Page:History of Corea, ancient and modern; with description of manners and customs, language and geography (1879).djvu/418

 388 THE COBEAK ULKGUAGE. This last sentence is peculiar, as the Corean would begin it with the word *' says." The grammatical construction of these sentences is exactly like the other Turanian languages, nom., obj., verK The preposition of Aryan becomes a postposition here; Corean resembling Japanese in this respect The adverb also precedes the verb. But the podtion of the n^ative in Japanese resembles that of Manchu, and Corean apinroaches nearest to Mongol ; the latter placing the negative before the verb, Manchu and Japanese after it One notable difference among these four languages, is their various degrees of obligation to Chinese, — ^which, it is scarcely necessary to say, never borrowed from any of them. Notwith- standing a diligent search, comparatively few Chinese words proper have turned up in Manchu ; Mongol is equally free from admixture. But it is curious that while tiie Chinese call tobacco by the characteristic name of yen ye^ " smoking leaf,'' — ^Mongol, Manchu, Corean, and Japanese, give it the same name as English. The proportion of Chinese words and phrases now embodied in the Corean language is very large ; and the same is generally true of Japanese alsa This remarkably large proportion of Chinese words in Corean, proves the truth of the Chinese historians, who ascribe so early a connection with and dependance upon China ; and is evidence of the large and constant influx of Chinese fugitives, from justice or injustice, fleeing for shelter to the then thinly peopled and remote mountains of Chaosieu, Oaoli, Baiji, or Sinlo, — ^the various kingdoms into which the present Corea was andently divided. How much of the learning, civilisation and manners of CSiina, were possessed by the first Chaoaen, shattered to atoms by the legions of Han, it is and will be impossible to say. The second kingdom, that of Gaoli, had better facilities, if it availed itself of them, of borrowing from the Chinese; but neither the former nor the latter had much more to do with creating the modem Corea^ than had the Celts who opposed Caesar's landing in making modem London,