Dear Folks:
I can't speak to whatever dynamics goes on among contributors here on this Forum. What I am posting about concerns the recent "open letter" to a Forum contributor concerning his apparent penchant for dealing with people whose use of language seems to fall below his expectation for them. To this I have nothing to contribute. It raises an interesting question, however, and one that strikes close to where I live as a practitioner of Korean Martial Arts (KMA).
People here will be familiar I think with the wide variance in terms, their transliteration back and forth among Japanese, Korean and Chinese as well as those nasty dialectic and spelling variances. For those to whom this is no special problem perhaps another string might be more thought-provoking. But for those of us who are concerned with the true difference between "lightening" and "a lightening bug" perhaps we might make a list of those tools which have proven to be the most helpful in guiding our communication skills. Certainly a good collegiate WEBSTERS or FUNK & WAGNELLS is a fine start for English. Does anyone have recommendations for Japanese? Korean? Chinese? Thoughts? Comments?
Best Wishes,
Bruce