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<DIV>If I may, I'd just like to offer a couple of short notes about the first of
Stefan Ewing's questions. The dictionary definitions he mentions are, in a
way, relics of how Chinese characters used to be used to transcribe
Korean. The <EM>hun</EM> method of reading characters may have long since
disappeared from modern Korean life--so much so many people associate
<EM>hun</EM> readings only with Japan (where they're called <EM>kun</EM>
readings--<EM>yama</EM> for 山 'mountain', for example)--but it was certainly
used, apparently quite commonly, in early Korea as well. The first
king of Silla, for example, is known to us as Hyokkose (<EM>hyekkesey</EM> in
Yale Romanization), because that's how the characters used to transcribe his
name (赫居世) are read in Contemporary Korean pronunciation. But the name was
also written in phonograms as 弗矩內, and the only way to reconcile the two
transcriptions is to assume that the most common transcription represented
<EM>hun</EM>-style readings, where the characters were chosen for the meanings
they represented. Thus, the king's "name" meant something like '(Monarch
of) the Shining Age'. We see the <EM>hun</EM> style of reading characters
on full display in the Hyangga poems (though many of these readings and their
meanings (most?) are uninterpretable). If we look, for example, at David
McCann's 1997 translation of one of the most transparent of the poems, the "Song
of Ch'oyang", we see that in these <EM>hyangch'al</EM> transcriptions
<EM>hun</EM> readings were used fully as much as <EM>kun</EM> readings are in
Japanese. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> Before the invention of Hangul, that's how Chinese
characters were often used to represent ordinary Korean words (in 13th-century
medical treatises, for example). And, as Stefan Ewing implies, Ch'oe
Sejin certainly made of use them in the 16th century, too, most obviously
perhaps in the names he gave to the Hangul letters, where, for example, the
character 衣 (<EM>uy</EM> 'clothing') was used to illustrate the final
-<EM>s</EM> of 시옷 <EM>sios</EM>, because it could be read as <EM>os</EM>
'clothing'. (These matters are discussed in detail in Gari Ledyard's
<EM>The Korean Language Reform of 1446</EM>.) </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> Robert Ramsey</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>----- Original Message -----
<DIV>From: "Stefan Ewing" <<A
href="mailto:sa_ewing@hotmail.com">sa_ewing@hotmail.com</A>></DIV>
<DIV>To: <<A
href="mailto:Koreanstudies@koreaweb.ws">Koreanstudies@koreaweb.ws</A>></DIV>
<DIV>Sent: Friday, June 10, 2005 9:22 PM</DIV>
<DIV>Subject: [KS] Ch'oe Sejin; Days of the Week; Choso^n Dynasty Regnal
Years</DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>> Dear KS list members:<BR>> <BR>> I have three arcane
questions, all on topics that have nothing to do with <BR>>
romanization. The first concerns the _hun_ readings (traditional <BR>>
definitions) of hanja, the second the Korean names of the days of the week,
<BR>> and the third the numbering of years using Korean versus Chinese reign
<BR>> names. The first two may perhaps be of the "Why is the sky blue?"
variety, <BR>> but I am confident that at least some among you may be able to
answer them.<BR>> <BR>> 1. In _okp'yo^n_ (hanja dictionaries), the
_hun_ readings (native Korean <BR>> definitions) of characters often use
archaic words or _natch'ummal_ for <BR>> nouns, or the determinative _-(u^)l_
ending for verbs and adjectives. <BR>> Examples will be familiar to
most readers: _me san_ for "mountain"; _o^mi <BR>> mo_ for "mother"; _kal
wang_ for "go."<BR>> <BR>> This practice would appear to be of rather
ancient origin. The question is, <BR>> how ancient and to whom may we
attribute these delightfully fascinating but <BR>> fossilized forms? Is
this due to the work of Ch'oe Sejin in his 1527 <BR>> _Hunmong Chahoe_, his
great collection of hanja with Hangul glosses? I <BR>> don't suppose
there could be any attestations to this practice that are much <BR>> older
than his work, unless Koryo^-era scholars wrote definitions in Idu!<BR>>
<BR>> 2. How did the naming of days in Korea and Japan after the Sun,
the Moon, <BR>> and the planets (or traditional five elements) come
about? The <BR>> correspondence between the seven days of the week in
Korean and Japanese on <BR>> the one hand and European languages on the other
is surely too similar to be <BR>> a coincidence.<BR>> <BR>> The English
names of the days of the week denote the Sun, the Moon, Mars <BR>> (the
Teutonic deity Tiw), Mercury (Woden), Jupiter (Thor), Venus (Frigga <BR>>
(sp.?), and Saturn, in that order. Similarly, the Korean and Japanese
names <BR>> of the days of the week denote the Sun, the Moon, Mars
(Hwaso^ng), Mercury <BR>> (Suso^ng), Jupiter (Mokso^ng), Venus (Ku^mso^ng),
and Saturn (T'oso^ng) <BR>> respectively.<BR>> <BR>> I notice than in
modern written Chinese, days of the week are numbered, <BR>> their names
having nothing to do with any sort of cosmological system. I <BR>> also
see that in the Kyujanggak's online edition of the _Ilso^nggi_ (late <BR>>
Choso^n-dynasty court diary), days are named or numbered using the _yuksip
<BR>> kapcha_, the same system used for numbering years in vernacular
documents of <BR>> that period. Was there any system for naming days of
the week (rather than <BR>> as part of a 60-day cycle) in use at that
time? How did the correspondence <BR>> between names of days of the
week and the planets (or five elements) come <BR>> about? Is this a
modern contrivance from the late 19th-century drives for <BR>>
westernization?<BR>> <BR>> 3. Someone recently informed me that he
believed that during the <BR>> Choso^n/Joseon Dynasty (at least prior to 1896
when the era _Ko^nyang_ <BR>> began), while Korean regnal years (reign years;
yo^nho) were used for dating <BR>> the Sillok (royal chronicles), _Chinese_
regnal years were used for dating <BR>> official documents. Thus, the
year 1887 would have been recorded as "Kojong <BR>> 25 nyo^n" in the _Kojong
Sillok_, but as "Kwangso^ [Guangxu] 13 nyo^n" in <BR>> official
documents. Could someone please tell me whether this is in fact <BR>>
the case?<BR>> <BR>> I will be grateful for any and all answers to these
vexing questions!<BR>> <BR>> Thanks,<BR>> Stefan Ewing<BR>> <BR>>
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