≪易言≫과 한글본 ≪이언≫을 통해 살펴본 개화기 서구 외래어의 자음 표기 분석

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the aspects of orthography loanwords in the early Enlightenment age through the analysis of consonant orthography among Western loanwords that appear in ≪Yiyan≫ and the Korean text ≪Ieon≫. For this purpose, the research focused on analyzing the transcription of Western loanwords, which were first phonetically transcribed into Chinese in ≪Yiyan≫ and then transcribed into Korean-style Chinese character sound in the Korean text ≪Ieon≫. As a result, it was found that in ≪Yiyan≫, Western loanwords were transcribed differently from the original pronunciation due to the syllabic rules and constraints of the Chinese language. In the Korean text ≪Ieon≫, due to the characteristic of indirectly transcribing the Chinese characters from ≪Yiyan≫ into Korean-style Chinese character sound, the plosives /b, d, g, k, t, p/ were not marked as tense sounds in either word-initial, word-middle, or word-final terms, and were written more as plain sounds than aspirated sounds. Consonants that are not used today were not used to write the fricatives /s, ʃ, h, z, v, ʒ/ or the fricatives /ʧ/, but they were mainly written in a different way from the current orthography of loanwords. The transcription of nasal sounds /m, n, ŋ/ or voice sounds /r, l/ was written in a relatively similar manner to the current orthography of loanwords system. This study has limitations in that the Western loanwords appearing in the Korean text ≪Ieon≫ are ‘indirect transcriptions.’ To closely understand the specific aspects of loanword orthography in the early age of enlightenment, follow-up research is needed to compare and contrast how Western loanwords were transcribed in other texts from the same period when the Korean text ≪Ieon≫ was published.