The Goguryeo language, or Koguryoan, was the language of the ancient kingdom of

Goguryeo Goguryeo (37 BC–668 AD) ( ) also called Goryeo (), was a Korean kingdom located in the northern and central parts of the Korean Peninsula and the southern and central parts of Northeast China. At its peak of power, Goguryeo controlled mos ...

(37 BCE – 668 CE), one of the

Three Kingdoms of Korea Samhan or the Three Kingdoms of Korea () refers to the three kingdoms of Goguryeo (고구려, 高句麗), Baekje (백제, 百濟), and Silla (신라, 新羅). Goguryeo was later known as Goryeo (고려, 高麗), from which the modern name ''Kor ...

. Early Chinese histories state that the language was similar to those of

Buyeo 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 Korea ...

Okjeo Okjeo () was an ancient Korean tribal state which arose in the northern Korean peninsula from perhaps the 2nd century BCE to the 5th century CE. Dong-okjeo (Eastern Okjeo) occupied roughly the area of the Hamgyŏng provinces of North Korea, and ...

and Ye. Lee Ki-Moon grouped these four as the Puyŏ languages. The histories also stated that these languages were different from those of the

Yilou Yilou is the modern Chinese name of a people in 3rd- to 6th-century Manchuria. In some sources, their name was also written as Sushen, after an earlier people that were traditionally thought to be from the same region. Although it is common to ...

and Mohe. All of these languages are unattested except for Goguryeo, for which evidence is limited and controversial. The most cited evidence is a body of placename glosses in the ''Samguk sagi''. Most researchers in Korea, assuming that the people of Goguryeo spoke a dialect of

Old Korean Old Korean () is the first historically documented stage of the Korean language, typified by the language of the Unified Silla period (668–935). The boundaries of Old Korean periodization remain in dispute. Some linguists classify the sparsel ...

, have treated these words as Korean, while other scholars have emphasized similarities with

Japonic languages 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 ...

. Lee and Ramsey suggest that the language was intermediate between the two families. Other authors suggest that these placenames reflect the languages of other peoples in the part of central Korea captured by Goguryeo in the 5th century, rather than Goguryeo itself. Other evidence is extremely sparse, and is limited to peculiarities in the Chinese language of Goguryeo inscriptions and a very few Goguryeo words glossed in Chinese texts. Vovin and Unger suggest that it was the original form of Koreanic, which subsequently replaced Japonic languages in the south of the peninsula. Others maintain that it was Tungusic, or that there is insufficient evidence to establish its affiliation.

Descriptions in Chinese sources

Chinese histories provide the only contemporaneous descriptions of peoples of the

Korean peninsula Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic ...

and eastern

Manchuria Manchuria is an exonym (derived from the endo demonym " Manchu") for a historical and geographic region in Northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day Northeast China (Inner Manchuria) and parts of the Russian Far East (Outer M ...

in the early centuries of the common era. They contain impressionistic remarks about the languages of the area based on second-hand reports, and sometimes contradict one another. Later Korean histories, such as the ''

Samguk sagi ''Samguk Sagi'' (, ''History of the Three Kingdoms'') is a historical record of the Three Kingdoms of Korea: Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla. The ''Samguk Sagi'' is written in Classical Chinese, the written language of the literati of ancient Korea, ...

'', do not describe the languages of the three kingdoms. The state of

, in the upper Songhua basin, was known to the Chinese from the 3rd century BCE. Chapter 30 "Description of the Eastern Barbarians" of the ''

Records of the Three Kingdoms The ''Records or History of the Three Kingdoms'', also known by its Chinese name as the Sanguo Zhi, is a Chinese historical text which covers the history of the late Eastern Han dynasty (c. 184–220 AD) and the Three Kingdoms period (220� ...

'' records a survey carried out by the Chinese state of

Wei Wei or WEI may refer to: States * Wey (state) (衛, 1040–209 BC), Wei in pinyin, but spelled Wey to distinguish from the bigger Wei of the Warring States * Wei (state) (魏, 403–225 BC), one of the seven major states of the Warring States per ...

after their defeat of

in 244. Another version of this report, likely from a common source, is found in chapter 85 of the ''

Book of the Later Han The ''Book of the Later Han'', also known as the ''History of the Later Han'' and by its Chinese name ''Hou Hanshu'' (), is one of the Twenty-Four Histories and covers the history of the Han dynasty from 6 to 189 CE, a period known as the Lat ...

'' (5th century). The report states that the languages of Buyeo, Goguryeo and Ye were similar, and that the language of

was only slightly different from them. Goguryeo, originally inhabiting the valley of the Hun River, believed themselves to be a southern offshoot of Buyeo. Over the next few centuries they would expand to rule much of eastern Manchuria and northern Korea. To the south of the Chinese

Lelang Commandery The Lelang Commandery was a commandery of the Han dynasty established after it had conquered Wiman Joseon in 108 BC and lasted until Goguryeo conquered it in 313. The Lelang Commandery extended the rule of the Four Commanderies of Han as far so ...

lay the

Samhan Samhan, or Three Han, is the collective name of the Byeonhan, Jinhan, and Mahan confederacies that emerged in the first century BC during the Proto–Three Kingdoms of Korea, or Samhan, period. Located in the central and southern regions of th ...

('three Han'),

Mahan Mahan or Mahaan may refer to: * Mahan (name) * Mahan confederacy, chiefdoms in ancient Korea * Mahan, Iran, a city in Kerman Province * Mahan District, an administrative subdivision of Kerman Province * Mahan Rural District, an administrative su ...

Byeonhan Byeonhan (, ), also known as Byeonjin, (, ) was a loose confederacy of chiefdoms that existed from around the beginning of the Common Era to the 4th century in the southern Korean peninsula. Byeonhan was one of the Samhan (or "Three Hans"), al ...

and

Jinhan Jinhan () was a loose confederacy of chiefdoms that existed from around the 1st century BC to the 4th century AD in the southern Korean Peninsula, to the east of the Nakdong River valley, Gyeongsang Province. Jinhan was one of the Samhan (or "T ...

, who the ''Records of the Three Kingdoms'' described in quite different terms from Buyeo and Goguryeo. Based on this text, Lee Ki-Moon divided the languages spoken on the Korean peninsula at that time into Puyŏ and Han groups. The same text states that the language of the

to the northeast differed from that of Buyeo and Goguryeo. Chapter 94 of the ''

History of the Northern Dynasties The ''History of the Northern Dynasties'' () is one of the official Chinese historical works in the ''Twenty-Four Histories'' canon. The text contains 100 volumes and covers the period from 386 to 618, the histories of Northern Wei, Western W ...

'' (compiled in 659) states that the language of the Mohe in the same area was different from that of Goguryeo. These languages are completely unattested, but are believed, on the basis of their location and the description of the people, to have been Tungusic. The '' Book of Liang'' (635) states that the language of

Baekje Baekje or Paekche (, ) was a Korean kingdom located in southwestern Korea from 18 BC to 660 AD. It was one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, together with Goguryeo and Silla. Baekje was founded by Onjo, the third son of Goguryeo's founder J ...

was the same as that of Goguryeo. According to Korean traditional history, the kingdom of Baekje was founded by immigrants from Goguryeo who took over Mahan.

Placename glosses in the ''Samguk sagi''

The most widely cited evidence for Goguryeo is chapter 37 of the ''

'', a history of the Three Kingdoms period written in

Classical Chinese Classical Chinese, also known as Literary Chinese (古文 ''gǔwén'' "ancient text", or 文言 ''wényán'' "text speak", meaning "literary language/speech"; modern vernacular: 文言文 ''wényánwén'' "text speak text", meaning "literar ...

and compiled in 1145 from earlier records that are no longer extant. This chapter surveys the part of Goguryeo annexed by Silla, with entries like The phrase 'one calls' separates two alternative names for a place. The first part, , can be read in Chinese as 'seven-fold county', while is meaningless, and hence seems to use Chinese characters to represent the sound of the name. From other examples, scholars infer that means 'seven' and means '-fold, layer', while the 'county' part of the gloss is not represented. In this way, a vocabulary of 80 to 100 words has been extracted from these place names. Although the pronunciations recorded using

Chinese characters Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanji ...

are difficult to interpret, some of these words appear to resemble

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 ...

, Japonic and Tungusic words. It is generally agreed that these glosses demonstrate that Japonic languages were once spoken in part of the Korean peninsula, but there is no consensus on the identity of the speakers. Scholars who take these words as representing the language of Goguryeo have come to a range of conclusions about the language. Most Korean scholars view it as a form of

and focus on Korean interpretations of the data. In the early 20th century, Japanese scholars such as Naitō Konan and

Shinmura Izuru was a Japanese linguist and essayist. He is best known for his many contributions to Japanese linguistics and lexicography. In honor of him, the Shinmura Izuru Prize is annually awarded for contributions to linguistics. Background Shinmura ...

pointed out similarities to Japanese, particularly in the only attested numerals, 3, 5, 7 and 10. Beckwith proposed Japonic etymologies for most of the words, and argued that Koguryoan was Japonic. Beckwith's linguistic analysis has been criticized for the ''ad hoc'' nature of his Chinese reconstructions, for his handling of Japonic material and for hasty rejection of possible cognates in other languages. Lee and Ramsey argue that it was somehow intermediate between Koreanic and Japonic. Other authors point out that most of the place names come from central Korea, an area captured by Goguryeo from Baekje and other states in the 5th century, and none from the historical homeland of Goguryeo north of the

Taedong River The Taedong River (Chosŏn'gŭl: ) is a large river in North Korea. The river rises in the Rangrim Mountains of the country's north where it then flows southwest into Korea Bay at Namp'o.Suh, Dae-Sook (1987) "North Korea in 1986: Strengthenin ...

. By the 5th century, Goguryeo ruled a huge area encompassing many ethnic groups and languages. These authors suggest that the place names reflect the languages of those states rather than that of Goguryeo. This would explain why they seem to reflect multiple language groups.

Other data

Other data on the language of Goguryeo is extremely sparse, and its affiliation remains unclear. A small number of inscriptions have been found in Goguryeo territory, including the Gwanggaeto Stele (erected in

Ji'an Ji'an () is a prefecture-level city situated in the central region of Jiangxi province of the People's Republic of China while bordering Hunan province to the west. It has an area of and as of the 2020 census, had a population of 4,469,176, of ...

in 414), four inscriptions on the walls of Pyongyang Castle, and a stele in Jungwon, Chungju (590s). All are written in Chinese, but some of them contain irregularities, including a few examples of object–verb order (as found in Korean and other northeast Asian languages) instead of the usual Chinese verb–object order, and some uses of the characters and , which some authors have connected to their use to represent Korean particles in later Idu texts from

Unified Silla Unified Silla, or Late Silla (, ), is the name often applied to the Korean kingdom of Silla, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, after 668 CE. In the 7th century, a Silla–Tang alliance conquered Baekje and the southern part of Goguryeo in the ...

. Beckwith identified a dozen names of places and people in Chinese histories that he argued were Goguryeo words. In his review of Beckwith's book, Byington criticized the historical basis of these identifications, as well as Beckwith's theories of Goguryeo origins in western

Liaoning Liaoning () is a coastal province in Northeast China that is the smallest, southernmost, and most populous province in the region. With its capital at Shenyang, it is located on the northern shore of the Yellow Sea, and is the northernmo ...

. Chinese histories contain a few glosses of Goguryeo words: * Chapter 30 of the ''Records of the Three Kingdoms'' (late 3rd century) states that (

Eastern Han Chinese Eastern Han Chinese or Later Han Chinese is the stage of the Chinese language revealed by poetry and glosses from the Eastern Han period (first two centuries AD). It is considered an intermediate stage between Old Chinese and the Middle Chinese ...

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 ...

) is the Goguryeo word for 'castle'. Beckwith compared this word with Old Japanese 'storehouse'.

Alexander Vovin Alexander (Sasha) Vladimirovich Vovin (russian: Александр Владимирович Вовин; 27 January 1961 – 8 April 2022) was a Soviet-born Russian-American linguist and philologist, and director of studies at the School for Ad ...

compared it with Middle Mongolian and

Manchu The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) an ...

'fortified town', but with lenition of ''t'' as in Korean. * Chapter 100 of the ''

Book of Wei The ''Book of Wei'', also known by its Chinese name as the ''Wei Shu'', is a classic Chinese historical text compiled by Wei Shou from 551 to 554, and is an important text describing the history of the Northern Wei and Eastern Wei from 386 to ...

'' (mid-6th century) gives 'big elder brother' and 'little elder brother'. Vovin compared with

Late Middle Korean Middle Korean is the period in the history of the Korean language succeeding Old Korean and yielding in 1600 to the Modern period. The boundary between the Old and Middle periods is traditionally identified with the establishment of Goryeo in 918 ...

'old' and with an Early Middle Korean word 'small, young' transcribed as () in the ''

Jilin leishi The ''Jilin leishi'' was a Chinese book about Korea written in 1103–1104 by Sūn Mù (孫穆), an officer of the Chinese Song dynasty embassy to Goryeo. The original work is lost, but fragments reproduced in later Chinese works provide vital in ...

'' (1103–1104). The word is closely matched by

Old Japanese is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language, recorded in documents from the Nara period (8th century). It became Early Middle Japanese in the succeeding Heian period, but the precise delimitation of the stages is controversial. Old Jap ...

'elder brother', but this has a limited distribution in Japonic, and may be a loanword. * The same chapter gives the name of

Jumong Chumo (Hangul: 추모, Hanja: 鄒牟), posthumously Chumo the Holy (Hangul: 추모성왕, Hanja: 鄒牟聖王), was the founding monarch of the kingdom of Goguryeo, and was worshipped as a god-king by the people of Goguryeo and Goryeo. ''Chumo ...

, the legendary founder of Goguryeo, as (Middle Chinese ), glossed as 'good archer'. This name appears in the Gwanggaeto Stele as (Eastern Han Chinese *dẓo-mu, Middle Chinese ). Vovin compared the first syllable with Middle Korean 'be good', but was unable to identify a match for the second part. * Chapter 41 of the '' Book of Zhou'' (early 7th century) gives 'ceremonial headgear', which Vovin compared with the first part of Middle Korean 'ceremonial headgear'. Vovin also pointed to Koreanic loanwords in

Jurchen Jurchen may refer to: * Jurchen people, Tungusic people who inhabited the region of Manchuria until the 17th century ** Haixi Jurchens, a grouping of the Jurchens as identified by the Chinese of the Ming Dynasty ** Jianzhou Jurchens, a grouping of ...

and

, and argued that the Goguryeo language was the ancestor of Koreanic, and spread southwards to replace the Japonic languages of the Samhan. James Unger has proposed a similar model on historical grounds. Other authors suggest that the Goguryeo language was a Tungusic language.

Juha Janhunen Juha Janhunen (born 12 February 1952 in Pori, Finland) is a Finnish linguist whose wide interests include Uralic and Mongolic languages. Since 1994 he has been Professor in East Asian studies at the University of Helsinki. He has done fieldwork on ...

argues for a Tungusic affiliation based on historical evidence that the

Jurchens Jurchen (Manchu: ''Jušen'', ; zh, 女真, ''Nǚzhēn'', ) is a term used to collectively describe a number of East Asian Tungusic-speaking peoples, descended from the Donghu people. They lived in the northeast of China, later known as Manch ...

of the Jin dynasty and later the

Manchus The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) and ...

of the

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...

Descriptions in Chinese sources

Placename glosses in the ''Samguk sagi''

Other data

See also

References

Citations

Sources

Further reading