Talk:Yangcheon District

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Spelling of Yangcheon District versus Yangcheon district[edit]

Unlike English, which generally uses an uppercase character as the initial letter for a proper noun, the Korean language (i.e. Hangul) has no uppercase orthography and instead uses a compounded word to distinguish proper nouns from common nouns. E.g., the common noun, 용산 (i.e. yongsan, lit. "dragon mountain") becomes a proper noun by compounding the word, 구 (i.e. gu, lit. "district") to form the noun phrase we hear as 용산구 and typically spell in English either as Yongsan-gu or Yongsan District.

Not long ago I impulsively changed this article's spelling of "Yangcheon District" to "Yangcheon district" to reflect the lowercase spelling of "gu." Upon reflection, I think the impulse to defer to orthography was an error. Instead, I should have considered how "gu" is a compounded word that changes the lexical category of 양천 (i.e. yangcheon) from a common noun to the proper noun phrase, 양천구 (i.e. invariably spelled in English as Yangcheon-gu). So, now I think it was correct after all to write it as Yancheon District like we would write New York City rather than New York city. Sorry for any confusion. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 18:25, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]