Ju Sigyeong (, December 22, 1876 – July 27, 1914) was one of the founders of modern

Korea 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 o ...

linguistics Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...

. He was born in Pongsan-gun, Hwanghae-do in 1876. He helped to standardize the

Korean language Korean ( South Korean: , ''hangugeo''; North Korean: , ''chosŏnmal'') is the native language for about 80 million people, mostly of Korean descent. It is the official and national language of both North Korea and South Korea (geographic ...

, based on the

spelling Spelling is a set of conventions that regulate the way of using graphemes (writing system) to represent a language in its written form. In other words, spelling is the rendering of speech sound (phoneme) into writing (grapheme). Spelling is one ...

and

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domain ...

of vernacular Korean.

Biography

Ju Sigyeong was born in

Hwanghae Province Hwanghae Province (''Hwanghae-do'' ) was one of the Eight Provinces of Korea during the Joseon era. Hwanghae was located in the northwest of Korea. The provincial capital was Haeju. The regional name for the province was Haeseo. History In 139 ...

, in what is now

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu (Amnok) and T ...

. He studied

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 ...

from an early age. In 1887 he moved to

Seoul Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea.Before 1972, Seoul was the ''de jure'' capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) as stated iArticle 103 of ...

and studied

. In 1896 he found work in the first Hangeul-only newspaper, '' Dongnip Sinmun'', founded by the

Korean independence The Korean independence movement was a military and diplomatic campaign to achieve the independence of Korea from Japan. After the Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910, Korea's domestic resistance peaked in the March 1st Movement of 1919, which ...

activist Seo Jae-pil. In 1897 Seo Jae-pil was sent into exile to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

, and Ju Sigyeong left the newspaper. Interested in Western linguistics and teaching methods, Ju Sigyeong served as a Korean instructor for the American missionary William B. Scranton, founder of today's

Ewha Womans University Ewha Womans University () is a private women's university in Seoul founded in 1886 by Mary F. Scranton under Emperor Gojong. It was the first university founded in South Korea. Currently, Ewha is one of the world's largest female educational inst ...

Standardizing Korean Language

Having realized the need of a standardized Korean alphabet, Ju Sigyeong established the Korean Language System Society () in 1886 along with several of his colleagues. He hosted several seminars in the National Language Discussion Centre of the Sangdong Youth Academy of the Korean language (). He proposed that the Korean

parts of speech In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are ass ...

include

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...

verb A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...

adjective In linguistics, an adjective (abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ma ...

adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...

s, un conjugated

s (),

auxiliaries Auxiliaries are support personnel that assist the military or police but are organised differently from regular forces. Auxiliary may be military volunteers undertaking support functions or performing certain duties such as garrison troops, ...

(), conjunctions,

exclamation An exclamation is an emphatic utterance, the articulate expression of an affect. Exclamation may also refer to: * Exclamation mark, the punctuation mark "!" * Exclamation, an emphatic interjection * Exclamation, a statement against penal interest ...

s, and

sentence-final particle Sentence-final particles, including modal particles, interactional particles, etc., are minimal lexemes (words) that occur at the end of a sentence and that do not carry referential meaning, but may relate to linguistic modality, register or other p ...

s (). Ju Sigyeong coined the name ''

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 le ...

'' () between 1910 and 1913 to identify the Korean writing system, which had previously existed under several other names, such as ''eonmun'' (, vernacular script), since the 15th century. In his 1914 publication, ''Sounds of the Language'' (), he promoted writing

linearly Linearity is the property of a mathematical relationship (''function'') that can be graphically represented as a straight line. Linearity is closely related to '' proportionality''. Examples in physics include rectilinear motion, the linear r ...

rather than syllabically. This is one of his few proposals not to have been implemented in modern Korean linguistics, although there have been experiments with linear Hangul, most notably in

Primorsky Krai Primorsky Krai (russian: Приморский край, r=Primorsky kray, p=prʲɪˈmorskʲɪj kraj), informally known as Primorye (, ), is a federal subject (a krai) of Russia, located in the Far East region of the country and is a part of t ...

Publications

* ''The History of the Downfall of Vietnam'' () (1907) * ''The National Language Classical Phonetics '' () (1908) (based on his lecture notes) * ''An Introduction to the Chinese Language '' () (1909) * ''An Introduction to the National Language '' () (1910) * ''The Grammar of the National Language'' () (1910) * ''Sounds of the Language'' () (1914)

References

External links

주시경 (Ju Si-kyeong)
a biography with a photo {{DEFAULTSORT:Ju, Sigyeong 1876 births 1914 deaths History of Korea South Korean Protestants Converts to Christianity Sangju Ju clan People from North Hwanghae Linguists from Korea 20th-century linguists Linguists of Korean

Biography

Standardizing Korean Language

Publications

See also

References

External links