Ju Sigyeong (; December 22, 1876 – July 27, 1914) was one of the founders of modern Korean

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

. He was born in Pongsan-gun, Hwanghae Province in 1876. He helped to standardize the

Korean language Korean is the first language, native language for about 81 million people, mostly of Koreans, Korean descent. It is the national language of both South Korea and North Korea. In the south, the language is known as () and in the north, it is kn ...

, based on the

spelling Spelling is a set of conventions for written language regarding how graphemes should correspond to the sounds of spoken language. Spelling is one of the elements of orthography, and highly standardized spelling is a prescriptive element. Spelli ...

and

grammar In linguistics, grammar is the set of rules for how a natural language is structured, as demonstrated by its speakers or writers. Grammar rules may concern the use of clauses, phrases, and words. The term may also refer to the study of such rul ...

of vernacular Korean.

Biography

Ju Sigyeong was born in Hwanghae Province, in what is now North Korea. He studied

Classical Chinese Classical Chinese is the language in which the classics of Chinese literature were written, from . For millennia thereafter, the written Chinese used in these works was imitated and iterated upon by scholars in a form now called Literary ...

from an early age. In 1887 he moved to

Seoul Seoul, officially Seoul Special Metropolitan City, is the capital city, capital and largest city of South Korea. The broader Seoul Metropolitan Area, encompassing Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, emerged as the world's List of cities b ...

and studied

. In 1896, he found work in the first Hangeul-only newspaper, '' Dongnip Sinmun'', founded by the Korean independence activist Seo Jae-pil. In 1897, Seo Jae-pil was sent into exile to the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, 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, founder of today's

Ewha Womans University Ewha Womans University () is a private women's research university in Seoul, South Korea. It was originally founded as Ewha Haktang on May 31, 1886, by missionary Mary F. Scranton. Currently, Ewha Womans University is one of the world's largest f ...

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. Ju also hosted several seminars in the National Language Discussion Centre of the Sangdong Youth Academy of the Korean language (). Ju proposed that the Korean

parts of speech In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are as ...

include

noun In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an Object (grammar), object or Subject (grammar), subject within a p ...

verb A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic f ...

adjective An adjective (abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main part of speech, parts of ...

adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a determiner, a clause, a preposition, or a sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, or level of certainty by ...

s, un conjugated

s (),

auxiliaries Auxiliaries are combat support, support personnel that assist the military or police but are organised differently from regular army, regular forces. Auxiliary may be military volunteers undertaking support functions or performing certain duties ...

(), conjunctions, exclamations, and sentence-final particles (). Ju Sigyeong coined the name ''

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 ...

'' () 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 Hangul linearly 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, informally known as Primorye, is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject (a krais of Russia, krai) of Russia, part of the Far Eastern Federal District in the Russian Far East. The types of inhabited localities in Russia, ...

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 Province Linguists from Korea 20th-century linguists Linguists of Korean Burials at Seoul National Cemetery

Biography

Standardizing Korean Language

Publications

See also

References

External links