Page:Corean Primer (1877).djvu/7

 INTRODUCTION.

The following lessons are intended to introduce to the Corean language those desirous to prepare for the official, mercantile, and chiefly the missionary intercourse with Corea, which cannot be of distant date. The Corean words are given in the Corean alphabet in syllables, under which is the Corean pronunciation in Roman letters, and the interpretation in English, according to the Corean idiom, viz. nom. obj., verb, negative.

The lessons, matter, arrangement and number., are those of my "Mandarin Primer," where the English is rendered idiomatically. The transliteration is also on the principle of that Primer. And in comparing the two little books it will be discovered wbat a remarkable proportion of Chinese words bas become incorporated with the Corean language, supplying defects, displacing some words and used alongside of others, (as bit, “light” and gwang "light,” metaphorically), like Latin and Saxon in English, Chinese being the Latin of the Coreans, through which their learning has been acquired. This comparison requires only to note the defects of the Corean alphabet and its numerous terminative particles. The "Corean Primer" also affordls numerous examples of the ancient pronunciation of Chinese, and especially of the final consonant dropped in Mandarin, though retained in the south.

As it is reported that a practised pen is engaged on, or has finished, a Corean Grammar, it is unnecessary to explain the use of the numerous and delicate particles. But as the Corean language, with no cases for