How much Korean terminology do you use when you teach and why?

[Daniel Sullivan]

How do you do kendo without sparring? All the dojo here tend to heavily focus on sparring. I have often thought about taking up kendo.

I don't do kendo without sparring. I teach kendo in space rented at a dance studio to about eight students in Sandy Spring, Maryland.

I teach geomdo at a taekwondo/hapkido school in Frederick, Maryland one day a week, and it is not kendo. We use a mokgeom/mokdo (a bokuto/bokken), not the jukdo (shinai).

I put the curriculum together for the kwanjang, who also happens to be my hapkido sabeom, at her request because she has students who have an interest in sword work and she does not have a sword art background beyond a couple of sword forms that she learned from her old hapkido instructor.

As to the nature of the class, I utilize a lot of repetative cutting drills, both stationary, back and forth, and in line drills. I have a total of nine hyeong that are performed in a fixed pattern, similar to the way that taekwondo pumse are done, and four two person sword sets, each of which consists of five partnered hyeong. The fixed patern hyeong are a combination of forms that I had put together for competitions that I was in and forms that I put together for tests that I took.

Nothing particularly fancy, but it is actual swordsmanship and not XMA, or color corp exercises performed with a sword. I went to a lot of trouble to find Korean terminology for sword specific concepts and terms. I had a strong base from GM Kim, who while he didn't use a lot of Korean in his teaching, would hand out vocab sheets at each test and quiz us on the vocab at each test. I found hangeul and hanja for most of the words as well.

Many kendoka here also study iaido at the same time from their kendo teachers.

I train in Tenshinsho Jigen Ryu kenjutsu/iaido presently, but do not work any of it into my teaching at this point. When I get to a point where I am permitted to teach Tenshinsho Jigen Ryu, I will do so with great joy and only with my sensei's permission, but given that I have been with my sensei for about two months, I think it would be quite premature.

When I trained under GM Kim and Master Choi, we practiced whatever kenjustu and iai the two of them had picked up and worked into the geom beop curriculum along with the twelve hyeong that GM Kim had introduced. Kendo shiai and geom beop were on separate nights and really constituted separate arts. Prior to that, in the late eighties I learned whatever kenjutsu my former taekwondo instructor had picked up along the way.

When we were sparring, aside from the calling of the targets in Korean (meori/heori/sonmok/mok), calling the shinai and bokuto a jukdo and mokdo and a little Korean interspersed here and there, the terminology was mostly in English, while specifically kendo concepts were expressed in Japanese. Both masters hold grades in the FIK, though GM Kim decided to start his own organization in about 2004. It consists of his two schools at this point, so he is essentially an independent, as I am at this point.

 

[puunui]

Up to black belt, I learned and used the terminology as much as I could. Upon training with some Koreans, I discovered that everything I knew was so badly pronounced that it was unintelligible. After going back to my seniors to try and fix this and finding that we all were basically saying it wrong, I stopped using Korean except for the terms that I had actually verified that were part of an actual language.

It would be worth your while to build a relationship with a native korean speaker who can assist you in learning the proper pronunciation. I find that it is also helpful to learn to read and to a lesser extent to write in hangul, which takes a couple of hours to learn. There are also dvd and tapes out there which explain the proper pronunciation of the common korean language usage for martial arts. I don't know how good they are, but that is out there.

 

[puunui]

I don't do kendo without sparring. I teach kendo in space rented at a dance studio to about eight students in Sandy Spring, Maryland. I teach geomdo at a taekwondo/hapkido school in Frederick, Maryland one day a week, and it is not kendo. We use a mokgeom/mokdo (a bokuto/bokken), not the jukdo (shinai).

Ok, that makes sense. How does the geomdo compare to the Tenshinsho Jigen Ryu kenjutsu/iaido that you are learning now? Similar? Different?

 

[Daniel Sullivan]

It would be worth your while to build a relationship with a native korean speaker who can assist you in learning the proper pronunciation. I find that it is also helpful to learn to read and to a lesser extent to write in hangul, which takes a couple of hours to learn. There are also dvd and tapes out there which explain the proper pronunciation of the common korean language usage for martial arts. I don't know how good they are, but that is out there.

Thankfully, I spent a lot of time working on my terminology with GM Kim. For the past couple of years, I have been having lunch almost daily at a Korean owned deli and I know the owners pretty well. They have been incredibly generous in helping me with pronunciations. They also make great udon, bibimbap, and bulgogi!

 

[Daniel Sullivan]

Ok, that makes sense. How does the geomdo compare to the Tenshinsho Jigen Ryu kenjutsu/iaido that you are learning now? Similar? Different?

Well, they are similar by necessity in some areas, but most of what I have been learning with them has been iai, which I already had exposure to, but am now receiving the kind of correction and training that will help me to get better. Not to mention that I am doing formal kata and not simply things that were kind of mish-mashed together. Meaning no disrespect to GM Kim's program, it is pretty much everything that he learned tossed into the bowl and mixed together.

He and Master Choi were not iaidoka, but had picked up enough along the way to work it into the curriculum. Neither of them were kenjutsuka, but again, they'd picked up enough over the years to work it into the curriculum. I had learned the Nihon kendo kata from them, though they didn't call it that, and as I had mentioned, solo hyeong as well.

Tenshinsho Jigen Ryu has kenjutsu, but so far, I am on the first three iai kata. I've learned kamae, but these were not new to me, though they have some fine details that are peculiar to their ryu. The only new kamae that I learned were tonbo and shin tonbo. Tonbo is similar to hasso, but the elbows are out further (thus the name) and shin tonbo is essentially a jodan version of tonbo.

Aside from the emphasis on iai, I haven't been with it long enough to pick out anything more substantial. I will say that my geomdo classes probably resemble an HDGD class more in terms of the make up; solo forms, parntered forms, and Korean termonology. I have heard that HDGD was grafting on some kind of sparring and what I had seen looked like purloined kendo and did not impress me. That was several years ago, so I have no idea what HDGD looks like at this point. In terms of technical content, my material resembles more a kenjutsu class.

 

[ETinCYQX]

Basic commands. I dislike the Korean for kicking techniques because a lot of the time my English names provide a hint as to what they're supposed to be. The real reason of course is that my instructors don't use them.

 

[WMKS Shogun]

When I came up through the ranks in Tae Kwon Do we used a minimal amount of Korean terms, (ready stance, attention, bow, turn around, a few basic kicks and blocks, and basic counting). In my training in other styles I was introduced to more terminology (both Korean and Japanese) and I wanted my students to at least be familiar with the terms for all the stances, blocks, kicks, and strikes we teach. Thus I took it upon myself to (via TKD and TSD manuals) compile a list of all the basics we teach in Korean and English. Now, I do my best to use them as often as possible in Korean then in English so that the students will associate the Korean with the English with the motion.

 

[Daniel Sullivan]

I have been maintaining both a Korean and a Japanese MA dictionary. Initially, it was pretty basic, but after almost a decade of adding to it, it is definitely not basic any longer.

 

[Cyriacus]

I have been maintaining both a Korean and a Japanese MA dictionary. Initially, it was pretty basic, but after almost a decade of adding to it, it is definitely not basic any longer.

That reminds Me.
Dollyo Chagi! From TKD.
Mawashi Geri! From Karate.
Mae Geri! From Karate.

I know the name of Two Karate Strikes in Japanese, and one TKD Strike in Korean. Clearly My priorities are sound

Furthermore, I dont even use Dollyo Chagi often, and Im probably misspelling it.

 

[Daniel Sullivan]

That reminds Me.
Dollyo Chagi! From TKD.
Mawashi Geri! From Karate.
Mae Geri! From Karate.

I know the name of Two Karate Strikes in Japanese, and one TKD Strike in Korean. Clearly My priorities are sound

Furthermore, I dont even use Dollyo Chagi often, and Im probably misspelling it.

Seen it spelled 'dollyo' more often than dollyeo. The last character is Romanized as 'eo' in the Revised Romanization system.

Dollyeo Chagi = turning kick
Mawashi geri = turning kick

Ap chagi = front kick
Mae geri = front kick