''Ch'ŏphae Sinŏ'' or ''Shōkai Shingo'' ('Rapid Understanding of a New Language') is a Korean textbook of colloquial

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

, written in 1618 and published by the

Bureau of Interpreters The Bureau of Interpreters or Sayŏgwŏn was an agency of the Joseon government of Korea from 1393 to 1894 responsible for training and supplying official interpreters. Textbooks for foreign languages produced by the bureau aimed to accurately de ...

in 1676. It is a source for

Late Middle Japanese was a stage of the Japanese language following Early Middle Japanese and preceding Early Modern Japanese. It was a period of transition in which the language shed many of its archaic features and became closer to its modern form. The period s ...

Author

Gang U-seong (康遇聖, Kang Wuseng) was a native of

Jinju Jinju () is a city in South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea. It was the location of the first (1592) and second (1593) Sieges of Jinju by Japanese forces during the Imjin War. The Republic of Korea Air Force Education and Training Command is ...

. At the age of 11, he was one of thousands of Korean civilians abducted to Japan during the Japanese invasion of Korea in 1592. He was released after 10 years and returned to Korea, where he embarked on a career as an official interpreter, passing the interpreter's exam in 1609. He served as interpreter on Korean embassies to Japan and as an instructor in

Busan Busan (), officially known as is South Korea's most populous city after Seoul, with a population of over 3.4 million inhabitants. Formerly romanized as Pusan, it is the economic, cultural and educational center of southeastern South Korea, w ...

, the point of departure for missions to Japan. By 1618, he had completed a series of instructional materials on the Japanese language in the form of conversations involving Koreans travelling to Japan for business or diplomacy.

Editions

The work was published in 10 fascicles in 1676, when it was adopted as the official textbook for teaching Japanese, replacing 14 out-dated titles. The Japanese text is written in large

hiragana is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contrast ...

, with a phonetic transcription in

Hangul The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul, . Hangul may also be written as following South Korea's standard Romanization. ( ) in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea, is the modern official writing system for the Korean language. The let ...

on the right and followed by a translation in

Korean mixed script Korean mixed script () is a form of writing the Korean language that uses a mixture of the Korean alphabet or ''hangul'' () and ''hanja'' (, ), the Korean name for Chinese characters. The distribution on how to write words usually follows th ...

. A copy of this edition is held by the

Seoul National University Seoul National University (SNU; ) is a national public research university located in Seoul, South Korea. Founded in 1946, Seoul National University is largely considered the most prestigious university in South Korea; it is one of the three "S ...

Library. The book and its revisions remained the sole official Japanese text for the following two centuries. A revised edition known as the ''Chungan'' (重刊 'reprinted') or ''Kaesu'' (改修 'revised') ''Ch'ŏphae Sinŏ'' was published in 12 fascicles in 1781. It contains the same conversations and Korean translation as the original, but the Japanese text was updated to reflect the colloquial language of the time. Copies of this edition are held in the Seoul National University Library, the

Tōyō Bunko The , or "Oriental Library", is Japan's largest Asian studies library and one of the world's five largest, located in Tokyo. It also functions as a research institute dedicated to the study of Asian history and culture. It has greatly contributed ...

and the Eihei Temple. The preceding editions focussed on spoken Japanese, and so recorded the language using hiragana. The ''Ch'ŏphae Sinŏ Munsŏk'' (捷解新語文釋 'literary transformation of the ''Ch'ŏphae Sinŏ), published in 12 fascicles in 1796, was aimed at those who were also studying written Japanese. Intended as a companion to the preceding edition, it contained only the Japanese text, rewritten in the Japanese mixed script. The only known surviving copy of this edition is held in the Seoul National University Library.

References

Works cited * * *

External links

{{commons cat, 捷解新語, ''Ch'ŏphae Sinŏ''
첩해신어(捷解新語)
– description at the

Academy of Korean Studies Academy of Korean Studies (한국학중앙연구원, AKS) is a South Korean research and educational institute with the purpose of establishing profound research on Korean culture. It was established on June 22, 1978, by Ministry of Education & ...

Cheopae sineo (捷解新語)
National Hangeul Museum
scanned volumes
at the Digital Hangeul Museum
scanned volumes
at the Ogura Collection,

University of Tokyo , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project by ...

Joseon dynasty works Late Middle Japanese texts 17th-century books Language textbooks