Ye-Maek (예맥어; 濊貊語), also known as Yemaek and Maek, a
Koreanic language
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 dialect ...
of
Manchuria and eastern
Korea north of
Silla spoken in the last few centuries BC. It is possibly ancestral to the
Koguryoic.
The
Yemaek people
Yemaek or Yamaek () was an ancient tribal group in the northern Korean Peninsula and Manchuria who are regarded by some scholars as the ancestors of modern Koreans. They had ancestral ties to various Korean kingdoms including Gojoseon, Buyeo, Go ...
had historical ties to later Korean kingdoms and may have been ancestral to several, such as
Gojoseon; the ''Ye'' of Yemaek are reported to have been a synonym for
Buyeo and the ''Maek'' for
Goguryeo. Their language may have been one of, or ancestral to, the
Koguryoic languages.
Evidence for the language is limited to
toponyms, and its existence is questionable. Attempts at recovering Yemaek words from toponyms in 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, ...
'' historical record are disputed.
''Journal of Inner and East Asian Studies''
vol 2-2 (Dec 2005)
References
Koreanic languages
Unclassified languages of Asia
{{koreanic-lang-stub