The Proper Rimes for the Eastern Country (東國正韻, 동국정운). Published in 1448 at the behest of King Sejong (世宗, 세종, 1397-1450, r. 1418-1450), it was the first Chinese character dictionary that listed Korean pronunciations and the first work using Hangul.
Introduction to Compound Words
Compound words are polysyllabic words, wherein the word can be understood by reading each character at the separately. These words are called either Hapseong’eo (合聲語, 합성어) or Hap’eui Boksa (合意復辭, 합의복사) in Korean. These types of words occur more frequently in later Classical Chinese texts, although there are plenty of examples in earlier texts.
An example of a compound word is 汽車(기차), which literally means “steam car” and refers to “train” in Korean. Each character in this word can be understood without changing the meaning of the word, when broken down into its constituent characters. Separately, the character 汽(기) means “steam” and 車(차) means “car.”
There are three types of compound words:
- Unitive (聯合式, 연합식);
- Associative (組合式, 조합식); and
- Combinative (結合式, 결합식).
These will be covered in the next series of posts.
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