Latest comment: 8 years ago9 comments4 people in discussion
I have reverted your changes to the etymology at 구두. Given the phonetics, Mongolian гутал(gutal) is much less likely a source for Korean 구두(gudu) than either Japanese 靴(kutsu) or some common ancestor. The modern Japanese reading kutsu was likely pronounced kutu in ancient times -- the modern Japanese phone /t͡su/ evolved from older /tu/, and kutu is quite close to the Hangul spelling 구두. For Mongolian, the second vowel /a/ doesn't match the /u/ shared by both Japanese and Korean, and the final /l/ in the Mongolian has no analog in either the Japanese or Korean. Without additional evidence, what we know now would suggest that the Japanese and Korean terms may be closely related, with the Mongolian term also related, but more distantly. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig19:04, 24 June 2016 (UTC)Reply
But "du" -> Japanses pronunciation "tsu"
See you ask Koreans "tsu" -> "du?, doo?"
It's impossible. will not be in Korean. It's not the boots(bu tsu).
If you mean that Korean /tu/ or /du/ does not correlate with Japanese /t͡su/, there are cases where we see just this correspondence: 鬥 with KO readings du and tu matching JA reading tsu, 兜 with KO reading du and JA reading tsu. Granted, it's not the most common correlation -- most Chinese borrowings with a du- or tu- reading in KO wind up as to- in Japanese -- but it does happen where older KO du matches JA tu / tsu.
Given the phonetics, any ancient KO gudu would require 1) that this is one of those uncommon ancient KO du - ancient JA tu matches, or 2) that older JA kuto underwent a phonetic shift to change the final o to u prior to its first appearance in writing (this is very unlikely), or 3) that KO gudu is actually _not_ ancient, but a more recent borrowing.
The JA term is attestable from at least 759, possibly earlier, and the phonetics in JA seem to be stable since then -- so a borrowing from KO into JA seems unlikely, unless #1 above is correct.
KO historical phonetic processes suggest that a shift from the -al ending in Mongolian гутал(gutal) to the -u ending in modern Korean is about as likely as #2 above -- i.e., not very likely.
As such, the most likely hypotheses are either that 1) the KO and JA terms are cognate, or 2) the KO term was borrowed from JA more recently than ancient times.
If the Mongolian term can be traced back in Mongolian to ancient times, then this gut- stem starts to look like a common root in this geographic area. I wonder if there are other nearby languages with a similar term for footwear? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig15:59, 27 June 2016 (UTC)Reply
It certainly is a pan-East Altaic word (Starling link) for "shoes", possibly derived from "fur on animal's paws" or "hoof". Mongolian: ᠭᠤᠲᠤᠯ(ɣutul, “shoes”), ᠭᠣᠳ(ɣod, “foot hide of an animal”). The Korean form is probably thought to be a loanword from either side. I will also have a look at what Korean etymological dictionaries say about this when I get a chance today. Wyang (talk) 05:38, 28 June 2016 (UTC)Reply
@Eirikr Ok, this is what the Korean etymological dictionaries say:
우리말語源辭典:
구두1 【명】주로 가죽을 재료로 이용하여 서양식으로 만든 신. [어원 (일)靴. 변화 (일)靴[kutu] > 구두. 참고 (1)(몽)구툴(몽어유해 상45: 靴子 훠, 구툴. 皮靴 갓훠, 사린구툴)]
Cannot find this in 李朝語辭典.
국어어원사전:
신 【명】(靴) 현대어에서는 신을 ‘신발’이라고도 하는데, ‘신’과 ‘발’의 합성어다. ¶신(履)<解例 用字>, 鞋曰盛<類事>, 靴曰洗<梁書, 新羅傳>. ‘신’의 어원적 의미는 발의 뜻을 지닌다고 하겠다. 일본어 haku(履)는 paku로 재구되는데, 국어 발(足)에서 비롯한 동사다. gutul(靴)<蒙>, kutsu(靴)<日>. 어근 gut, kut은 신의 뜻을 지닌다고 하겠다. 일본어에 kutsu가 있는 것을 보면 우리 고어에서도 ‘굳’이 신의 뜻을 지니는 말이었을 것이다. 현대어 구두는 일본어 kutsu가 재입(再入)된 것이라 하겠다. kut은 국어 ‘갇(脚)’과 동원어일 것이다. 그렇게 본다면 신은 ‘싣’으로 재구되며 현대어 ‘삳(股)’과 동원어라 여겨진다. goto(脚)<蒙>, gutul(靴)<蒙>. 몽골어의 goto(脚)의 어근 got과 신(靴)의 뜻을 지니는 gutul의 어근 gut은 동원어임을 보여주고 있다. sabu(靴)<滿>. 만주어 sabu는 sa와 bu의 합성어로서 다리, 발(脚, 足)의 어원적 의미를 지닌다고 하겠다. 짚신의 사투리로 ‘짚세기, 무쿠리, 무크리, 미투리, 메투리’ 등이 있다. 짚세기의 ‘세기’가 신의 뜻을 지닌다고 하겠다. ‘무쿠리, 무크리, 미투리, 메투리’를 보면 합성어라 하겠는데 ‘쿠리, 크리, 투리’가 신의 뜻이고 ‘무, 미, 메’가 공통된다고 하겠다. ‘쿠리, 크리’의 어근은 ‘굴, 글’로 소급되며 ‘투리’의 어근은 ‘둘’이라 하겠다. ‘굴, 글’은 걷다(步등)의 ‘걷’, ‘둘’도 다리의 ‘달’에서의 변의(變意)라 하겠다.
비교언어학적 어원사전:
구두 【명】 뜻: 주로 가죽을 재료로 만든 서양식 신(靴). 유: 갓훠(＝가죽신) 뿌: 이 말은 kutu (> kucu. 구두, Jap) · ğutul (구두, W.Mo유) · kundura (구두, Turk) · gūlha (구두, Ma) · ŋïčx (발, GilyG) 등과 비교될 수 있다. 이것을 일본어의 차용으로 보고 있으나, 실은 알타이공통기어*kutura(구두)가 우리말을 거쳐 일본으로 건너간 것이어서 '구두'란 말은 본시 우리말인데, 이조어 사전에는 나타나 있지 않았던 것으로 믿어진다. 어떻든 '구두'는 *kutura>kuturi>kutui>kutu의 변화를 거친 것으로 보인다. 따라서 '구두'의 어원은 *kutura(구두)로 추정된다.
I underlined the important bits in each dictionary. Most Korean sources agree on a Japanese origin, but some argue it is not borrowed from Japanese. I think it is fair to say that it is "From Japanese .... Alternatively, ... proposes that this is directly descended from Proto-Altaic without borrowing from Japanese." Wyang (talk) 05:18, 29 June 2016 (UTC)Reply
Very interesting, thank you. I don't understand that all as well as I'd like... I see a number of forms ending in /-l/, but I can't read this well enough to tell what's going on. Is that supposed to be an earlier KO form, or the Altaic root?
FWIW, I cannot easily accept any borrowing into JA of a form ending in /-l/ -- pretty much every hanja reading ending in /-l/ is realized in Japanese on'yomi as し, ち, or つ, and I'm not aware of any cases where final /-l/ in KO just disappears in JA for Chinese character readings. This appears to hold true too for many native-KO words that have apparent cognates in JA, such as KO 벌 (beol) <> JA 蜂(hachi, ancient pati), or KO 별 (byeol) <> JA 星(hoshi, ancient JA posi). (I'm still researching ancient JA vowel values; there's some indication that certain vowels had additional values, c.f. w:ja:上代特殊仮名遣 or w:Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai, so KO ⟨yeo⟩ might still be a match for modern JA ⟨o⟩, depending on the history of the given term.)
That said, if JA kutu is older and not a borrowing, this might still fit -- I see at least one apparent cognate where KO ends in /-l/ and JA just has a null: KO 불 (bul) <> JA 火(hi, ancient JA allophone pu attested in eastern dialects, po in western dialects). But then again, this pattern seems to be very rare, and I am not aware of other potential cognate pairs that have this same KO /-l/ <> JA null correspondence. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig17:08, 29 June 2016 (UTC)Reply
Did you mean 구툴? The last part of the first reference, written in Hanja, would be 參考 (1)(蒙)구툴(蒙語類解 上45: 靴子(zh) 훠(ko), 구툴(mn). 皮靴(zh) 갓훠(ko), 사린구툴(mn))]. 구툴 is the Korean transcription of Mongolian gutul. The first reference treats the Korean word as a borrowing from Japanese, although it also compares Mongolian as an alternative theory. The second reference also treats Korean as a borrowing from Japanese, and tries to find cognates of this word in native Korean (e.g. 걷다, 무쿠리~미투리). The last reference treats the Korean word as descended from Proto-Altaic *kutura which passed over to Japan via Korean. Wyang (talk) 22:28, 30 June 2016 (UTC)Reply
Thank you! That's very helpful -- my Korean is much more rudimentary than I'd like. :-/
The positions espoused in references one and two then make sense to me. Reference three's *kutura only makes sense to me if the final -ra disappeared before the term made it to Japan. Otherwise, the phonetics don't fit.
