[KS] Fwd: Re: Library of Congress Korean Controversy

[Ross King]

Hi everybody: 

> There's also a possible linguistic basis for some discussion on this challenging
> and interesting question.
> 
> Takeshima is the Japanese reading of the Korean name for the islands which is in
> turn the two Chinese characters meaning Lone Island.

In fact, the etymology of the first syllable of Tokto is supposed to be Korean dialect for 'rock': Middle Korean :twolh, but some dialects have a final -k corresponding to the Middle Korean -h. So the Sino-Korean TOK is just a fancy way of writing Korean dialect /tok/ = standard /tol/ < earlier :twolh (< earlier *twolok or the like?). It's just 'rock island'. But I don't think this helps us much with determining ownership ...

Cheers, 

Ross



--
Ross King
Professor of Korean and Head,
Department of Asian Studies, 
University of British Columbia, 

and 

Dean, Korean Language Village, 
Concordia Language Villages

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