Baekje language
| Baekje | |
|---|---|
| Paekche | |
| Native to | Paekche |
| Region | Korea |
| Era | 4th–7th centuries |
Koreanic
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | Either:pkc – Paekche (Paekchean)xpp – Puyo-Paekche |
pkc | |
xpp | |
| Glottolog | paek1234 |
 The Three Kingdoms of Korea, with Baekje in green. | |
The language of the kingdom of Baekje (4th to 7th centuries), one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, is poorly attested, and scholars differ on whether one or two languages were used. However, at least some of the material appears to be related to the Old Korean of the neighbouring Silla kingdom.
Description in early texts
Baekje was preceded in southwestern Korea by the Mahan confederacy. The Chinese Records of the Three Kingdoms (3rd century) states that the language of Mahan differed from that of Goguryeo to the north and the other Samhan ('Three Han') to the east, Byeonhan and Jinhan, whose languages were said to resemble each other. However, the Book of the Later Han (5th century) speaks of differences between the languages of Byeonhan and Jinhan.[1]
Historians believe that Baekje was established by immigrants from Goguryeo who took over Mahan, while Byeonhan and Jinhan were succeeded by Gaya and Silla respectively. According to Book of Liang (635), the language of Baekje was similar to that of Goguryeo.[2] Chapter 49 of the Book of Zhou (636) says of Baekje:[3]
王姓夫餘氏，號於羅瑕，民呼為鞬吉支，夏言竝王也。
The king belongs to the Puyŏ clan; the gentry call him 於羅瑕; commoners call him 鞬吉支. In Chinese it means 'king'.
Based in this passage and some Baekje words cited in the Japanese history Nihon Shoki (720), many scholars, beginning with Kōno Rokurō, have argued that the kingdom of Baekje was bilingual, with the gentry speaking a Puyŏ language and the common people a Han language.[4][5]
Linguistic data
There are no extant texts in the Baekje language.[6] The primary contemporary lexical evidence comes from a few glosses in Chinese and Japanese histories, as well as proposed etymologies for old place names.[7]
Nihon Shoki
The Japanese history Nihon Shoki, compiled in the early 8th century from earlier documents, including some from Baekje, records 42 Baekje words. These are transcribed as Old Japanese syllables, which are restricted to the form (C)V, limiting the precision of the transcription.[8]
| Gloss | Transcription | Comparison | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Old Japanese | Middle Korean[a] | Tungusic | ||
| ruler | ki1si | ki1si 'envoy'[b] | ||
| king | orikoke | |||
| queen | oruku | el-Gǐ-l 'mate with' | ||
| consort | siso orikuku | el-Gǐ-l 'mate with' | ||
| main wife | makari orikuku | makar- 'entrust' | el-Gǐ-l 'mate with' | |
| second wife | kuno orikuku | el-Gǐ-l 'mate with' | ||
| imperial consort | pasikasi | pěs 'companion' + kas 'wife' | ||
| low consort | epasito | pěs 'companion' | ||
| prince | sesimu | sonahi 'male' | ||
| upper minister | makari daro | makar- 'entrust' | ||
| master | nirimu | nǐm 'master' | ||
| father | kaso2 | kaso2 'father' | ||
| mother | omo2 | omo2 'mother' | eme-ním 'mother' | Manchu eme 'mother' |
| child | yomo | Manchu jui 'son' | ||
| heir | makari yomo | makar- 'entrust' | ||
| Koryo | koku | |||
| Koryo | kokusori | |||
| walled city | ki2 | ki2 'fortress' | ||
| walled city | sasi | cás 'walled city' | ||
| district | ko2po2ri | ko2po2ri 'district' | kwoúl, kwowólh < *kopor 'county seat, district' | |
| village | pure | |||
| village | suki1 | súkoWol 'country' | ||
| village chief | sukuri | |||
| Gloss | Transcription | Comparison | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Old Japanese | Middle Korean[a] | Tungusic | ||
| above, north | okosi | oko2s- 'raise, get up' | wuh 'top' | *ugi- 'top' |
| bear | kuma | kuma 'bear' | kwǒm 'bear' | |
| below | arusi/arosi | aláy 'below' | ||
| belt | sitoro | stúy 'belt' | ||
| burden | no2 | no2- 'burden' | ||
| falcon | kuti | kuti 'hawk' | ||
| ford | nuri | nolo 'ferry' | ||
| good | wire | wiya 'polite' | ||
| interpret | wosa | wosa 'interpreter' | ||
| island | sema | sima 'island, territory' | syěm 'island' | |
| large | ko2ni | há- 'many, great' | ||
| lower | oto2 | oto2 'younger' | ||
| middle | siso | sús 'between' | ||
| mountain | mure | mworwó 'mountain, ridge' | *mulu 'ridge' | |
| outside | poka | poka 'outside, other' | pask 'outside' | |
| south | aripisi | alph 'front' | ||
| storehouse | pesu | Manchu fise 'shed' | ||
| stream | nare/nari | nǎyh 'stream' | *niaru 'lake, swamp' | |
| upper | soku | |||
Early Japan was heavily influenced by Baekje and the Gaya confederacy, and several of the above matching Old Japanese forms are believed to be borrowed from Baekje.[10] For example, kaso2 'father', ki2 'fortress', ko2po2ri 'district' and kuti 'hawk', have no cognates in Eastern Old Japanese or Ryukyuan languages.[11] For some words, like 'father' and 'mother', there are alternative words in Old Japanese that are attested across the Japonic family (titi and papa respectively).[12] Bentley lists these words, as well as kuma 'bear' and suki2 'village', as loans into Old Japanese from Baekje.[13]
Other histories
The Middle Korean text Yongbieocheonga transcribes the name of the old Baekje capital 'Bear Ford' as kwomá nolo, closely matching two of the words from the Nihon Shoki.[14]
Chapter 49 of the Chinese Book of Zhou (636) cites three Baekje words:[3][c]
- ʔyo-la-hae (於羅瑕) 'king' (used by the gentry)
- kjon-kjit-tsye (鞬吉支) 'king' (used by commoners)
- ʔyo-ljuwk (於陸) 'queen'
These may be the same words as orikoke 'king', ki1si 'ruler' and oruku 'queen' respectively, found in the Nihon Shoki.[15]
Chapter 54 of the Book of Liang (635) gives four Baekje words:[16]
- kuH-mae (固麻) 'ruling fortress'
- yem-luX (檐魯) 'settlement'
- pjuwk-syaem (複衫) 'short jacket'
- kwon (褌) 'pants'
None of these have Koreanic etymologies, but Vovin suggests that the first two could be analysed as otherwise-unattested compounds of Japonic words.[16]
Several of the Baekje placenames in chapter 37 of the Samguk sagi (compiled in 1145 from earlier records) include the form 夫里 pju-liX, which has been compared with later Korean pul 'plain'.[17]
Wooden tablets
Wooden tablets dated to the late Baekje era have been discovered by archaeologists, and some of them involve the rearrangement of Classical Chinese words according to native syntax. From this data, the word order of Baekje appears to have been similar to that of Old Korean. Unlike in Silla texts, however, no uncontroversial evidence of non-Chinese grammatical morphemes has been found.[18] Compared to Silla tablets, Baekje tablets are far more likely to employ conventional Classical Chinese syntax and vocabulary without any native influence.[19]
The tablets also give the names of 12 locations and 77 individuals.[20] A total of 147 phonographic characters have been identified from these proper nouns, but this is insufficient to allow a reconstruction of the phonology.[21]
A tablet found in the Baekje-built temple of Mireuksa, originally thought to be a list of personal names, appears to record native numerals, possibly a series of dates. Although the tablet is dated to the early Later Silla period, postdating the 660 fall of Baekje, its orthography differs from conventional Old Korean orthography. In the extant Silla texts, a native numeral is written by a logogram-phonogram sequence, but in this tablet, they are written entirely with phonograms (both phonetically and semantically adapted). Lee Seungjae thus suggests that the tablet is written in Baekje numerals. The numerals appear Koreanic, with a suffix 邑 *-(ə)p that may be cognate to the Early Middle Korean ordinal suffix *-m.[22][d]
| Number | Wooden tablet word | Reconstruction | Middle Korean |
|---|---|---|---|
| one | 伽第邑 | *gadəp[e] | honáh |
| two | 矣毛邑 | *iterəp[f] | twǔlh |
| three | 新台邑 | *saidəp | sěyh |
| five | 刀士邑 | *tasəp | tasós |
| seven | 日古邑 | *nirkop | nilkwúp |
| 二[?]口邑[g] | *ni[?]kup | ||
| eight | 今毛邑 | *jeterəp | yetúlp |
| [以?]如邑[h] | *[je?]təp |
See also
Notes
- ^ a b The pitch accent is marked with an acute accent on high-pitched syllables. Rising pitch (ǒ) implies an earlier disyllabic form.
- ^ The Old Japanese word may be a loan from Silla.[9]
- ^ Names represented phonetically with Chinese characters are transcribed using William H. Baxter's transcription for Middle Chinese.
- ^ The character 邑 is used as a placeholder for a recurrent character in the tablet which has no assigned Unicode codepoint, but is visually similar to and likely based on 邑.
- ^ Compare Old Korean 一等 *HAton "one".[24]
- ^ Compare Middle Korean ithul "two days".[25]
- ^ The second character is illegible.
- ^ The identity of the first character is uncertain because the bottom half is illegible.
References
- ^ Lee & Ramsey (2011), pp. 35–36.
- ^ Lee & Ramsey (2011), p. 44.
- ^ a b Vovin (2005), p. 119.
- ^ Kōno (1987), pp. 84–85.
- ^ Kim (2009), p. 766.
- ^ Nam (2012), p. 49.
- ^ Vovin (2013), p. 223.
- ^ Bentley (2000), pp. 424–427, 436–438.
- ^ Vovin (2010), pp. 155.
- ^ Bentley (2001), p. 59.
- ^ Vovin (2013), pp. 226–227.
- ^ Vovin (2010), pp. 92–94.
- ^ Bentley (2001), pp. 59–60.
- ^ Lee & Ramsey (2011), p. 45.
- ^ Vovin (2005), pp. 121–124.
- ^ a b Vovin (2013), pp. 232–233.
- ^ Lee & Ramsey (2011), pp. 44–45.
- ^ Lee (2017), pp. 290–298.
- ^ Lee (2017), pp. 299–301.
- ^ Lee (2017), p. 276.
- ^ Lee (2017), p. 362.
- ^ Lee (2017), pp. 87–99.
- ^ Lee (2017), pp. 89, 96.
- ^ Lee (2017), p. 91.
- ^ Lee (2017), p. 89.
Works cited
- Bentley, John R. (2000), "A new look at Paekche and Korean: data from the Nihon shoki", Language Research, 36 (2): 417–443, hdl:10371/86143.
- ——— (2001), A Descriptive Grammar of Early Old Japanese Prose, Leiden: Brill, ISBN 978-90-04-12308-3.
- Kim, Nam-Kil (2009), "Korean", in Comrie, Bernard (ed.), The World's Major Languages (2nd ed.), London: Routledge, pp. 765–779, ISBN 978-0-415-35339-7.
- Kōno, Rokurō (1987), "The bilingualism of the Paekche language", Memoirs of the research department of the Toyo Bunko, 45: 75–86.
- Lee, Ki-Moon; Ramsey, S. Robert (2011), A History of the Korean Language, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-1-139-49448-9.
- Lee, Seungjae (2017), Mokgan-e girokdoen Godae Hangugeo 木簡에 기록된 古代 韓國語 [The Old Korean Language Inscribed on Wooden Tablets] (in Korean), Seoul: Iljogag, ISBN 978-89-337-0736-4.
- Nam, Pung-hyun (2012), "Old Korean", in Tranter, Nicolas (ed.), The Languages of Japan and Korea, Routledge, pp. 41–72, ISBN 978-0-415-46287-7.
- Vovin, Alexander (2005), "Koguryŏ and Paekche: different languages or dialects of Old Korean?", Journal of Inner and East Asian Studies, 2 (2): 107–140.
- ——— (2010), Korea-Japonica: A Re-Evaluation of a Common Genetic Origin, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, ISBN 978-0-8248-3278-0.
- ——— (2013), "From Koguryo to Tamna: Slowly riding to the South with speakers of Proto-Korean", Korean Linguistics, 15 (2): 222–240, doi:10.1075/kl.15.2.03vov.