| Goguryeo | |
|---|---|
| Koguryŏ | |
| Native to | Goguryeo,Balhae? |
| Region | Manchuria,Korea |
| Extinct | 7th–10th century? |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | zkg |
zkg | |
| Glottolog | kogu1234 |
 The Three Kingdoms of Korea, with Goguryeo and Buyeo in blue (Kaya is not included in the Three Kingdoms) | |
TheGoguryeo language, orKoguryoan, was the language of the ancient kingdom ofGoguryeo (37 BCE – 668 CE), one of theThree Kingdoms of Korea.Early Chinese histories state that the language was similar to those ofBuyeo,Okjeo andYe.Ki-Moon Lee grouped these four as thePuyŏ languages. The histories also stated that these languages were different from those of theYilou andMohe.All of these languages are unattested except for Goguryeo, for which evidence is limited and controversial.[1]
The most cited evidence is a body ofplacename glosses in theSamguk sagi.Most researchers in Korea, assuming that the people of Goguryeo spoke a dialect ofOld Korean, have treated these words as Korean, while other scholars have emphasized similarities withJaponic languages.[2]Lee and Ramsey suggest that the language was intermediate between the two families.[3]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.[4][5]Others maintain that it was Tungusic, or that there is insufficient evidence to establish its affiliation.
Chinese histories provide the only contemporaneous descriptions of peoples of theKorean peninsula and easternManchuria in the early centuries of the common era.[7]They contain impressionistic remarks about the languages of the area based on second-hand reports, and sometimes contradict one another.[8]Later Korean histories, such as theSamguk sagi, do not describe the languages of the three kingdoms.[8]
The state ofBuyeo, in the upperSonghua basin, was known to the Chinese from the 3rd century BCE.[9]Chapter 30 "Description of the Eastern Barbarians" of theRecords of the Three Kingdoms records a survey carried out by the Chinese state ofWei after their defeat ofGoguryeo in 244.[10]Another version of this report, likely from a common source, is found in chapter 85 of theBook of the Later Han (5th century).[10][11]The report states that the languages of Buyeo, Goguryeo and Ye were similar, and that the language of Okjeo was only slightly different from them.[10][12]Goguryeo, originally inhabiting the valley of theHun 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.[9]
To the south of the ChineseLelang Commandery lay theSamhan ('three Han'),Mahan,Byeonhan andJinhan, who theRecords of the Three Kingdoms described in quite different terms from Buyeo and Goguryeo.[13]Based on this text, Ki-Moon Lee divided the languages spoken on the Korean peninsula at that time into Puyŏ and Han groups.[14]
The same text states that the language of theYilou to the northeast differed from that of Buyeo and Goguryeo.Chapter 94 of theHistory of the Northern Dynasties (compiled in 659) states that the language of theMohe 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 beenTungusic.[13]
TheBook of Liang (635) states that the language ofBaekje was the same as that of Goguryeo.[3]According to Korean traditional history, the kingdom of Baekje was founded by immigrants from Goguryeo who took over Mahan.[15]
The most widely cited evidence for Goguryeo is chapter 37 of theSamguk sagi, a history of the Three Kingdoms period written inClassical Chinese and compiled in 1145 from earlier records that are no longer extant.[16]This chapter surveys the part of Goguryeo annexed by Silla, with entries like
七重縣一云難隱別
The phrase一云 'one calls' separates two alternative names for a place.The first part,七重縣, can be read in Chinese as 'seven-fold county', while難隱別 is meaningless, and hence seems to use Chinese characters to represent the sound of the name.From other examples, scholars infer that難隱 means 'seven' and別 means '-fold, layer', while the 'county' part of the gloss is not represented.[17]In this way, a vocabulary of 80 to 100 words has been extracted from these place names.[18]Although the pronunciations recorded usingChinese characters are difficult to interpret, some of these words appear to resembleKoreanic,Japonic andTungusic words.[19]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.[20]
Scholars who take these words as representing the language of Goguryeo have come to a range of conclusions about the language.[20]Most Korean scholars view it as a form ofOld Korean and focus on Korean interpretations of the data.[21][22][23]In the early 20th century, Japanese scholars such asNaitō Konan andShinmura Izuru pointed out similarities to Japanese, particularly in the only attested numerals, 3, 5, 7 and 10:[24][25]
| Native word | Gloss | Old Japanese numeral | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Script | Middle Chinese[a] | Sino-Korean[b] | ||
| 密 | mit | mil | 三 'three' | mi1[21][26] |
| 于次 | hju-tshijH | wucha | 五 'five' | itu[21][27] |
| 難隱 | nan-ʔɨnX | nanun | 七 'seven' | nana[21][28] |
| 德 | tok | tek | 十 'ten' | to2wo[21][29] |
Beckwith proposed Japonic etymologies for most of the words, and argued that Koguryoan was Japonic.[30]Beckwith's linguistic analysis has been criticized for thead hoc nature of his Chinese reconstructions, for his handling of Japonic material and for hasty rejection of possible cognates in other languages.[31][32]Lee and Ramsey argue that Koguryoan was somehow intermediate between Koreanic and Japonic.[2]
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 theTaedong River.[33]By the 5th century, Goguryeo ruled a huge area encompassing many ethnic groups and languages.[34][35]These authors suggest that the place names reflect the languages of those states rather than that of Goguryeo.[36][37]This would explain why they seem to reflect multiple language groups.[38]
Other data on the language of Goguryeo is extremely sparse,[39] and its affiliation remains unclear.[40]
A small number of inscriptions have been found in Goguryeo territory, including theGwanggaeto Stele (erected inJi'an in 414), four inscriptions on the walls ofPyongyang Castle, and astele in Jungwon, Chungju (590s).[41]All are written in Chinese, but some of them contain irregularities, including a few examples ofobject–verb order (as found in Korean and other northeast Asian languages) instead of the usual Chineseverb–object order, and some uses of the characters之 and伊, which some authors have connected to their use to represent Korean particles in laterIdu texts fromUnified Silla.[42][43]
Beckwith identified a dozen names of places and people in Chinese histories that he argued were Goguryeo words.[44]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 westernLiaoning.[45]
Chinese histories contain a few glosses of Goguryeo words:
Vovin also pointed to Koreanic loanwords inJurchen andManchu, and argued that the Goguryeo language was the ancestor of Koreanic, and spread southwards to replace the Japonic languages of the Samhan.[51]James Unger has proposed a similar model on historical grounds.[5]
Other authors suggest that the Goguryeo language was a Tungusic language.[52]Juha Janhunen argues for a Tungusic affiliation based on historical evidence that theJurchens of theJin dynasty and later theManchus of theQing dynasty that rose from the former territory of Goguryeo were Tungusic speakers.[53]
