Page:History of Corea, ancient and modern; with description of manners and customs, language and geography (1879).djvu/408

 378 THE COREAN LANGUAGK represent Chinese sounds, and after the Manchu conquest of China. If it be so, it would partially account for the softening process through which the Nanking dialect passed at the hands of the Manchus ; the result being the present Pekinese, which^ as was natural, is developed at least as fully in Moukden as in Peking. This will not wholly account for the softening, for Manchu has separate letters for kmg and ching, for ging and jvng ; but south of Kaiyooen, the Manchus have lost their own language, except for state purposes, and they, therefore, pronounce both forms with the same sound. So much has the Chinese superseded the Manchu, that the best Manchu scholar in Moukden can no more close a syllable with a consonant than can a Chinaman ; — all that the Manchus have retained of the vocal peculiarities of their language is the ability to trill the r sound. The Verb. The Corean verb has properly three tenses, — the Present Imperative, the Past, and the Future ; but both past and present are subject to certain modifications to express past-definite^ past-indefinite, &a, time. Many verbs have also a form for the present indicative. From root gcd (English go, German gamgen, Scotch gang), is gashi,^ imperative; gassummS, pft., "has gone;" gaghatdapde, fut, "will go;" mugguahi, eat; mughu88vmi^, has eaten ; moghatdapdS, will eat The interro- gative of Past and Future is formed by terminating the verb with the vowel a, the vowel S is affirmative; as gaeaummaf ha& he gone ? ^gassumm^, he has gone. The imperative is used for infinitive, as booUu ona, " call (him to) come." The verb has properly no persons, though sometimes the first person differs, — as mughv^aum, I have eaten. But each verb and each tense has three various forms, according as the person addressed is superior, equal, or inferior in rank or age, to the speaker. The middle form is ordinarily applicable to all^
 * The 9h, 88, t, are chAnged by euphony from the same letter 8 (see above).