Template talk:Langname-ko

한글 vs. 한국어

한글 is "Hangul" - the Korean phonetic alphabet - and not the language. It is somewhat like using "Cyrillic" when you are talking about Russian (although unlike Cyrillic, Hangul is not used for languages other than Korean, so it's not quite as bad).

Instead, we use the Mediawiki choice for language name: {{#language:ko}} = 한국어 = Hangugeo

In theory, using 한글 as the language name indicates text written in the phonetic alphabet rather than in Hanja (the ideographic alphabet adapted from Chinese characters, but no longer widely used) but writing 한국어 ("Hangugeo" in Hangul) rather than 韓國語 ("Hangugeo" in Hanja) makes that indication implicitly.

According to the wiktionary entry for 한국어, "[한국어 (Hangugeo)] is the most formal in the Republic of Korea (South Korea), but 한국말 (Hangungmal) is more commonly used. In North Korea, 조선말 (Joseonmal) is more common." - ideally we would use an (informal) name which is common for both Koreas, but without knowing which of several choices that might be, Mediawiki's choice seems to be the most reasonable default.

It is possible that using 한글 (Hangul) avoids the problem of a country-neutral language name, but it nonetheless seems less correct, so unless a native Korean-speaker can definitively say that it would be preferred, I have chosen 한국어. --@alex 02:49, 28 March 2008 (EDT)