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Gugyeol, also kwukyel, is a system for rendering texts written in Classical Chinese into understandable Korean. It was chiefly used during the Joseon Dynasty, when readings of the Chinese classics were of paramount social importance. Thus, in gugyeol, the original text in classical Chinese was not modified, and the additional markers were simply inserted between phrases. The Korean reader would then read the parts of the Chinese sentence out of sequence to approximate Korean (SOV) rather than Chinese (SVO) word order. A similar system for reading classical Chinese is used to this day in Japan and is known as kanbun kundoku. Gugyeol is derived from the cursive and simplified style of Chinese characters. The name gugyeol can be rendered as "phrase parting," and may refer to the separation of one Chinese phrase from another. This name is itself believed to originate from the use of hanja characters to represent the Middle Korean phrase ipgyeot (입겿), with a similar meaning. The gugyeol system is also sometimes referred to as to (토, 吐) or hyeonto (현토, 懸吐), since to is also used to refer to the morphological affixes themselves; or as seogui (석의, 釋義) which can be rendered as "interpretation of the classics." Gugyeol is first attested from the 11th century in the early Goryeo dynasty, but evidence indicates it likely dates back to the 7th century or earlier. In this period, certain hanja characters were used (along with specialized symbols) to represent Korean sounds through their meaning. For example, the syllable '잇' (is) was represented with the hanja character 有, since that character has the Korean meaning '있다.' This technique came to be replaced in the late Goryeo period with using hanja characters according to their sound. This later version of the gugyeol system was formalized by Jeong Mong-ju and Gwon Geun around 1400 in the early Joseon Dynasty, at the behest of King Taejong. At this time a number of Confucian classics, including the Classic of Poetry, were rendered into gugyeol.

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Related concepts (9)

Hangul

The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul (ˈhɑːnguːl ; ) in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl () in North Korea, is the modern official writing system for the Korean language. The letters for the five basic consonants reflect the shape of the speech organs used to pronounce them, and they are systematically modified to indicate phonetic features; similarly, the vowel letters are systematically modified for related sounds, making Hangul a featural writing system.

Hunminjeongeum

rr () is a 15th century historical document that introduced a script that became the Hangul script for writing the Korean language. An original copy of the document is currently located at the Gansong Art Museum in Seoul, South Korea. Hunminjeongeum was commissioned and supervised by Sejong the Great based on a writing system he invented in 1443. The original spelling of the title was Húnminjyéongeum (in North Korea, Húnminjyéonghʼeum). The script it introduced was actually originally named "Hunminjeongeum" after the document, but its name was later changed to its present form.

Gugyeol