GUGYEOL

'Gugyeol' is a system for rendering texts written in Classical Chinese into understandable Korean. It was chiefly used during the Joseon Dynasty, when readings of the Chinese classics were of paramount social importance. Unlike the ''idu'' and ''hyangchal'' systems which preceded it, ''gugyeol'' used specialized markings, together with a subset of Chinese characters, to represented Korean morphological markers. Also, the ''idu'' and ''hyangchal'' systems appear to have been used primarily to render the Korean language into hanja; on the other hand, ''gugyeol'' sought to render Chinese texts into Korean with a minimum of distortion. Thus, in ''gugyeol'', the original classical text was not modified, and the additional markers were simply inserted between phrases.
The name ''gugyeol'' can be rendered as "phrase parting," and may refer to the separation of one Chinese phrase to another. This name is itself believed to originate from the use of Chinese characters to represent the Middle Korean phrase ''ipgyeot'' (입겿), with a similar meaning. The ''gugyeol'' system is also sometimes referred to as ''to'' (吐) or ''hyeonto'' (懸吐), since ''to'' is also used to refer to the morphological affixes themselves; or as ''seogui'' (석의,釋義) which can be rendered as "interpretation of the classics."
''Gugyeol'' first came into use in the early Goryeo dynasty. In this period, certain Chinese characters were used (along with specialized symbols) to represent Korean sounds through their meaning. For example, the syllable '잇' (''is'') was represented with the Chinese character , since that character has the Korean meaning '있다.' This technique came to be replaced in the late Goryeo period with using Chinese characters according to their sound. This later version of the ''gugyeol'' system was formalized by Jeong Mong-ju and Gwon Geun around 1400 in the early Joseon Dynasty, at the behest of King Taejong. At this time a number of Confucian classics, including the ''Classic of Poetry'', were rendered into ''gugyeol''.
The term ''gugyeol'' is often extended beyond this early system to similar uses of hangul following the introduction of the ''Hunmin jeongeum'' in the 15th century. In this respect, ''gugyeol'' remains in occasional use in contemporary South Korea, where such techniques are still sometimes used to render the Confucian classics into readable form.

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References

★ 국어의 역사 (Gugeo-ui yeoksa, History of the Korean language), Kim, Mu-rim (김무림), , , Hankook Munhwasa, 2004, ISBN 89-5726-185-0

★ 간추린 국어학 발전사 (Ganchurin gugeohak baljeonsa, An abridged history of Korean language studies), Kwon, Jae-seon (권재선), , , Ugoltap, 1989,

See also

★ Hanja

★ Idu

★ Hyangchal

★ Hangul

External links

★ Dusan World Encyclopedia entry