Ju Sigyeong (, December 22, 1876 – July 27, 1914) was one of the founders of modern Korean linguistics. He was born in Pongsan-gun,

Hwanghae-do Hwanghae Province (''Hwanghae-do'' ) was one of the Eight Provinces of Korea during the Joseon era. Hwanghae was located in the northwest of Korea. The provincial capital was Haeju. The regional name for the province was Haeseo. History In 139 ...

in 1876. He helped to standardize the Korean language, based on the spelling and grammar of vernacular Korean.

Biography

Ju Sigyeong was born in Hwanghae Province, in what is now North Korea. He studied Classical Chinese from an early age. In 1887 he moved to Seoul and studied linguistics. In 1896 he found work in the first Hangeul-only newspaper, ''

Dongnip Sinmun ''The Independent'' or ''Tongnip Sinmun'' (독립신문; 1896–1899) was an early Korean newspaper. ''Tongnip Sinmun'' was the first privately managed modern daily newspaper in Korea. It was founded in July 1896 by a member of the enlightened Ko ...

'', founded by the Korean independence activist Seo Jae-pil. In 1897 Seo Jae-pil was sent into exile to the United States, and Ju Sigyeong left the newspaper. Interested in Western linguistics and teaching methods, Ju Sigyeong served as a Korean instructor for the American missionary

William B. Scranton William Benton Scranton (May 29, 1856 – March 23, 1922) was an American medical doctor and Methodist missionary in Korea. Biography William B. Scranton was born on May 29, 1856, in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of William Talcott Scranton, a ...

, founder of today's Ewha Womans University.

Standardizing Korean Language

Having realized the need of a standardized Korean alphabet, Ju Sigyeong established the Korean Language System Society () in 1886 along with several of his colleagues. He hosted several seminars in the National Language Discussion Centre of the Sangdong Youth Academy of the Korean language (). He proposed that the Korean parts of speech include nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, un conjugated adjectives (), auxiliaries (), conjunctions,

exclamation An exclamation is an emphatic utterance, the articulate expression of an affect. Exclamation may also refer to: * Exclamation mark, the punctuation mark "!" * Exclamation, an emphatic interjection * Exclamation, a statement against penal interest ...

s, and

sentence-final particle Sentence-final particles, including modal particles, interactional particles, etc., are minimal lexemes (words) that occur at the end of a sentence and that do not carry referential meaning, but may relate to linguistic modality, register or oth ...

s (). Ju Sigyeong coined the name ''

Hangul The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul, . Hangul may also be written as following South Korea's standard Romanization. ( ) in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea, is the modern official writing system for the Korean language. The ...

'' () between 1910 and 1913 to identify the Korean writing system, which had previously existed under several other names, such as ''eonmun'' (, vernacular script), since the 15th century. In his 1914 publication, ''Sounds of the Language'' (), he promoted writing

linearly Linearity is the property of a mathematical relationship (''function'') that can be graphically represented as a straight line. Linearity is closely related to '' proportionality''. Examples in physics include rectilinear motion, the linear re ...

rather than syllabically. This is one of his few proposals not to have been implemented in modern Korean linguistics, although there have been experiments with linear Hangul, most notably in

Primorsky Krai Primorsky Krai (russian: Приморский край, r=Primorsky kray, p=prʲɪˈmorskʲɪj kraj), informally known as Primorye (, ), is a federal subject (a krai) of Russia, located in the Far East region of the country and is a part of t ...

Publications

* ''The History of the Downfall of Vietnam'' () (1907) * ''The National Language Classical Phonetics '' () (1908) (based on his lecture notes) * ''An Introduction to the Chinese Language '' () (1909) * ''An Introduction to the National Language '' () (1910) * ''The Grammar of the National Language'' () (1910) * ''Sounds of the Language'' () (1914)

References

External links

주시경 (Ju Si-kyeong)
a biography with a photo {{DEFAULTSORT:Ju, Sigyeong 1876 births 1914 deaths History of Korea South Korean Protestants Converts to Christianity Sangju Ju clan People from North Hwanghae Linguists from Korea 20th-century linguists Linguists of Korean

Biography

Standardizing Korean Language

Publications

See also

References

External links