Andrew SHIMUNEK

10.18399/acta.2023.26.1.004

Kara (Kaya) Silla historical-comparative linguistics Koreanic language family ethnolinguistic history of Korea Puyŏ-Koguryŏic languages

The languages spoken in the state of Kara 加羅 or Kaya 伽耶 (ca. AD 42 – 562) have remained largely beyond reach, impeded by previous approaches to the data. In this paper, I examine the earliest editions of the Samguk sagi 三國史記 and the Samguk yusa 三國遺事 and offer an appraisal of certain Kara words and suffixes building on Beckwith’s phonetic reconstruction of the conservative frontier dialect of Chinese spoken on the Korean Peninsula in pre-Unified Silla times and on Toh’s geographic identification of Kara toponyms in the Samguk sagi. Following this methodology, I identify the original Kara forms of the toponyms Hadong-gun 河東郡, Agyang-hyŏn 嶽陽縣, Kyeja-hyŏn 谿子縣, and Habin-hyŏn 河濱縣. In addition, I analyze the earliest Koreanic words for ‘child’, ‘east’, ‘mountain’, river’, and ‘shore’, and the genitive-attributive suffix, as well as data from neighboring Puyŏ-Koguryŏic languages and dialects. The findings of this exploratory study exemplify a new approach to Korean Peninsular historical linguistics and elucidate the linguistic diversity of the Korean Peninsula in ancient times, thereby increasing awareness of Korea’s multilingual and multicultural past.