[KS] “Terminations of the verb [hada]”

Brother Anthony ansonjae at sogang.ac.kr
Thu May 9 21:44:11 EDT 2013


I am not sure that every member of the list will be aware of the significance of this text or be sufficiently grateful for the announcement of its digital availability. 
Its full title is 

Terminations of the Verb 하다 with occasional references to some of the terminations used in Lumen. Seoul. 1896. For private circulation only.

and it is not simply 'rare'. The copy in the Bodleian Library, which came to it with the rest of his collection from Richard Rutt, is the only known copy, worldwide. The book sets out in a systematic way the complete variety of Korean verbal endings. In the Catalogue of the Landis Library published in the RASKB Transactions Volume 3 1903 http://www.raskb.com/transactions/VOL03/VOL03_3.docx the book is attributed to Bishop Corfe who was the Anglican Bishop in Corea 1890 - 1905. Bishop Corfe's practical difficulties with the Korean language (he could not understand what people were saying or speak it) did not apparently interfere with his ability to read and analyze, perhaps also to write it.

The rather mysterious mention of "Lumen" in the title refers to a small volume of essential passages from the Bible which the early Anglican missionaries including Corfe prepared in English then translated into Korean as JoManMinGwang to serve until they could dispose of a full Bible in Korea. Fuller information and scanned images can be found at http://hompi.sogang.ac.kr/anthony/Lumen.html  Corfe presented a copy to all the Bishops at the Lambeth Conference of 1897; the Bishop of Chota Nagpur had it translated into Hindi.

So let us thank Ross King and the Friends of the Bodleian most heartily for this gift to the scholarly world. I hope it will inspire many other such projects so that ultimately all the old books in the world's libraries can be freely read online by all who are interested in them.

Brother Anthony
President, RAS Korea etc




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