Ch'ŏphae Sinŏ

Ch'ŏphae Sinŏ or Shōkai Shingo ('Rapid Understanding of a New Language') is a Korean textbook of colloquial Japanese, written in 1618 and published by the Bureau of Interpreters in 1676. It is a source for Late Middle Japanese.[1][2]

Ch'ŏphae Sinŏ
Korean name
Hangul첩해신어
Hanja捷解新語
Japanese name
Kanji捷解新語
Hiraganaしょうかいしんご

Gang U-seong (康遇聖, Kang Wuseng) was a native of Jinju. At the age of 11, he was one of thousands of Korean civilians abducted to Japan during the Japanese invasion of Korea in 1592. He was released after 10 years and returned to Korea, where he embarked on a carrer as an official interpreter, passing the interpreter's exam in 1609. He served as interpreter on Korean embassies to Japan and as an instructor in Busan, the point of departure for missions to Japan.[3] By 1618, he had completed a series of instructional materials on the Japanese language in the form of conversations involving Koreans travelling to Japan for business or diplomacy.[4]

The work was published in 1676, when it was adopted as the official textbook for teaching Japanese, replacing 14 out-dated titles. The book and its revisions remained the sole official Japanese text for the following two centuries.[4] The Japanese text is written in large hiragana, with a phonetic transcription in Hangul on the right and followed by a translation in Korean mixed script.[4]

References
  1. Martin (1987), p. 22.
  2. Irwin & Narrog (2012), p. 246.
  3. Song (2001), p. 142.
  4. Song (2001), p. 143.

Works cited

  • Irwin, Mark; Narrog, Heiko (2012), "Late Middle Japanese", in Tranter, Nicolas (ed.), The Languages of Japan and Korea, Routledge, pp. 246–226, ISBN 978-0-415-46287-7.
  • Martin, Samuel Elmo (1987), The Japanese Language through Time, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, ISBN 978-0-300-03729-6.
  • Song, Ki-joong (2001), The Study of Foreign Languages in the Chosŏn Dynasty (1392–1910), Seoul: Jimoondang, ISBN 978-89-88095-40-9.
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