''Ch'ŏphae Sinŏ'' () or is a Korean textbook of colloquial

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

, written in 1618 and published by the

Bureau of Interpreters The Bureau of Interpreters or Sayŏgwŏn was an agency of the Joseon government of Korea from 1393 to 1894 responsible for training and supplying official interpreters. Textbooks for foreign languages produced by the bureau aimed to accurately de ...

in 1676. It is a source for

Late Middle Japanese was a stage of the Japanese language following Early Middle Japanese and preceding Early Modern Japanese. It was a period of transition in which the language shed many of its archaic features and became closer to its modern form. The period ...

Author

Kang U-sŏng (, ) was a native of

Jinju Jinju (; ) is a city in South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea. It was the location of the first (1592) and second (1593) Sieges of Jinju by Japanese forces during the Imjin War. The Republic of Korea Air Force Education and Training Comman ...

. 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 career 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 Busan (), officially Busan Metropolitan City, is South Korea's second list of cities in South Korea by population, most populous city after Seoul, with a population of over 3.3 million as of 2024. Formerly romanized as Pusan, it is the economi ...

, the point of departure for missions to Japan. 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.

Editions

The work was published in 10 fascicles in 1676, when it was adopted as the official textbook for teaching Japanese, replacing 14 out-dated titles. The Japanese text is written in large

hiragana is a Japanese language, Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' means "common" or "plain" kana (originally also "easy", ...

, with a phonetic transcription in

Hangul The Korean alphabet is the modern writing system for the Korean language. In North Korea, the alphabet is known as (), and in South Korea, it is known as (). The letters for the five basic consonants reflect the shape of the speech organs ...

on the right and followed by a translation in

Korean mixed script Korean mixed script () is a form of writing the Korean language that uses a mixture of the Korean alphabet or hangul () and hanja (, ), the Korean name for Chinese characters. The distribution on how to write words usually follows that all nat ...

. A copy of this edition is held by the

Seoul National University Seoul National University (SNU; ) is a public university, public research university in Seoul, South Korea. It is one of the SKY (universities), SKY universities and a part of the Flagship Korean National Universities. The university's main c ...

Library. The book and its revisions remained the sole official Japanese text for the following two centuries. A revised edition known as the ''Chungan'' (重刊 'reprinted') or ''Kaesu'' (改修 'revised') ''Ch'ŏphae Sinŏ'' was published in 12 fascicles in 1781. It contains the same conversations and Korean translation as the original, but the Japanese text was updated to reflect the colloquial language of the time. Copies of this edition are held in the Seoul National University Library, the

Tōyō Bunko The , or Oriental Library, is Japan's largest Asian studies library and one of the world's five largest, located in Tokyo. It also functions as a research institute dedicated to the study of Asian history and culture. It has greatly contributed to ...

and the Eihei Temple. The preceding editions focussed on spoken Japanese, and so recorded the language using hiragana. The ''Ch'ŏphae Sinŏ Munsŏk'' (捷解新語文釋 'literary transformation of the ''Ch'ŏphae Sinŏ), published in 12 fascicles in 1796, was aimed at those who were also studying written Japanese. Intended as a companion to the preceding edition, it contained only the Japanese text, rewritten in the

Japanese mixed script The modern Japanese writing system uses a combination of logographic kanji, which are adopted Chinese characters, and syllabic kana. Kana itself consists of a pair of syllabaries: hiragana, used primarily for native or naturalized Japanese wo ...

. The only known surviving copy of this edition is held in the Seoul National University Library.

References

Works cited * * *

External links

{{commons cat, 捷解新語, ''Ch'ŏphae Sinŏ''
첩해신어(捷解新語)
– description at the

Academy of Korean Studies The Academy of Korean Studies (AKS; ) is a South Korean research and educational institute focusing on Korean studies. It was established on June 22, 1978, by the Ministry of Education & Science Technology. Works Journals *'' Korea Journal'' ...

Cheopae sineo (捷解新語)
National Hangeul Museum
scanned volumes
at the Digital Hangeul Museum
scanned volumes
at the Ogura Collection,

University of Tokyo The University of Tokyo (, abbreviated as in Japanese and UTokyo in English) is a public research university in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1877 as the nation's first modern university by the merger of several pre-westernisation era ins ...

Works by Joseon people Late Middle Japanese texts 17th-century books Language textbooks