Is Tang Soo Do pretty much Karate?

[Luther unleashed]

On 10/15/2024 at 9:00 AM, KorroddyDude said:

What other characters are used for TSD?  Because it actually translates to To-te (do).  To get "karate," you would need the hancha for "kong soo" (do).

A mountain lion can never simply be called a lion, a koala bear can never simply be called a bear, and Mongolian barbecue can never simply be called barbecue.

So while I'll grant TSD "Korean karate," I won't grant simply "karate."

From Wikipedia.  Etymology. "Tang Soo Do" (당수도) is the Korean pronunciation of the Hanja 唐手道 (pronounced Táng shǒu dào in Mandarin), and translates literally to "The Way of the Tang Hand." The same characters can be pronounced "karate-dō" in Japanese.

[KorroddyDude]

4 hours ago, Luther unleashed said:

From Wikipedia.  Etymology. "Tang Soo Do" (당수도) is the Korean pronunciation of the Hanja 唐手道 (pronounced Táng shǒu dào in Mandarin), and translates literally to "The Way of the Tang Hand." The same characters can be pronounced "karate-dō" in Japanese.

Two things:

1.  We all know why Wikipedia can't be used as a reference, and this is an example.  Karate-do is "the way of the empty hand," not "tang hand.  The character for Tang 唐 is pronounced "tō" in Japanese.  The characters for karate-do are 空手道, which is pronounced "kong soo do" in Korean.  It was "tang hand" in Okinawa before spreading to mainland Japan, but that was way before Koreans trained in it.

2.  By the way, none of that matters.  Even if they changed the name of it to "kong soo do," I still wouldn't consider it to be karate.  If I walk into a TSD dojang, I'm going to see hangul everywhere, people using Korean words, uniforms with piping on the edges, etc.  I should be able to walk into any karate dojo, regardless of style, and be able to follow along with their commands (with the exception of their kata).  I can't do that in a TSD dojang.

If karate is the French language, TSD would be Haitian Creole.

Edited yesterday at 10:03 AM by KorroddyDude

[bushido_man96]

I don't think universality is a necessary component.  TSD does have its roots in Karate.  When the Okinawan practitioners originally used the term Karate, the symbol they used was for Tang, hence "Tang Hand."  Funakoshi changed the symbol to the one for "Empty," thus deriving "Empty Hand."  I didn't find that on Wiki.

I don't think the language used makes it Karate.  An American school using primarily English language in class wouldn't necessarily detract from it's "Karate-ness."  I think the same can be said of Tang Soo Do.

The problem you run into is if a particular Tang Soo Do school is using the name but is a part of the groups that unified the Kwans in the early days.  If the school is still using the older Karate kata, then I think you have a "Korean Karate" school.