Wordley Wednesday

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Words of course have meanings, and root words are important. We can’t know a word’s meaning unless we know where it came from! This is especially true about words used in martial arts! So today’s word is “Taekwon-Do, Tae Kwon Do, Taekwondo.”

First, let’s look at how we spell it in English. Above are the three most common ways we see Taekwon-Do spelled. We generally use the “orthodox” way of spelling it with the hyphen between Kwon and Do. We use this way of spelling for several reasons, the first being this is the preferred way the founder of Taekwon-Do Choi, Hong-hi wanted it. He wanted the Art (Taekwon) and the Way (Do) to have their place, to be distinguished between the two and yet connected. When Taekwon-Do was first being taught to the soldiers of the Republic of Korea 29^th Infantry Division when they saluted they would shout “Tae Kwon” as their custom & courtesy of the day, this was a custom they learned from the US Army while they were in Korea during the Korean Way 1950-53. Many Taekwon-Do schools today give the same courtesy when they salute aka bow in class and demonstrations etc.

In English, it doesn’t matter how you spell the martial art of Taekwon-Do, as long as you truly understand that the martial art is “Taekwon” and the philosophical/way is the “Do.” Now let’s dive even deeper into the meaning and name of Taekwon-Do!

In Korean more appropriately in Hangul the Korean written language, Taekwon-Do does not have the hyphen or the space or even capitalization as it does in English and other Latin-based written systems. In Hangul, it is just simply written as 태권도. The first set of characters resembles the capital letters E and H in English and this is of course ‘Tae’ 태. In Korean it is made of two hangul ㅌand is the hard “T” sound t’, so it is a consonant. The second character is the is the vowel “AE” ㅐ. So like in English where it is three letters, in Korean it also is three letters as there is a single consonant character and a double vowel character. The next set of Hangul is comprised of three characters, that are combined to form the word “Kwon.” Those characters are separately ㄱ= k , ㅝ= wo, ㄴ = n. And of course, the last word DO is comprised of two Hangul of ㄷ= d and ㅗ = o. Now, Hangul is a simple written language that uses 24 basic letters: 14 consonant letters and 10 vowel letters. Since Spoken Korean is much like many other languages it has native words, but also is made of foreign words, the majority of them being of Chinese origin before the creation of the Hangul script they used Hanja 漢字 which used Chinese characters.

So in Hanja (Chinese Charaters) Taekwon-Do is written 跆拳道. As you can see in Hanja, Taekwon-Do is much more complex and is made of many characters/sub-characters. The first character comprises 12 strokes 跆 and can be broken down into two sets of characters 足 and 台. The first radical is 足 means foot, leg, to stamp, walk, or tread with foot. The pictograph originated from the Bone Script that looked like a foot then by 221 BC the pictograph changed to called the small seal script and of course today it looks like 足. The second radical used for “Tae” is 台, and means to stand or counter. So when combined with the first character it means to kick, stomp, or trample with the feet.

拳 The second character is comprised of two main characters. This is pronounced Kwon in Korean, Quan in Chinese, and Kem in Japanese. The character is made up of two radicals, the top one 龹 represents two hands holding something when you view it in the older bone script and is also pronounced as “Quan/Kwon.” The bottom radical 手 is the Hanja for “hand” and “te” as in kara TE in Japanese and “Soo” in Korean as in tang SOO do. You also see this in the Japanese/Chinese martial art of Kempo/Kenpo 拳法 which means “fist method/law.”

道 Do, which is “Tao” in Chinese is another compound charter whose original meaning means to “explain, talk about,” and today means “path, road, way” which is the “philosophical” aspect of Taekwon! In Buddhism and Taoism, it is “doctrine, teaching” which too fits the use of “Do” for us as well. In Hangul it is made of two characters, one stacked on top of the other, the character for “D” is the “ㄷ” and then the “o” is ㅗ when written out it is 도.

So, the martial art we teach/practice is “Taekwon” 태권/跆拳, and when we wish to say the “art of, or way” of “kicking, stamping smashing with foot, fist” then of course we use “Taekwon-Do/Tae Kwon Do, Taekwondo.” When we greet each other in the Dojang we would use “Taekwon” as the greeting, when we bow for demonstrations, or sometimes in general practice, we would salute with the courtesy of “Taekwon.”

TAEKWON!

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Grant-Sahyun has been a long time student of the martial arts and a history major and has been published and continues to promote all martial arts via the Kido Kwan, its publications, students and members. He has traveled internationally to promote the history, techniques and his trademark self defense of the martial arts and is always available to help others.

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