Talk:taekwondo

Do means Way or Path, and has nothing to do with the Asian concept of Art.--76.213.87.172 06:21, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

At dictionary.com and merriam-webster.com, and in my two print dictionaries (American Heritage and Oxford), the main spelling of this is "tae kwon do", and in my print dictionaries, the spelling "taekwondo" is not even mentioned, though that could be because they are paperback editions. Is there a good reason that wiktionary has this main entry listed with no spaces? Thanks Fallendarling 14:18, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

The original Korean word is 태권도, one word, no spaces. It was an old way of transcribing many exotic languages such as Amerindian languages, Chinese and Korean using spaces or hyphens between each syllable, but it’s obsolete and we are getting away from that practice. Korean has a word space just like English does, and if they wanted spaces in the word, they would put them in the Korean. —Stephen 17:06, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, there are spaces in Korean. The rules for spaces are different though, so that endings or particles may be attached without spaces and there are variants - same word or a combination with and without spaces - quite annoying! On the topic, Stephen, can we a have an alternative spelling? I've seen "tae kwon do" quite often too. Or perhaps, just a redirect? --Anatoli 00:11, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Oops, we do already. No questions. --Anatoli 00:12, 25 March 2010 (UTC)