Towards the end of the 19th century the writing
system of Hangeul showed considerable disorders,
and it became an urgent task to settle them. The
very purpose of the establishment of The Research
Institute of the Korean Language(國文硏究所) in The
Ministry of Learning was to solve these problems.
An Agreement on the Research of the Korean Language(國文硏究議定案)
submitted by this Institute in the latter part
of the year 1909, confirmed the graphic status
of ‘?’ and the system of twenty-five consonants
and vowels. The twenty- four system except the
letter ‘?’ was introduced and observed in the
personal writings of Chu Shi-Gy?ng and his disciples.
At last it came to be recognized officially in
A Unified Proposal On Hangeul Orthography(1933).
Seen from a modern prospective, it is considered
very natural. However, as it could not but be
confronted with many challenges, it is never useless
to look back upon its history. This challenge
has two aspects; that is, writing systems for
indigenous words and loanwords. Especially, the
challenge of how to deal with loanwords was long
and tedious.
In the writing of indigenous words the addition
of new letters was focused on vowel letters. ?Kugmun-Ch?ngni?(國文正理,
1897) by Lee Pong-Un, and ?S?nmun-Thonghae?(鮮文通解,
1922) and ?Jeongeum-Munj?n?(正音文典, 1923)7)
by Lee Phil-Su, could be counted among these efforts.
As the former started from the false assumption
that ‘ㅏ’ was a long vowel and ‘?’ was a short
vowel, considering the existing vowel letters
as ones for long vowels, and he made new letters
for the short vowel, it does not deserve special
attention. But the argument of the latter for
making new complex letters in order to represent
diphthong ‘ㅡㅓ’ and such triphthongs as ‘ㅣㅡㅓ’ and
‘ㅜㅡㅣ’ could not be overlooked. The examples including
these vowels appearing in Lee Phil-Su (1923) are
as follows (written in modern vowel letters):
(1) k?n-gang(健康), s?ngin(聖人)
s?m(섬[島]), p?m(범[虎]), ch?kta(적다[小]), ?nje(언제[何時])
(2) ky?ngsa(慶事), ky?ngs?ng(鏡城)
y?nhan kogi(연한 고기[軟肉]), py?n-i natta(변이 났다[變生])
(3) wonmang(怨望), wonshi(遠視)
hwonhada(훤하다[薄明]), hwolhwol nalnunda(훨훨 날는다[飛負])
In short, paying attention to the difference of
pronunciation between long vowel ‘어’ in ‘어, 여,
워’ and short vowel ‘어’, he suggested new letters
for long vowels ‘어, 여, 워’. In the Seoul dialect,
the fact that the pronunciation of vowel ‘어’ is
realized in two different places of articulation
according to its length was reported by many articles
including Lee Sung-Ryong (1949). A recent case
was Yu Man-Gun (1977). In this context Lee Phil-Su's
argument may have a phonetic appropriateness,
but phonologically it could be interpreted as
an allophone of the vowel ‘어’. Additionally, the
above-mentioned difference of pronunciation is
gradually becoming inconspicuous in the Seoul
dialect these days.
The necessity for new letters in addition to the
existing twenty-four consonants and vowels was
strongly brought forth in writing Western proper
nouns. It attracts our attention that these new
letters were concentrated on consonant letters.
The earliest example was ?Thaesh?shinsa?(태셔신?).
The translator found the discrepancy between proper
nouns represented by Chinese characters and their
original pronunciations, and after long thought
he added a table for names of persons and places
in the preface. This table, with the contrast
between original pronuciations represented by
Hangeul and proper nouns copying their pronunciations
by Chinese characters, is a valuable document
which shows examples of the writing of loanwords
at that time. What is important is that the Western
original pronunciations represented by Hangeul
were based upon English pronunciations.8)
The first examples are as follows:
Pharis(파리스) 巴黎 法都
K?ris(그리스) 希臘 國
Rom(롬) 羅馬 國 卽 府 |
