HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Peninsular Japonic languages are now-extinct
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 ...
that most linguists believe, based on traces in ancient texts, were formerly spoken in the central and southern parts 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 ...
. The most-cited evidence comes from chapter 37 of the (compiled in 1145), which contains a list of pronunciations and meanings of placenames in the former 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 ...
. As the pronunciations are given 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 ...
, they are difficult to interpret, but several of those from central Korea, in the area south of the Han River captured from
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 ...
in the 5th century, seem to correspond to Japonic words. Scholars differ on whether they represent the language of Goguryeo or the people that it conquered. There are also very sparse traces from the states in the south of the peninsula, and from the former
Tamna Tamna, or Tamna-guk, was a state based on Jeju Island from ancient times until it was absorbed by the Korean Joseon dynasty in 1404, following a long period of being a tributary state or autonomous administrative region of various Korean king ...
kingdom on Jeju Island.


Placename glosses in the ''Samguk sagi''

The is a history, 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 ...
, of the Korean
Three Kingdoms The Three Kingdoms () from 220 to 280 AD was the tripartite division of China among the dynastic states of Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Eastern Wu. The Three Kingdoms period was preceded by the Eastern Han dynasty and was followed by the West ...
period, which ended in 668. Chapter 37 gives place names and meanings, mostly for places in the
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 ...
lands seized by
Silla Silla or Shilla (57 BCE – 935 CE) ( , Old Korean: Syera, Old Japanese: Siraki2) was a Korean kingdom located on the southern and central parts of the Korean Peninsula. Silla, along with Baekje and Goguryeo, formed the Three Kingdoms o ...
. These glosses were first studied by Naitō Torajirō in 1907, with substantial analysis beginning with a series of articles by Lee Ki-Moon in the 1960s. For example, the following entry refers to the city now known as
Suwon Suwon (, ) is the capital and largest city of Gyeonggi-do, South Korea's most populous province which surrounds Seoul, the national capital. Suwon lies about south of Seoul. It is traditionally known as "The City of Filial Piety". With a popul ...
: That is, the characters are used to record the sound of the name, while the characters represent its meaning. From this, we infer that 買 and 忽 represent the pronunciations of local words for 'water' and 'city' respectively. In this way, a vocabulary of 80 to 100 words has been extracted from these place names. Characters like and presumably represented pronunciations based on some local version of the Chinese reading tradition, but there is no agreement on what this sounded like. One approximation is to use the
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 ...
reading pronunciations recorded in such dictionaries as the ''
Qieyun The ''Qieyun'' () is a Chinese rhyme dictionary, published in 601 during the Sui dynasty. The book was a guide to proper reading of classical texts, using the ''fanqie'' method to indicate the pronunciation of Chinese characters. The ''Qieyun'' ...
'' (compiled in 601), in which is pronounced . Another uses the Sino-Korean readings of 15th century dictionaries of
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 9 ...
, yielding a pronunciation of for the same character. In some cases, the same word is represented by several characters with similar pronunciations. Several of the words extracted from these names resemble Korean or
Tungusic languages The Tungusic languages (also known as Manchu-Tungus and Tungus) form a language family spoken in Eastern Siberia and Manchuria by Tungusic peoples. Many Tungusic languages are endangered. There are approximately 75,000 native speakers of the doz ...
. Others, including all four of the attested numerals, resemble
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 ...
, and are accepted by most authors as evidence that now-extinct relatives of Japonic were once spoken on the Korean peninsula. The first authors to study these words assumed that, because these place names came from the territory of Goguryeo, they must have represented the language of that state. Lee and Ramsey offer the additional argument that the dual use of Chinese characters to represent the sound and meaning of the place names must have been done by scribes of Goguryeo, which would have borrowed written Chinese earlier than the southern kingdoms. They argue that the Goguryeo language formed a link between Japanese, Korean and Tungusic.
Christopher I. Beckwith Christopher I. Beckwith (born October 23, 1945) is an American philologist and distinguished professor in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. He has a B.A. in Chinese from Ohio State Unive ...
, applying his own Middle Chinese readings, claims that almost all of the words have Japonic cognates. He takes this as the language of Goguryeo, which he considers a relative of Japanese in a family he calls Japanese-Koguryoic. He suggests that the family was located in western Liaoning in the 4th century BC, with one group (identified with the Yayoi culture) travelling by sea to southern Korea and Kyushu, others migrating into eastern Manchuria and northern Korea, and others by sea to the
Ryukyu Islands The , also known as the or the , are a chain of Japanese islands that stretch southwest from Kyushu to Taiwan: the Ōsumi, Tokara, Amami, Okinawa, and Sakishima Islands (further divided into the Miyako and Yaeyama Islands), with Yon ...
. In a review for ''
Korean Studies Korean studies is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of Korea, which includes the Republic of Korea, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and diasporic Korean populations. Areas commonly included under this rubric include Ko ...
'', Thomas Pellard criticizes Beckwith's linguistic analysis 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. Another review by historian Mark Byington casts doubt on Beckwith's interpretation of the documentary references on which his migration theory is based. Other authors point out that none of the placenames with proposed Japonic cognates are located in 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 ...
, and no Japonic morphemes have been identified in inscriptions from the area, such as the
Gwanggaeto Stele The Gwanggaeto Stele is a memorial stele for the tomb of Gwanggaeto the Great of Goguryeo, erected in 414 by his son Jangsu. This monument to Gwanggaeto the Great is the largest engraved stele in the world. It stands near the tomb of Gwanggaeto ...
. The glossed place names of the ''Samguk sagi'' generally come from central Korea, in an area captured by Goguryeo from Baekje and other states in the 5th century, and 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. Kōno Rokurō and
Kim Bang-han Kim Bang-han was a South Korean linguist. He proposed primitive Korean peninsula language theory. Primitive Korean peninsula language is a now-extinct non- Koreanic languages that some linguists believe were formerly spoken in central and souther ...
have argued for bilingualism in Baekje, with the placenames reflecting the language of the common people.


Other evidence

Several authors have suggested that the sole recorded word of the
Gaya confederacy Gaya (, ) was a Korean confederacy of territorial polities in the Nakdong River basin of southern Korea, growing out of the Byeonhan confederacy of the Samhan period. The traditional period used by historians for Gaya chronology is AD 42– ...
is Japonic.
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 ...
has suggested Japonic etymologies for several words and placenames from southern Korea appearing in ancient Chinese and Korean texts.


Baekje

As noted above, several authors believe that the glossed placenames of the ''Samguk sagi'' reflect an early language of Baekje. In addition, chapter 54 of the ''
Book of Liang The ''Book of Liang'' (''Liáng Shū''), was compiled under Yao Silian and completed in 635. Yao heavily relied on an original manuscript by his father Yao Cha, which has not independently survived, although Yao Cha's comments are quoted in seve ...
'' (635) gives four Baekje words, two of which may be compared to Japonic: * 'ruling fortress' vs Old Japanese 'to put inside' * 'settlement' vs Old Japanese 'house' and 'circle'


Silla

Some words from Silla and its predecessor
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 ...
are recorded by Chinese historians in chapter 30 of ''Wei Zhi'' in ''
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� ...
'' (3rd century) and chapter 54 of the ''
Book of Liang The ''Book of Liang'' (''Liáng Shū''), was compiled under Yao Silian and completed in 635. Yao heavily relied on an original manuscript by his father Yao Cha, which has not independently survived, although Yao Cha's comments are quoted in seve ...
'' (completed in 635). Many of these words appear to be Korean, but a few match Japonic forms, e.g. ''mura'' () 'settlement' vs Old Japanese 'village'. Chapter 34 of the ''Samguk sagi'' gives former place names in
Silla Silla or Shilla (57 BCE – 935 CE) ( , Old Korean: Syera, Old Japanese: Siraki2) was a Korean kingdom located on the southern and central parts of the Korean Peninsula. Silla, along with Baekje and Goguryeo, formed the Three Kingdoms o ...
and the standardized two-character Sino-Korean names assigned under King Gyeongdeok in the 8th century. Many of the pre-reform names cannot be given Korean derivations, but are explicable as Japonic words. For example, several of them contain an element ''miti'' (), which resembles Old Japanese 'way, road'.


Byeonhan/Gaya

The Chinese ''
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� ...
'' (3rd century) gives phonographic transcriptions in Chinese characters of names of 12 settlements in the
Byeonhan confederacy 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 ...
in southern Korea. Two of these include a suffix , which has been compared with Late Middle Korean and
Proto-Japonic Proto-Japonic or Proto-Japanese–Ryukyuan is the reconstructed language ancestral to the Japonic language family. It has been reconstructed by using a combination of internal reconstruction from Old Japanese and by applying the comparative meth ...
*, both meaning 'base, bottom' and claimed by Samuel Martin to be cognate. One of the names has a suffix , which is commonly identified with Proto-Japonic 'mountain'. The
Gaya confederacy Gaya (, ) was a Korean confederacy of territorial polities in the Nakdong River basin of southern Korea, growing out of the Byeonhan confederacy of the Samhan period. The traditional period used by historians for Gaya chronology is AD 42– ...
, which succeeded Byeonhan, maintained trading relations with Japan, until it was overrun by Silla in the early 6th century. A single word is explicitly attributed to the
Gaya language Gaya (伽耶語, 가야어), also rendered Kaya, Kara or Karak, is the presumed language of the Gaya confederacy in ancient southern Korea. Only one word survives that is directly identified as being from the language of Gaya. Other evidence cons ...
, in chapter 44 of the ''Samguk sagi'': Because the character was used to transcribe the Silla word ancestral to Middle Korean 'ridge', philologists heve inferred that the Gaya word for 'gate' had a similar pronunciation. This word has been compared with the
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 ...
word 'gate, door'.


Tamna

Chapter 81 of the Chinese ''
Book of Sui The ''Book of Sui'' (''Suí Shū'') is the official history of the Sui dynasty. It ranks among the official Twenty-Four Histories of imperial China. It was written by Yan Shigu, Kong Yingda, and Zhangsun Wuji, with Wei Zheng as the lead author. ...
'' (656) mentions (), an earlier form of the name of the kingdom of
Tamna Tamna, or Tamna-guk, was a state based on Jeju Island from ancient times until it was absorbed by the Korean Joseon dynasty in 1404, following a long period of being a tributary state or autonomous administrative region of various Korean king ...
on Jeju Island. Vovin suggests that this name may have a Japonic etymology 'valley settlement' or 'people's settlement'. A village in southwestern Jeju called Gamsan (/kamsan/ 'persimmon mountain') has an old name 'deity mountain'. The first character of the place name () cannot be read as / in Korean, but Vovin suggests that the first syllable was originally a word cognate to Old Japanese 'deity'. The
Jeju language Jeju (Jeju: , ; ko, 제주어, or , ), often called Jejueo or Jejuan in English-language scholarship, is a Koreanic language traditionally spoken on Jeju Island, South Korea. While often classified as a divergent Jeju dialect ( ko, 제주방� ...
is Koreanic, but may have a Japonic substratum. For example, the colloquial word 'mouth' may be connected to the Japonic word 'mouth'.


Proposed archaeological links

Most linguists studying the Japonic family believe that it was brought to the
Japanese archipelago The Japanese archipelago (Japanese: 日本列島, ''Nihon rettō'') is a group of 6,852 islands that form the country of Japan, as well as the Russian island of Sakhalin. It extends over from the Sea of Okhotsk in the northeast to the East Chin ...
from the Korean peninsula around 700–300 BC by
wet-rice A paddy field is a flooded field of arable land used for growing semiaquatic crops, most notably rice and taro. It originates from the Neolithic rice-farming cultures of the Yangtze River basin in southern China, associated with pre-Aust ...
farmers of the Yayoi culture. Whitman and Miyamoto associate Japonic on the Korean peninsula with the Mumun culture, which introduced wet-rice agriculture around 1500 BCE. In addition to rice, the onset of the Yayoi culture in northern
Kyushu is the third-largest island of Japan's five main islands and the most southerly of the four largest islands ( i.e. excluding Okinawa). In the past, it has been known as , and . The historical regional name referred to Kyushu and its surround ...
saw the introduction and adaptation of many cultural features from the Korean Mumun culture, including types of housing, pottery and tools. Archaeologists believe this reflects a combination of diffusion, migration from the peninsula, and hybridisation within the archipelago. Whitman further suggests that Koreanic arrived in the peninsula from the north with the Liaoning bronze dagger culture about 300 BCE. Vovin and James Marshall Unger propose similar models, but associate Koreanic with iron-using mounted warriors from
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 contrast,
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 that Koreanic expanded from Silla in the southeast, replacing Japonic languages in Baekje and the rest of the peninsula.


Notes


References


Works cited

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


External links


Review of Beckwith (2007)
by Picus Ding {{Japonic languages Japonic languages Three Kingdoms of Korea