Old Chinese Loanwords in Indigenous Korean among Swadesh’s 200 Words

Abstract

The Korean lexicon largely consists of indigenous Korean and Sino-Korean words. What is notable is that a small number of what appears to be indigenous Korean words nonetheless sound similar to corresponding words in Old Chinese. It has been controversial as to how to interpret these similar words. Some historical linguists, such as Pan (2006, 2013) and O (2015), regard them as cognates while others as Old Chinese loanwords. Eom (Yan 2019) conducted an extensive examination of both views and concludes that those similar words are not cognates but are loanwords. Based upon nine similar words each between indigenous Korean and Old Chinese among Swadesh’s first and second tiers of 100-word lists, he claims that Korean has no genetic affinity with Chinese. Since the number of similar words in each tier is crucial to determine the linguistic relationship between the two languages in question, this article reexamines the validity of those 18 similar words and points out some problems that have to be further resolved. It is proposed here that the genetic relationship between Korean and Chinese remains the same even if the balance in the first and the second tiers of 100-word lists is slightly modified.