Nogeoldae

Nogeoldae
Korean name
Hangul 노걸대
Hanja 老乞大
Revised Romanization Nogeoldae
McCune–Reischauer Nogŏltae

The Nogeoldae (hanzi: 老乞大; pinyin: Lǎo qǐdà, hangeul: 노걸대, meaning litteraly, Old Khitan) is an old foreign language textbook published in Korea. At first it dealt only with the Chinese language, but later various tongues from elsewhere. This book has a weighty status in Chinese historical linguistics for its abundant, valuable data. 乞大 is a phonetic transcription of Khitans.

Text

The book mainly consists of dialogues. A merchant from Goryeo and his relatives travel from Kaesŏng, called the Royal Capital (王京, wang gyeong, as opposed to the Imperial Capital) to Dadu (Beijing), and on their way they happen to get Chinese companions. In Dadu, they sell Korean commodities and purchase goods to sell in their country. They eventually depart from Dadu, and their route comes to an end.

After the first Chinese edition, two major revisions have been issued; Some were translated into other languages, while others made into guidebooks in Hangul.

The first Chinese edition seems to have been written in the late Goryeo Dynasty. A copy discovered in Daegu in 1998 is considered the closest to the original version. It includes valuable information on the colloquial Northern Chinese language, called Han'er (漢兒言語) in this book, around the 14th century.

Since the original version became obsolete from the Ming Dynasty, a revised edition was produced in 1480s. A Korean scholar Choi Sejin wrote a guidebook based on it, called Beonyeok Nogeoldae (飜譯老乞大). This contains the pronunciation of the Chinese language as well as its meaning in Korean, both recorded in Hangul. In 1670 he put out another book called Nogeoldae Eonhae (老乞大諺解).

During the Qing period, the text was revised again to adjust to contemporary Chinese. the Nogeoldae Sinseok (老乞大新釋) was published in 1761, and the Junggan Nogeoldae (重刊老乞大) appeared in 1795. The commentaries corresponding to them are called Nogeoldae Sinseok Eonhae (老乞大新釋諺解) (1763) and the Junggan Nogeoldae Eonhae (重刊老乞大諺解).

The Nogeoldae was translated into other languages. The Cheong-eo Nogeoldae (or Qīngyǔ Lǎoqǐdà 淸語(滿語)老乞大) includes Manchu text along with Hangul pronunciation and Korean translations. It was written by Choe Hutaek (崔厚澤) and others and published in 1680. I Choedae (李最大) made a Mongolian edition called the Mong-eo Nogeoldae (Měngyǔ Lǎoqǐdà 蒙語老乞大) that was published in 1741.

See also

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