Very little is known of the language of the
Buyeo kingdom
Buyeo or Puyŏ (Korean: 부여; Korean pronunciation: u.jʌ or 扶餘 ''Fúyú''), also rendered as Fuyu, was an ancient kingdom that was centered in northern Manchuria in modern-day northeast China. It is sometimes considered a Korean ki ...
.
Chapter 30 "Description of the Eastern Barbarians" in the ''
Records of the Three Kingdoms'' records a survey carried out by the Chinese state of
Wei after their defeat of
Goguryeo in 244.
The report states that the languages of Buyeo and those of its southern neighbours
Goguryeo and
Ye were similar, and that the language of
Okjeo was only slightly different from them.
Based on this text, Lee Ki-Moon grouped the four languages as the
Puyŏ languages, contemporaneous with the
Han languages
The Han languages (Korean: ) or Samhan languages (Korean: ) were the languages of the Samhan ('three Han') of ancient southern Korea, the confederacies of Mahan, Byeonhan and Jinhan.
They are mentioned in surveys of the peninsula in the 3rd ce ...
of the
Samhan confederacies in southern Korea.
The most widely cited evidence for this group is a body of
placename glosses in the ''Samguk sagi'' (1154), which some authors take to represent the language of Goguryeo, but others believe reflect a mix of languages spoken by peoples conquered by Goguryeo.
Scholars who take these words as representing the language of Goguryeo have come to a range of conclusions about the language, some holding that it was
Koreanic
Koreanic is a small language family consisting of the Korean and Jeju languages. The latter is often described as a dialect of Korean, but is distinct enough to be considered a separate language. Alexander Vovin suggests that the Yukjin dialec ...
, others that it was
Japonic
Japonic or Japanese–Ryukyuan, sometimes also Japanic, is a language family comprising Japanese, spoken in the main islands of Japan, and the Ryukyuan languages, spoken in the Ryukyu Islands. The family is universally accepted by linguists, and ...
, and others that it was somehow intermediate between these families.
The same chapter of the ''Records of the Three Kingdoms'' transcribes a Buyeo word for noblemen subordinate only to the king as .
This character was pronounced ''kai'' in
Eastern Han Chinese.
Beckwith identified this word with a ''Samguk sagi'' gloss / (pronounced ''kɛj''/''kɛjtshij
H'' in
Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The Sw ...
, ''kay''/''kaycha'' in
Sino-Korean) for 'king', and the
Baekje language
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 variety of O ...
word for 'ruler' transcribed in the ''
Nihon Shoki'' as
Old Japanese ''ki
1si''.
References
Works cited
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Buyeo
Puyŏ languages
Languages extinct in the 7th century
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