19세기 서양인의 국어 계통론

Abstract

Studies on the Origin of Koreanin the 19th CenturyKi Joong SONGIn the middle of the 19th century, when such concepts as genealogical relationship of the languages, language family, common proto-language and so on were gaining popularity among the intellectuals in Europe, anyone who was seriously studying an exotic language would have thought about its origin or its genetic relationship with others. It was also the case for the western scholars who were engaged in the study of Korean.The earliest work in which an opinion on the genealogical classification, as a part of a general description of Korean, was presented seems to be de Rosny(1864) by the French Japanologist. After this rudimentary description, there had been published about twenty works, in which discussions on the classification or origin of Korean, or comparisons of Korean vocables with those of other languages, are found until the first decade of the 20th century by several missionary- or diplomat- scholars from France, Britain and America.In de Rosny(1864: pp.304-307) the following points were made: