Hi all,

On October 26th, as part of the "CJK combining components" thread, I
brought up "kugyol" as an early Korean source of additional characters
that might need to be considered (http://www.egroups.com/message/qalam/83),
to which Jon Babcock expressed interest (http://www.egroups.com/message/qalam/84)
that I was not able to elaborate on (http://www.egroups.com/message/qalam/97).
(I wonder when that Ramsey and Moon book will be coming out...)

Recently I came across an English-language explanation, with examples, in
Ho-Min Sohn's _The Korean Language_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999) in chapter six, "Writing systems" (pp. 121-150). Pp. 124-128
cover "Hyangchal", "Itwu proper", and "Tho/Kwukyel". (The rest of the
chapter discusses "Hankul", which is also interesting for coverage of
pre-modern usage and archaic letters.)

Sohn subsumes the three traditions under the cover term "Itwu (Clerk
Reading) script", about which he says (Sohn uses Yale romanization):

The Itwu script was used to record Korean expressions by means
of (a) Chinese characters borrowed in their Chinese meaning but
read as the corresponding Korean morphemes (glossograms), or (b)
Chinese characters borrowed in their Chinese sounds only
(phonograms) ... (124)

Skipping past the examples, he summarizes in conclusion:

... First, as for the coverage of the Korean elements, Hyangchal
covers not only relationals such as particles, suffixes, and
auxiliary verbs, but also contentives such as adverbs, nouns, and
verbs; Itwu proper is limited mainly to grammatical elements and
adverbs; and Tho is limited to grammatical elements. Second,
as for the word order in texts, Hyangchal follows Korean word
order because there are no Chinese words involved. The same
can be said of the texts in Itwu proper although nouns and verbs
are in Chinese. The main texts in Tho are written according to
Chinese word order. Third, as for the time of usage, Hyangchal
was used mostly during the Sinla dynasty, although there were
some Hyangchal writings found from the Kolye dynasty. Itwu
proper, on the other hand, flourished mostly during the Kolye
era and the early part of the Cosen dynasty. Tho started to be
used at the end of the Kolye era, but the peak of its use was in
the early and middle part of the Cosen dynasty when the
philosophical study of imported Chinese classical works was at
its height. Fourth, as for the forms of Chinese characters,
Hyangchal and Itwu proper used only full character forms,
whereas Tho was based on both full and simplified forms. (128)

From what Sohn writes and the examples given, it seems that Hyangchal and
Itwu proper somewhat resemble contemporary Japanese practice, where some
kanji are used for their meaning alone ("kun"), and others for their sound
(now in the form of kana). On the other hand, Tho/Kwukyel seems to
somewhat resemble the "kanbun" annotation used to mark up classical
Chinese text to clarify it for a Japanese reader.

Sohn gives examples of Tho/Kwukyel on p. 127 (the glosses are his wording;
I've reformatted it into a list):

something like U+5382, from U+5393, for ay 'at'
something like U+961D, from U+96B1, for nun 'as for' (topic particle)
something like U+5915 (or katakana ta), from U+591A, for ta
something like katakana ya or U+4E5B (two forms given), from U+4E5F, for
ya
something like U+4EBD, from U+7F85, for la (the previous three are
"declarative sentence enders")
something like U+4E40 (but without the small upward piece at the
left), from U+662F, for i 'be' or subject particle
something like U+535C (or katakana to), from U+5367, for wa 'and, with'
something like U+53E3 (or katakana ro), from U+53e4, for ko 'and'
something like U+4E37, from U+7232, for ho (<o> should be <c> flipped
over the y-axis) 'do, be'
something like U+5315 (but the diagonal stroke doesn't pierce the
other stroke) (or katakana hi), from U+5C3C, for ni 'because'


Thomas Chan
tc31@...