| Old Korean | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in | Korea |
| Era | Evolved into Middle Korean by the 10th century |
| Language family |
Disputed
|
| Writing system | Hanja |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | oko |
| Old Korean | |
|---|---|
| Hangul | 고대 국어 |
| Hanja | 古代國語 |
| Revised Romanization | Godae gugeo |
| McCune–Reischauer | Kodae kugŏ |
Old Korean is the historical variety of the Korean language or Koreanic languages dating from the beginning of Three Kingdoms of Korea to the latter part of the Unified Silla,[1] roughly from 1 AD to 1000 AD. It is distinct from Proto-Korean (원시 한국어), the ancestral language reconstructed from comparison of Korean dialects. Old Korean may have been a tonal language, although this has not been clearly established.[2]
The extent of Old Korean is unclear. It is generally accepted as including Sillan, which is thought to be the direct ancestor of Middle and Modern Korean, and may also have included Buyeo, Goguryeo, and Baekje. If so, Old Korean was a language family, not a single language. (See Buyeo languages, Koreanic languages.)
Only some literary records of Unified Silla, changed into Goryeo text, are extant and some texts (written in their native Writing system) of the Three kingdoms period are mostly available in form of inscriptions at present. Thus, the languages of the Three Kingdoms period are generally examined through official government names and local district names. The point at which Old Korean became Middle Korean is assessed variously by different scholars. The line is sometimes drawn in the late Goryeo dynasty, and sometimes around the 15th century in the early Joseon Dynasty. But it is usually thought that Middle Korea started at the establishment of Goryeo, and the standard language of Old Korean was changed from the Silla dialect to the Goryeo dialect.
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There is very little literature for research of Old Korean. The first texts in Old Korean date from the Three Kingdoms period. They are written using Chinese characters to represent the sound and grammar of the native language. Various systems were used, beginning with ad hoc approaches and gradually becoming codified in the scribal idu system and the hyangchal system used for poetry.
Additional information about the language is drawn from various proper nouns recorded in Korean and Chinese records, and from etymological studies of the Korean pronunciations of Chinese characters, which are believed to have been first adapted into Korean in the late Three Kingdoms period.
Classical Chinese was used as the main writing system. Phonetic systems were used, such as Hyangchal, Gugyeol or Idu. However, these were only arrangements of Chinese characters to represent the language phonetically, much like the Japanese Man'yōgana.
It has not been definitely proven that during the age of Three Kingdoms, all three kingdoms used the same language, but it is accepted by many scholars that the Three Kingdoms utilized similar languages, and that these may have been dialects of a single language.[3]
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