THE KOREAN LANGUAGE. 809 



worked out to its ultimate end in Korean. Tlie nice adjustment of 

 the organs of speech whereby conllicting sounds are so modified as 

 to blend harmonioush' is one of tlie unconscious Korean arts. Who 

 told them to change the labial surd "p" of Ap-nok to its corresponding 

 labial nasal "m'' before the following nasal, which leaves the eupho- 

 nious word aimok: or to change the lingual nasal ""n" of in-pi to its 

 coi'responding labial nasal "m'' l)efore the labial surd ''p," giving the 

 phoneticallj" correct impi i The evidence goes to show that the 

 euphonic tendency in Korea has not broken down the vocabulary as 

 is sometimes the case. Prof. Max Midler speaks of the law of pho- 

 netic deca}^; and rightl}^ so, when the romance languages are under 

 discussion, but in Korea this law would better ])e called one of phonetic 

 adjustment. When rough stones are put together to form a roadbed, 

 if they are of good qualit}" they work down together, get their cor- 

 ners knocked off, and form a solid and durable surface; but it' the 

 stone is poor the pieces will mutually pulverize each other and the road 

 will be worthless. The former of these processes represents phonetic 

 adjustment while the latter represents phonetic decay. The compar- 

 ative virility of French and Italian speech, in spite of phonetic decav, 

 is brought about by the compensating law of dialectic regeneration, but 

 the Portuguese language, for instance, shows no such vitality. Cross- 

 breeding is as necessary to the vitalit}" of a language as grafting is to 

 the production of good fruit. 



Another feature which specially characterizes Korean speech is the 

 great number of . mimetic w^ords, or, as the}^ are sometimes called, 

 onomatopoeia. As Korean colors are drawn directlv from nature, so 

 a great number of its words are phonetic descriptions. And the rea- 

 son why such primitive nature-words are still found intact in a lan- 

 guage so highly developed as the Korean is because the principle of 

 reduplication, common in all the Turanian languages, is carried to the 

 extreme in Korean. A reduplicated mimetic word carries on its 

 very face its mimetic quality, and consequently the ver}^ conspicuous- 

 ness of this quality has prevented change. Its very raison d'etre 

 being its phonetic description of the object or the act, a change in the 

 sound is rendered very unlikely. For instance, the Korean word 

 t'ul-biik fill bilk means precisely what an English or an American Ijoy 

 would express b}^ the word "ker-splash!"' which is itself keenly 

 mimetic. In Korean the syllable t'iil, and in English the "ker" rep- 

 resents the sharp spat with which a heavy body strikes the surface of 

 the water, and the Korean buk represents the heavy sound which fol- 

 lows when the water comes together over the object. In P^nglish the 

 splash represents rather the spray thrown up by the impact of the 

 water. It will readily ])o seen that tiie I'eduplication of the t'ld-buk 

 would tend to secure permanency in the proiuuiciation. Mimetic 

 words in English have so often lost their evident mimetic (piality; as 



