Middle Korean
Middle Korean is a historical stage of the Korean language spanning approximately the 10th to the 16th centuries, encompassing the Goryeo dynasty (918–1392) and the early Joseon dynasty up to the Imjin War (1592–1598).[1] This era marks a transitional phase from Old Korean, characterized by greater dialectal unification following the establishment of the Goryeo capital in Kaesong, to the foundations of modern Korean forms.[1] The most defining innovation of Middle Korean was the invention of the Hangul alphabet in 1443 by King Sejong the Great (r. 1418–1450), promulgated in 1446 through the Hunminjeongeum document, which aimed to create a simple, phonetic script accessible to commoners and distinct from the logographic Chinese characters (Hanja) previously used via systems like idu and hyangchal.[2] This development enabled the transcription of vernacular Korean literature, including poetry, novels, and scientific texts, vastly increasing literacy and preserving the language's native structure for the first time.[2] Prior to Hangul, Middle Korean was primarily recorded using Chinese graphs as phonetic aids (chaja or idu), limiting full representation of its sounds and grammar.[3] Linguistically, Middle Korean exhibited an agglutinative structure typical of Koreanic languages, with subject-object-verb (SOV) word order, postpositions, and extensive suffixation for tense, mood, and honorifics.[3] Its phonology included 17 consonants—such as aspirated, tense, and plain stops—and a vowel inventory of 8, organized into yang (light) and yin (dark) harmony classes (e.g., yang: , [ə], ; yin: [ɛ], [ɨ], , ), where harmony applied across roots and morpheme boundaries, often affecting case markers like -ul/-ɨl.[4] A distinctive two-way pitch accent system (high and low tones) distinguished lexical items, a feature inherited from earlier stages but lost in most modern dialects except southeastern varieties.[4] Morphologically, it featured complex verb conjugations with evidential markers and a robust honorific system reflecting social hierarchy, while syntax emphasized topic-comment structures and relative clauses without relativizers.[3] Vocabulary blended native roots with increasing Sino-Korean loans, reflecting cultural exchanges, though native terms dominated everyday usage.[3] These elements highlight Middle Korean's role in standardizing the language amid political unification and scholarly advancement.Historical Context
Definition and Periodization
Middle Korean is the historical stage of the Korean language that spans from the 10th to the 16th centuries, serving as a transitional phase between Old Korean and the onset of Modern Korean. This period encompasses significant linguistic developments, including the establishment of more systematic documentation and the influence of political unification under successive dynasties. The language during this era reflects a synthesis of earlier regional dialects, particularly those from the Silla kingdom, evolving amid cultural and administrative changes on the Korean peninsula.[1] The periodization of Middle Korean is generally divided into two sub-stages aligned with major dynastic shifts: Early Middle Korean (918–1392 CE), which corresponds to the Goryeo dynasty following the unification of the peninsula, and Late Middle Korean (1392–1592 CE), encompassing the initial phase of the Joseon dynasty. The Goryeo era began with the dynasty's founding in 918 CE and the relocation of the capital to Kaesong, marking a consolidation of linguistic norms across regions. The subsequent Joseon period started in 1392 CE with the move of the capital to Seoul (then Hanyang), fostering further standardization, though the precise end of Middle Korean is tied to the disruption of written records during the Japanese invasion of 1592 CE, the onset of the Imjin War.[1] Middle Korean is distinguished from Old Korean, which is confined to the era of the Unified Silla kingdom (668–935 CE) and characterized by sparse documentation primarily through idu script and Chinese transcriptions, heavily influenced by Silla dialects in southeastern Korea. In contrast, the post-Middle Korean phase, often termed Early Modern Korean, emerges after the 16th century, with notable phonological and lexical shifts accelerated by the socio-political upheavals of the Imjin War (1592–1598 CE) and subsequent isolationist policies. The exact start of Middle Korean remains somewhat debated among scholars, with some proposing an 11th-century onset due to the appearance of the earliest substantial Korean lexical records in the Chinese text Jilin leishi (1103–1104 CE), though the dynastic framework from 918 CE is more widely adopted for its reflection of broader linguistic continuity.[5][1]Sociolinguistic Background
Middle Korean, spanning the Goryeo (918–1392) and early Joseon (1392–1592) dynasties, was shaped by political efforts toward linguistic standardization amid shifting capitals and administrative needs. During the Goryeo period, the relocation of the capital to Kaesong centralized the spoken language around a central dialect base, while the dynasty's reliance on Classical Chinese for official documents fostered the integration of Sino-Korean vocabulary and early vernacular notation systems like idu and hyangchal.[6] In the early Joseon era, King Sejong's promulgation of Hangul in 1446 marked a deliberate push for vernacular standardization, enabling phonetic representation of spoken Korean and reducing dependence on Sino-script adaptations, though full implementation faced resistance from conservative elites.[6] Religious and ideological forces profoundly influenced literacy and lexical development in Middle Korean. Buddhism, prominent in Goryeo, promoted literacy through vernacular translations of sutras, such as the Amit’a kyŏng ŏnhae (late 15th century), which used mixed scripts to make sacred texts accessible beyond monastic circles.[6] Confucianism, elevated as state orthodoxy under Joseon, expanded Sino-Korean vocabulary via civil service examinations and commentaries like the Sohak onhae (1588), reinforcing elite literacy in Chinese classics while embedding Confucian terms into everyday discourse.[6] The monarchy, particularly Sejong, actively supported these trends by commissioning works like the Yongbi eocheonga (1447), which blended Sino-Korean and vernacular elements to legitimize dynastic rule through accessible language.[6] Sociolinguistic stratification was evident in the bilingualism of elites, who mastered Classical Chinese for writing official, literary, and scholarly purposes, often employing annotation systems like kugyŏl to align it with Korean syntax.[7] This diglossia persisted across Goryeo and Joseon, with vernacular Korean dominating oral communication among all classes but remaining largely unwritten until Hangul's invention, which gradually democratized written expression.[7] The 13th-century Mongol invasions further diversified spoken forms, introducing loanwords related to military, equine, and administrative terms—such as those preserved in Cheju dialects—and elevating Mongol as a prestige language in courtly circles, though without supplanting Korean.[8] Regional dialects, including those from Kyŏngsang and Hamgyŏng provinces, reflected substratal influences like Koguryŏan remnants, contributing to phonetic and lexical variations in everyday speech.[6] Access to language and literacy varied sharply by gender and class, underscoring social hierarchies. Among yangban elites, literacy in Classical Chinese was primarily a male privilege, tied to Confucian education and exam preparation, while women—even from elite families—faced severe restrictions, often limited to moral texts like Naehun or informal oral traditions.[9] Commoners of both genders had minimal formal literacy, relying on oral vernacular, though kisaeng entertainers occasionally accessed literary arts. Pre-Hangul, women's exclusion from education reinforced patriarchal norms, but Hangul's simplicity later facilitated female literacy in vernacular works, such as domestic manuals, marking a gradual shift in access.[9][10]Linguistic Documentation
Primary Sources
The primary sources for Middle Korean encompass a range of texts and inscriptions from the 12th to the 16th centuries, primarily written in adapted Chinese characters before the invention of Hangul and later in the new script, providing glimpses into the language's lexicon, phonology, and usage during the Goryeo and early Joseon periods.[5][11] Pre-Hangul sources are limited but crucial, with the Jilin leishi (also known as Kyerim yusa), compiled between 1103 and 1104 by the Song dynasty scholar Sunmu, standing as the earliest substantial lexicon of Korean words.[12] This Chinese text on Korean customs includes over 350 Korean entries transcribed in the Idu script, an adaptation of Chinese characters for phonetic representation of Korean, covering topics like kinship terms, numerals, and daily objects, though it reflects the Goryeo dialect, likely the standard spoken in the capital Kaesong.[13][14] Hyangchal inscriptions, another pre-Hangul system using Chinese characters to denote Korean sounds and meanings, appear in surviving examples such as hyangga poems preserved in the Samguk yusa (1281) by the monk Il-yeon, which records 14 vernacular songs and Buddhist hymns from the Unified Silla and early Goryeo eras, along with fragmentary evidence from steles and wooden tablets.[5] Additionally, scattered Chinese glosses in historical records, such as the Samguk sagi (1145) and Jurchen-Mongol diplomatic documents, offer isolated Korean terms and phrases, often in idu or mixed Sino-Korean forms, illuminating administrative and cultural vocabulary.[13] The invention of Hangul in 1443 dramatically expanded documentation, beginning with the Hunminjeongeum (1446), a foundational primer promulgated by King Sejong that explains the script's principles and includes numerous Middle Korean example sentences and vocabulary to demonstrate its phonetic accuracy for vernacular expression.[11] This was followed by the Yongbi eocheonga (1447), an epic poem in 125 cantos composed under royal auspices to legitimize the Joseon dynasty, fully rendered in Hangul with mixed hanja, showcasing rhythmic prose and cosmological themes in the Seoul dialect.[15] These sources, while invaluable, exhibit significant limitations: their fragmentary nature restricts comprehensive analysis, an elite bias favors courtly or scholarly registers over everyday speech, and regional variations—such as central dialects in Hangul texts—complicate uniform reconstruction.[14][5] The Jilin leishi remains the earliest substantial lexicon, predating Hangul by over three centuries, while post-1446 Hangul texts uniquely enable precise phonetic transcription, preserving nuances lost in earlier idu and hyangchal adaptations.[12] Modern scholarship often interprets these artifacts through comparative linguistics, though such analyses build directly on the originals.[11]Secondary Sources and Modern Scholarship
Modern scholarship on Middle Korean has relied heavily on comparative linguistic methods to reconstruct its features, drawing from the abundant Hangul texts of the 15th and 16th centuries alongside earlier Sino-Korean loanwords and idu transcriptions to infer developments in the transitional periods. Key methodologies include phonological reconstruction through internal evidence from vernacular documents and external comparisons with Chinese borrowings, which provide clues to vowel and consonant evolutions prior to the widespread use of Hangul.[16] These approaches have been central to works like Yi Ki-mun's comprehensive historical analyses, which emphasize systematic sound changes across stages of the language.[17] Prominent scholars have shaped the field, with Yi Ki-mun (Lee Ki-Moon) leading in phonological reconstructions, notably proposing a major vowel shift in the 13th to 15th centuries that transformed sounds like *a to *eo, based on discrepancies between Old Korean inscriptions and early Middle Korean texts.[17] This hypothesis, detailed in his collaborative history of Korean, has influenced subsequent studies by integrating comparative data from Sino-Korean layers. Similarly, Samuel E. Martin's 1992 reference grammar provides a foundational descriptive framework for Middle Korean morphology and syntax, analyzing inflectional patterns and word formation using 15th- and 16th-century sources to bridge historical and modern Korean. Debates persist around these reconstructions, particularly the vowel shift, with critics like those in a 2009 study challenging Yi Ki-mun's model as overly reliant on assumed uniformity, arguing instead for more gradual, dialect-specific changes evidenced by variant transcriptions in Hangul records. Such discussions highlight the interpretive challenges in aligning sparse pre-Hangul data with later attestations. Scholarship faces significant gaps for the 11th to 13th centuries, where limited vernacular documentation—mostly confined to idu glosses and loan adaptations—obscures the transition from Old to Middle Korean, complicating precise periodization and feature attribution.[17] Post-2000 research has addressed this through digital corpora initiatives, such as those by the National Institute of the Korean Language, which digitize and annotate Middle Korean texts for computational analysis, enabling broader access and pattern detection.[18] In the 21st century, studies have increasingly explored dialectal variations, using modeling techniques to trace regional divergences from the Seoul-based standard, as seen in analyses of Cheju dialect reflexes of Middle Korean consonants like ㅿ.[19] Iterated learning models have been applied to simulate historical accent shifts in dialects like Kyengsang and Chungnam, revealing how sociolinguistic factors may have driven uneven changes across the peninsula.[20] These approaches integrate quantitative simulations with textual evidence to model sociolinguistic dynamics, such as prestige influences on vowel mergers.[21]Orthography
Pre-Hangul Writing Systems
Before the invention of Hangul in 1443, Korean was primarily written using adaptations of Chinese characters (hanja), as the language lacked a dedicated script. These systems, developed during the Three Kingdoms period (c. 57 BCE–668 CE) and refined in subsequent eras, allowed for the transcription of vernacular Korean but were inherently limited by their reliance on a logographic system designed for a different language family. The main pre-Hangul writing systems included Idu and Hyangchal, which served distinct purposes in official, literary, and interpretive contexts.[6] Idu, meaning "clerk reading," emerged around the 4th century in the kingdoms of Goguryeo and Baekje, with significant systematization in Silla by the late 7th century under scholars like Seol Chong. It adapted Chinese characters to represent Korean grammar and syntax, particularly in official documents and legal texts during the Goryeo (918–1392) and early Joseon (1392–1897) periods. In Idu, characters were used both semantically (for meaning, via hun readings) and phonetically (as loan characters for sounds), with special markers for particles and endings—such as 乙 for the accusative -ul or 伊 for certain connectives—to adjust Chinese syntax to Korean's agglutinative structure. For instance, the native word for "mountain," san, could be rendered with the character 山, augmented by grammatical indicators like particles for location (e.g., ey or i). This system was primarily employed by administrative elites to annotate Chinese classics for Korean comprehension, blending phonetic and interpretive elements.[22][6] Hyangchal, or "local letters," originated in the Silla kingdom during the 7th–10th centuries and was mainly used for vernacular poetry, such as the hyangga form preserved in the Samguk yusa (1289). Unlike Idu's focus on grammar, Hyangchal emphasized phonetic transcription, treating Chinese characters as a syllabary to approximate Korean sounds and words—e.g., 加 for ka, 乃 for na, or 山 for the native mwoy "mountain" in poetic contexts. It combined semantic glosses with phonograms, as seen in examples like the "Song of Ch'ŏyong" (c. 879), where sequences like 東京 represent TWONG-KYENG (likely "capital city"). This indigenous adaptation was confined to literary works, including sijo-like forms from the 11th–13th centuries, and required familiarity with Chinese to interpret.[23][6] Both systems suffered from inherent limitations in phonetic precision, leading to frequent ambiguity and reliance on reader expertise in Chinese. Idu provided scant phonological detail, prioritizing grammatical adaptation over sound representation, while Hyangchal's syllabic approximations were inexact and prone to multiple interpretations, making full vernacular expression challenging. These inadequacies restricted literacy to the scholarly elite and highlighted the need for a more systematic script. Following the promulgation of Hangul in 1446, Idu and Hyangchal rapidly declined, as Hangul's alphabetic design superiorly captured Korean phonetics and grammar; by the 16th century, Hangul dominated vernacular writing, though Idu lingered in some administrative uses until the 19th century.[24][6]Development and Features of Hangul
Hangul, the Korean alphabet, was invented by King Sejong the Great between 1443 and 1446 during the Joseon Dynasty, with its official promulgation occurring in 1446 through the document Hunminjeongeum ("The Proper Sounds for the Education of the People"). This creation addressed the inadequacies of pre-existing writing systems like Hanja, which were ill-suited for representing the Korean language's phonology and morphology. Sejong's motivation stemmed from a desire to promote literacy among commoners, as articulated in the Hunminjeongeum preface, where he noted the challenges faced by those unfamiliar with Chinese characters.[25] The script's design drew on philosophical principles rooted in East Asian cosmology and human physiology: the three basic vowels symbolized heaven (a dot, •), earth (a horizontal line, ㅡ), and humanity (a vertical line, ㅣ), from which all other vowels were derived, while consonants were modeled after the shapes of the speech organs, such as the throat for ㅇ and the tongue for ㄴ. As a featural alphabet, Hangul's structure is unique in systematically encoding articulatory and phonetic features within its graphemes, allowing for efficient representation of Korean sounds. The original Hunminjeongeum introduced 28 letters: 17 consonants and 11 vowels, though four consonants (one vowel and three others) fell into disuse shortly after, leading to a core set of 14 consonants (such as ㄱ for velar stops, ㄴ for nasals, and ㄷ for dentals) and 10 vowels (including ㅏ, ㅓ, ㅗ, ㅜ, and ㅡ as basics, with compounds like ㅐ and ㅔ). These basic elements are combined into syllabic blocks, a hallmark of Hangul's orthography, where an initial consonant is placed at the top or left, followed by a medial vowel to the right or below, and an optional final consonant at the bottom—forming compact units like 한 (han) from ㅎ + ㅏ + ㄴ. This block arrangement reflects the natural rhythm of Korean syllables and facilitates reading in horizontal lines, a departure from the vertical columns of Hanja. Hangul's orthographic rules emphasize positional variation and derivational consistency to denote phonological distinctions. Letters occupy specific positions within the syllable block: initials at the onset, medials as vowels, and finals as codas, with rules governing their clustering and linear arrangement to avoid ambiguity. Aspiration is marked by adding a horizontal stroke to plain consonants (e.g., ㄱ becomes ㅋ for aspirated velars), while tension or gemination is indicated by doubling the plain form (e.g., ㄱ doubles to ㄲ for tense stops), enabling precise notation of Korean's three-way stop contrasts without additional symbols. These principles, detailed in the Hunminjeongeum Haerye (Explanation of Hunminjeongeum, 1446), ensure the script's systematicity, where complex sounds are built from simpler ones through geometric modifications. In its early years, Hangul was primarily used in a mixed script alongside Hanja, particularly for annotations and vernacular explanations, as elite scholars resisted its adoption for formal literature until the 16th century. The first major text employing Hangul extensively was Yongbi eocheonga ("Songs of Flying Dragons," 1447), a panegyric poem celebrating the Joseon founders, which interspersed Hangul with Hanja to aid readability.[25] Other early works, such as the Hunminjeongeum Eonhae (1446), demonstrated practical applications in glossing Chinese texts, gradually establishing Hangul's role in documenting Middle Korean despite initial opposition from Confucian elites who viewed it as simplistic. By the late 15th century, this mixed usage had expanded to include legal codes, medical treatises, and religious materials, laying the foundation for Hangul's broader acceptance.Phonology
Consonants
Middle Korean possessed a rich consonant inventory of 17 phonemes, systematically documented in 15th-century texts such as the Hunmin jeongeum (1446), which introduced Hangul to represent them precisely.[6] These included three series of stops and affricates—plain (lenis), aspirated, and tense (reinforced)—along with fricatives, nasals, and a liquid, reflecting a three-way contrast in obstruents that distinguished Middle Korean from both earlier and later stages of the language.[26] The system arose from historical developments in Old Korean, where aspiration and tenseness contrasts emerged gradually, with dental aspiration appearing earliest and velar aspiration latest by the 15th century.[6] The following table presents the Middle Korean consonant inventory in IPA notation, with corresponding Hangul representations from early texts:| Place of Articulation | Plain (Lenis) | Aspirated | Tense (Reinforced) | Hangul Examples (15th c.) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bilabial Stops | /p/ | /pʰ/ | /p͈/ | ㅂ (pal "foot"), ㅍ (phal "arm"), ㅃ (ppal "red") |
| Dental Stops | /t/ | /tʰ/ | /t͈/ | ㄷ (tal "moon"), ㅌ (tal "field"), ㄸ (ttal "daughter") |
| Velar Stops | /k/ | /kʰ/ | /k͈/ | ㄱ (kkos "flower"), ㅋ (khal "knife"), ㄲ (kkut "end") |
| Alveolar Affricates | /t͡s/ | /t͡sʰ/ | /t͡s͈/ | ㅿ or ㅈ (seng "monk"), ㅊ (chal "short"), ㅉ (ccam "grasp") |
| Palatal Affricates | /t͡ɕ/ | /t͡ɕʰ/ | /t͡ɕ͈/ | ㅈ (cil "finger"), ㅊ (chil "seven"), ㅉ (ccip- "receive") |
| Alveolar Fricatives | /s/ | — | /s͈/ | ㅅ (sal "flesh"), ㅆ (ssal "rice") |
| Glottal Fricative | /h/ | — | — | ㅎ (ha "do") |
| Nasals | /m/ | — | — | ㅁ (mul "water") |
| /n/ | — | — | ㄴ (nal "country") | |
| /ŋ/ | — | — | ㅇ (ŋot "duckweed") | |
| Liquid | /l/ / /ɾ/ | — | — | ㄹ (lal "empty") |