Middle Korean, corresponding to the Goryeo period, when the capital moved from the southeast to Kaesong, and Joseon up to the Imjin Wars. Middle Korean is often divided into Early and Late periods corresponding to the two dynasties. The introduction of the Hangul alphabet in 1446 transformed the documentation of the language in comparison with previous systems based on adaptations of Chinese characters.
Nam Pung-hyun has suggested that the division between Old and Middle Korean ought to be drawn at the time of the Mongol invasions of Korea. He divides his extended Old Korean period into Early, Middle and Late periods.
Origins
Korean and the closely related Jeju language form the compact Koreanic language family. A relation to the Japonic languages is debated but currently not accepted by most linguists. Other theories are the Altaic and Dravido-Korean theory, but both are either discredited or fringe. Homer Hulbert claimed the Korean language was Ural-Altaic in his book, The History of Korea. The classification of Korean as Altaic was introduced by Gustaf John Ramstedt, but even within the debunked Altaic hypothesis, the position of Korean relative to Japonic is unclear. A possible Korean–Japonic grouping within Altaic has been discussed by Samuel Martin, Roy Andrew Miller and Sergei Starostin. Others, notably Vovin, interpret the affinities between Korean and Japanese as an effect caused by geographic proximity sprachbund.
Old Korean
Use of Classical Chinese by Koreans began in the fourth century or earlier, and phonological writing in Idu script was developed by the sixth century. It is unclear whether Old Korean was a tonal language. It is assumed that Old Korean was divided into dialects, corresponding to the three kingdoms. Of these, the Sillan language is the best attested due to the political domination of Later Silla by the seventh century. Only some literary records of Unified Silla, changed into Goryeo text, are extant and some texts of the Three Kingdoms period are mostly available in form of inscriptions at present. Thus, the languages of the Three Kingdoms period are generally examined through official government names and local district names. There is very little literature for research of Old Korean. The first texts in Old Korean were written using Hanja to represent the sound and grammar of the local language. Additional information about the language is drawn from various proper nouns recorded in Korean and Chinese records, and from etymological studies of the Korean pronunciations of Chinese characters. Various systems were used, beginning with ad hoc approaches and gradually becoming codified in the Idu script and the hyangchal system used for poetry. These were arrangements of Chinese characters to represent the language phonetically, much like the Japanese kana.
Middle Korean
The language standard of this period is based on the dialect of Kaesong because Goryeo moved the capital city to the northern area of the Korean Peninsula. The first foreign record of Korean is the Jilin leishi, written in 1103 by a Chinese Song dynasty writer, Sūn Mù 孫穆. It contains several hundred items of Goryeo-era Korean vocabulary with the pronunciation indicated through the use of Chinese characters, and is thus one of the main sources for information on Early Middle Korean. From a phonological perspective however, the usefulness of this material is limited due to logographic nature of the characters. The Chinese Ming dynastyBureau of Translators compiled a Chinese-Korean vocabulary of Joseon-era Korean in the mid-16th century. There were tones in Middle Korean. The creation of the Hunminjeongeum, the original name for Hangul, was completed in 1443 by Sejong the Great, the fourth Joseon king, and promulgated in September or October 1446. Hunminjeongeum was an entirely new and native script for the Korean language and people. The script was initially named after the publication, but later came to be known as "Hangul". It was created so that the common people illiterate in Hanja could accurately and easily read and write the Korean language. Its supposed publication date, October 9, is now "Hangul Day" in South Korea. In Korean wiktionary, the pronunciation of Middle Korean is represented by the Yale romanization of Korean. This is because the Revised Romanization of Korean was only designed for Modern Korean. Yale romanization of Korean places primary emphasis on showing a word's morphophonemic structure, so it does not indicate the actual pronunciation of the day.
