Middle Korean was a Koreanic language spoken on the Korean Peninsula from 1300-1600, descended from Old Korean. Middle Korean after the invention of Hangul is very well-attested and well-understood. Per scholarly consensus, Korean-language texts produced up to 1600 are considered Middle Korean, and subsequent texts are considered Early Modern Korean. Many late sixteenth-century texts, especially informal ones such as personal letters, show Early Modern Korean features. But for the sake of consistency, the year 1600 is used as a definitive boundary date on Wiktionary. Take care to note that many texts published in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are attributed to the Middle Korean period, but are linguistically clearly Early Modern. For example, almost all known sijo poems are linguistically Early Modern works, even though many are ascribed to poets who would have written in Middle Korean.
The entry titles for Middle Korean terms should be written in the Hangul script as invented by Sejong, without tone marks. However, the tone should ideally be marked within the entry itself.
A phonemic IPA pronunciation may be added for Middle Korean based on the scholarly consensus on fifteenth-century Korean phonology (see Middle Korean#Script and phonology). It is not clear whether a phonetic orthography is appropriate, given ongoing dispute over the exact vowel qualities of Middle Korean, although it is useful to allow readers not familiar with Korean to understand, for example, that intervocalic /l/ is actually [ɾ].
In addition to Hangul, Middle Korean was also written in Sinographic systems such as Idu and "consecutive gugyeol". Middle Korean terms in these scripts should be marked with the template {{spelling of}} that link back to the Hangul form. For an example, see 遣 (Yale: -kwo).
Forms attested only in 칠대만법 / 七大萬法 must be marked with {{lb|okm|Gyeongsang}}.
Per this discussion in January 2025, Middle Korean verbs and adjectives are lemmatized at their morphophonemic form + 다(-ta), with the exception of p/W- and s/z-irregular verbs and adjectives. Below are some examples to follow:
The rationale to make p/W and s/z-irregular verbs and adjectives exceptions is due to one contributor's suggestion:
I think creating entries such as 셔ᇕ다, spelled in Hangul, would also be a source of confusion for those expecting the same lemma coming from popular MK dictionaries.
Indeed, none of the major Middle Korean dictionaries (우리말 큰사전 4 옛말과 이두 (한글학회), 고어사전 (남광우), 15세기 국어 활용형 사전 (이진호, 최영선, 이수진, 선한빛), 이조어사전 (유창돈)) have forms such as '더러ᇦ다' or 'ᄃᆞᇫ다' in its entry, while they do have 더럽다 and ᄃᆞᆺ다 (although the stem forms '더러ᇦ-', 'ᄃᆞᇫ-' are often included).
Nouns shall also be lemmatized morphophonemically:
In a previous (now overruled) discussion (this discussion in October 2020), it had been decided that verbs were to be lemmatized at their surface forms. Because of this, many entries are still (as of Jan 2025) formatted in this way. The pages will eventually all be moved to the new updated forms.
The following templates give detailed conjugations. However, several dozen parameters must currently be manually inputted. It is hoped that it can be eventually modularized, which should remove this problem.
