AFAIK (maybe someone can correct or confirm) it is essential for studying law in Korea. To avoid ambiguity with identically sounding words, Chinese characters a

AFAIK (maybe someone can correct or confirm) it is essential for studying law in Korea. To avoid ambiguity with identically sounding words, Chinese characters are used in law.

pas 2y ago
It seems there's room for "legal innovation" there, by providing definitions early on in various texts to disambiguate, and then sticking to them throughout the text!? I assume it's already done anyway for some terms. Why isn't this more widespread?
- mannykannot 2y ago
  Innovation is quite often resisted by those who have mastered the hard way of doing things, though I have no idea whether this is the case here.
- fenomas 2y ago
  I suppose for the same reason that law in English-speaking countries still uses so much Latin?
  - hollerith 2y ago
    The Latin (and Old French) words don't require a complicated arrangement to type them on a keyboard.
    - Tor3 2y ago
      For what it's worth, writing Japanese on a normal keyboard is easy, even for me. Fast too. And my wife is super-fast. I have no knowledge of how this is done in Chinese, or Korean for that matter (not to mention other non-Latin languages like Arabic, Thai or Hebrew), but for Japanese it's easy. There are two main ways of doing it, some prefer one, some the other.
  - pas 2y ago
    But that's the opposite of innovation? Basically, instead of describing things in detail drafters opt to use shortcuts, but that's how people end up getting fucked in court by some "technicality". Innovation would be to just put in the verbiage, precisely define terms, fuck tradition.
coliveira 2y ago
This is the reason Chinese characters are not going away. It is essential to comprehending written documents, because the Chinese language (and similars) have too many sounds that are the same or very similar for different words. So, if they abolish the characters and use something purely phonetic they'll have to reinvent the whole language to be understandable, especially for anything that is not colloquial.
- jimmaswell 2y ago
  > they'll have to reinvent the whole language to be understandable Frankly, the whole language seems like such a mess that maybe they should?
  - coliveira 2y ago
    Good luck convincing 1.5 billion people that they need to reinvent a language they have used for thousands of years in order to satisfy somebody else...
    - James_K 2y ago
      In the Chinese style of government, people don't necessarily need to be convinced of something for it to be implemented.
- James_K 2y ago
  This is not a problem in other languages. The word "set" in English has 7 different meanings, yet you rarely struggle to tell which is intended. If the language can be understood when spoken, it can be understood when written phonetically.
  - coliveira 2y ago
    Other languages are not Chinese. In Chinese a lot of the meaning in the spoken language is conveyed through tones and other conversational cues.

AFAIK (maybe someone can correct or confirm) it is essential for studying law in Korea. To avoid ambiguity with identically sounding words, Chinese characters are used in law.

pas 2y ago

It seems there's room for "legal innovation" there, by providing definitions early on in various texts to disambiguate, and then sticking to them throughout the text!? I assume it's already done anyway for some terms. Why isn't this more widespread?

mannykannot 2y ago
Innovation is quite often resisted by those who have mastered the hard way of doing things, though I have no idea whether this is the case here.
fenomas 2y ago
I suppose for the same reason that law in English-speaking countries still uses so much Latin?
- hollerith 2y ago
  The Latin (and Old French) words don't require a complicated arrangement to type them on a keyboard.
  - Tor3 2y ago
    For what it's worth, writing Japanese on a normal keyboard is easy, even for me. Fast too. And my wife is super-fast. I have no knowledge of how this is done in Chinese, or Korean for that matter (not to mention other non-Latin languages like Arabic, Thai or Hebrew), but for Japanese it's easy. There are two main ways of doing it, some prefer one, some the other.
- pas 2y ago
  But that's the opposite of innovation? Basically, instead of describing things in detail drafters opt to use shortcuts, but that's how people end up getting fucked in court by some "technicality". Innovation would be to just put in the verbiage, precisely define terms, fuck tradition.

coliveira 2y ago

This is the reason Chinese characters are not going away. It is essential to comprehending written documents, because the Chinese language (and similars) have too many sounds that are the same or very similar for different words. So, if they abolish the characters and use something purely phonetic they'll have to reinvent the whole language to be understandable, especially for anything that is not colloquial.

jimmaswell 2y ago
> they'll have to reinvent the whole language to be understandable Frankly, the whole language seems like such a mess that maybe they should?
- coliveira 2y ago
  Good luck convincing 1.5 billion people that they need to reinvent a language they have used for thousands of years in order to satisfy somebody else...
  - James_K 2y ago
    In the Chinese style of government, people don't necessarily need to be convinced of something for it to be implemented.
James_K 2y ago
This is not a problem in other languages. The word "set" in English has 7 different meanings, yet you rarely struggle to tell which is intended. If the language can be understood when spoken, it can be understood when written phonetically.
- coliveira 2y ago
  Other languages are not Chinese. In Chinese a lot of the meaning in the spoken language is conveyed through tones and other conversational cues.