Hunmong chahoe () is an educational text published in 1527 by Korean linguist Ch'oe Sejin. The text was intended to help children learn Hanja: Chinese characters. It saw significant use for this purpose, and was reprinted numerous times, even into the early 20th century. It is considered to be of significant interest to modern linguistics and has had a lasting impact on the Korean alphabet Hangul.
Description
A section at the end of the text, called Ŏnmun chamo (), was an adaptation of the Hunminjeongeum meant to serve as a more practical guide for learning Hangul. Ahn evaluated it as a superior educational tool to the original, and argued that its structure made it a predecessor to the later panjŏl () tables that became ubiquitous teaching tools for Hangul in the early modern period.
The text is considered to be of significant interest to modern linguists for a number of reasons. It is the earliest known direct attestation to names for the letters of Hangul; letter names in current use are based on the ones found here. However, it is unclear if Ch'oe coined the letter names himself. Many possibly incorrectly believe that Ch'oe coined the names. However, that is not clear from the text. Ch'oe states elsewhere in the work that his intent was to document current practice at the time. The order of Hangul letters found in this text form the basis of orders used today. In addition, the text documented actual pronunciations of the time instead of attempting to enforce artificial prescriptivist pronunciations, which aids linguists in trying to understand authentic contemporary phonology.
The oldest known copy of the text, produced in 1527, is held in Japan.
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External links
(incomplete) , including a copy of the 1613 edition original movable-type edition (1527), in traditional 10-column format, held by the Eizan library in Enryaku-ji temple, Shiga prefecture, Japan (full text and scans of pages) woodblock redaction published immediately afterwards, with large head characters in a 4×4 layout, held by the Central Library of the University of Tokyo (scans of pages) 1559 copy, held in the Cabinet Library (Naikaku Bunko) in Japan, National Archives of Japan Digital Archive ref 278-0146 (scans of pages) royal gift copies (1613) held by Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies at Seoul National University: 奎貴 26 (scans of pages) 奎貴 27 (scans of pages)