Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/401

 LANGUAGE 305 ously, is one of the unconscious Korean arts. The euphonic tendency has not broken down the languages, as is sometimes the case. Prof. Max Miiller speaks of a law of phonetic decay, but in Korea it would be better called the law of phonetic adjustment. Korean is characterised by a large number of mimetic words. As their colours are drawn directly from nature, so their words are often merely phonetic descriptions.

The Korean language is eminently adapted for public speaking. It is a sonorous, vocal language. They have grasped the idea that the vowel is the basis of all human speech. The sibilant element is far less conspicuous than in Japanese, and one needs only to hear a public speech in Japanese and one in Korean to discover the great advantage which the latter enjoys. The lack of all accent in Japanese words is a serious drawback to oratory. There is nothing in Korean speech that makes it less adapted to oratory than English or any other Western tongue. In common with the language of Cicero or Demosthenes, Korean is composed of periodic sentences, each one reaching its climax in the verb which is usually the final word, and there are no weakening addenda which so often make the English sentence an anticlimax. In this respect the Korean surpasses English as a medium of public speaking.