Buyeo languages
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Buyeoic | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution: |
Korea and Manchuria |
| Genetic classification: |
A proposed primary language family |
| Subdivisions: |
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Buyeo or Fuyu languages (Buyeo or Puyŏ (부여어족) in Korean, Fūyú or Fúyú (夫餘 or 扶餘) in Chinese) are a hypothetical language family that consists of ancient languages of the northern Korean Peninsula and southern Manchuria. According to the Chinese ancient records, the languages of Buyeo, Goguryeo, Dongye, Okjeo, Baekje (and possibly Gojoseon as well) were similar. The Buyeo languages itself is unknown except for a small number of words which suggest that it was somewhat different from the language of Silla, which likely consisted of an earlier wave of migration from the same northern region, and significantly different from the Mohe and Tungusic languages.
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[edit] Classification of the Buyeo languages
There are some hypotheses on the classification of the Buyeo languages which is disputed at the present time.
[edit] Extinct languages hypothesis
| Fuyu or Buyeo | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution: |
Korea and Japan |
| Genetic classification: |
A proposed primary language family |
| Subdivisions: |
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There have been some attempts to relate certain ancient languages of specifically the Goguryeo language, and the language of Baekje as well) with the Japonic languages (Beckwith 2004); according to this scenario, the ancestors of the Yamato people would have settled Japan from the region of the state of Buyeo, which was ancestral to Goguryeo. Baekje was founded by Goguryeo princes, and also considered itself descended from Buyeo. Baekje subsequently had close relations with Yamato period Japan; Christopher Beckwith suggests that at that point the Japanese may have still recognized a relationship to Buyeo. The possibility of a relationship between the Japanese language and languages of Goguryeo and Baekje was first noticed by two Japanese scholars[citation needed] in 1907. Beckwith reconstructs about 140 Goguryeo words, mostly from ancient place names. Many include grammatical morphemes which appear to be cognate with morphemes of similar function in Japanese, such as genitive -no and attributive -si.
[edit] Old Korean hypothesis
| Old Koreanic | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution: |
Korea and Manchuria |
| Genetic classification: |
A proposed primary language family |
| Subdivisions: |
Buyeo languages (Goguryeo)
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There are a number of linguists including a renowned Korean linguist, Kim Bang-han and western linguists like Vovin and Unger who categorize the Buyeo languages into Old Korean. Being strongly skeptical of the Buyeo-Japonic hypothesis, they emphasize that the so-called Japanese-like toponymes or pseudo-Goguryeo words were mostly found in the central part of Korean peninsula, which don’t reflect the Goguryeo language but previous substratum spoken by indigenous people of the central and southern part of Korean peninsula. Since it has been shown that a considerable number of Japanese-like toponymes (such as a Japanese-like numeral found in the historical homeland of Silla) were also distributed in southern part of Korean peninsula, the linguists propose that there was once a Japonic language spoken on the prehistoric Korean peninsula as the substratum language of Old Korean; Unger suggests that the ancestors of the Yayoi people would have settled Japanese Archipelago from the central and southern part of Korean peninsula. The basis of this argument supporting Old Korean hypothesis is as follows: None of the Japanese-like toponymes have been found in the northern part of Korean peninsula and south-western part of Manchuria where the historical homeland of Buyeo and Goguryeo were situated. On the contrary, the Koreanic toponymes were evenly distributed all around the territory of the Three Kingdoms of Korea from Manchuria to the Korean peninsula. The Goguryeo inscriptions include Grammatical morphemes, supporting the argument, which appear to be cognate with morphemes of similar function in Korean, such as a form of final predication -ti and nominative -i”.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Christopher I. Beckwith, 2004. Koguryǒ: The Language of Japan's Continental Relatives: An Introduction to the Historical-Comparative Study of the Japanese-Koguryoic Languages, with a Preliminary Description of Archaic Northeastern Middle Chinese. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 90-04-13949-4.
- 2005. "The Ethnolinguistic History of the Early Korean Peninsula Region: Japanese-Koguryoic and Other Languages in the Koguryo, Paekche, and Silla Kingdoms." Journal of Inner and East Asian Studies, 2005, Vol. 2-2: 34-64.
- 2006. "Methodological Observations on Some Recent Studies of the Early Ethnolinguistic History of Korea and Vicinity." Altai Hakpo 2006, 16: 199-234.
- Alexander Vovin, 2005. "Koguryǒ and Paekche: Different Languages or Dialects of Old Korean?" Journal of Inner and East Asian Studies, 2005, Vol. 2-2: 108-140.
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