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Art. XIII.—A Comparative Study of the Japanese and Korean Languages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

W. G. Aston
W. G. Aston
Affiliation:
Assistant Japanese Secretary H.B.M.'s Legation, Yedo.
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Extract

In comparing Japanese and Korean with each other and with other languages, there are three things to be considered: —1st, their phonetic systems; 2nd, the functions of their grammar; and 3rd, the character of their grammatical procedures.

Type
Original Communications
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , August 1879 , pp. 317 - 364
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1879

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References

page 318 note 1 “Le mandchou possède des consonnes fortes, et des consonnes demi-fortes figurées par des caractères distincts, mais dans le corps et à la fin des mots, ces dernières sont sujettes a dégénérer en douces sans que l'écriture manifeste cette dégénérescence.”—Lucien Adam's Manchu Grammar, p. 13.Google Scholar

page 320 note 1 Author of a Corean Primer, Mission Press, Shanghai, 1877.Google Scholar It may he procured from Trübner & Co.

page 320 note 2 The modern Japanese language presents exceptions to this statement and to others made in the course of this paper, but the old classical language is always meant, except when otherwise indicated.

page 324 note 1 It is impossible to restore, with any degree of certainty, the dialects of Chinese from which the Chinese words in Japanese and Korean were borrowed. Indeed, one of the principal evidences of their character is these very Japanese and Korean derivatives. The modern official language has, therefore, been taken as a term of comparison. In so far as Chinese and Korean are concerned, a table in Dr. Pfizmaier's “Darlegungen aus der Geschichte und Geographie Corea's” has been made use of.

page 326 note 1 Chŭl and tera have not a single letter in common. But Korean ŭ is Japanese e; Korean l Japanese r; e in Japanese must be preceded by t not ch; and as no Japanese word can end in a consonant, an a is added in order to satisfy the laws of euphony.

page 326 note 2 The non-radical part of a word is put, as far as can be ascertained, in italics.

page 330 note 1 Summer is in Hungarian nyur and in Turkish yaz; the corresponding word in Mongol is narau ‘sun.’

page 335 note 1 “Mr. Tylor has justly observed that the true lesson of the new science of Comparative Mythology is the barrenness in primitive times of the faculty which we most associate with mental fertility, the imagination. Comparative Jurisprudence … yet more strongly suggests the same inference … Among these multitudes (the millions of men who fill what we vaguely call the East), Literature, Religion, and Art—or what correspond to them—move always within a distinctly drawn circle of unchanging notions … This condition of thought is rather the infancy of the human mind prolonged than a different maturity from that most familiar to us.”—Maine, Early History of Institutions, pp. 225–226.Google Scholar

page 343 note 1 It is this form which some writers have called the ‘copulative’ form. I prefer the term ‘adverb,’ because it has usually the force of an adverb in the case of adjectival roots and sometimes in that of verbs also. Besides, looking to the derivation of the word ‘adverb,’ it is not inappropriate as applied to the copulative form.

page 344 note 1 In some of these examples the ending characteristic of the part of speech is added, not to the root, but to a conjugable suffix. The principle illustrated is, however, the same.

page 352 note 1 The English ‘that’ includes both the nearer, or 2nd person, and more remote, or 3rd person, but the distinction is preserved in the vulgar phrase ‘this, that, and tha other.’ The Latin iste, ille, and the Italian cotesto, quello, mark the same distinction.

page 352 note 2 Geiger, , Ursprung und Entwickelung der menschlichen Sprache und Vernunft, vol. i. pp. 201–204.Google Scholar

page 355 note 1 It has already been observed that there are indications that in Japanese and Manchu there was at one time a tendency to mark a variation in the power of the same root by varying its vowel.

page 356 note 1 For want of sufficient and trustworthy materials, this list of Korean numerals is incomplete, and I fear to some extent inaccurate. Native words for ‘hundred’ and ‘thousand’ probably exist, but I have not been able to find them. It is well known that both Koreans and Japanese are fond of using the Chinese numerals instead of their own, especially in the case of the higher numbers.

page 358 note 1 In Manchu, there is a similar obscurity as to the derivation of the words for twenty, thirty, forty, and fifty.