# 倭理
## Old Korean
### Etymology

Unknown.

### Noun

倭理 (*YEri)
* (hapax) the Japanese
** c. 600, 融天師 (Yungcheonsa), “彗星歌 (Hyeseong-ga)”, in 三國遺事 (Samguk Yusa) [Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms]:倭理叱軍置來叱多*YEri-s KWUN-two WA-Is-taThe army of the Japanese has also come

#### Reconstruction notes

In Old Korean orthography, native terms with clear Chinese equivalents are usually written with an initial Chinese character (logogram) glossing the meaning of the word, followed by one or more Chinese characters (phonograms) that transcribe the final syllable or coda consonant of the term. In the case of 倭理, the first character shows that this is the native Old Korean word for "Japanese", and the subsequent character shows that the final syllable of this word is *-li or *-ri.
While the Middle Korean descendant does not fully preserve the Old Korean form, Middle Korean 예〯 (Yěy, “Japanese”) has a diphthong and a rising pitch, which is often the result of a loss of a medial *-r-: cf. 川理 (*NAri, “stream”) > 내〯 (nǎy, “id.”), 世理 (*NWUri, “world”) > 뉘〯 (nwǔy, “id.”) Hence the word is conventionally reconstructed as *YEli or *YEri. Note that the reconstruction was not necessarily the actual pronunciation. Rather, it should simply be considered as a method of representing an Old Korean form phonetically by using its Middle Korean reflex.
According to scholarly convention, the elements of the reconstruction which are not directly represented by phonograms are given in capital letters. This allows readers to identify what part of the reconstruction is attested and what part is applied retroactively from the Middle Korean reflex.
Middle Korean merged Old Korean *r and *l unconditionally, and it is not easy to determine the Old Korean phoneme based on the Middle Korean reflex. Old Korean reconstructions are conventionally given in the Yale Romanization of Korean, which makes only those phonemic distinctions also made in Middle Korean. However, Alexander Vovin gives circumstantial evidence that the syllable being transcribed by 理 is *ri with a rhotic consonant.
The sixth-century wooden tablet corpus excavated at Haman Seongsan Sanseong includes two tablets, one with an apparent toponym 仇利 ([ENEMY]-li) and the other with 十[?] ([TEN]-[?]), which appear to contain otherwise identical information by the same author. Lee Seung-jae speculates that 仇利 and 十[?] were the same toponym, allowing the reconstruction of *yeli with the assumption that 十 (shí, “ten”) is being used as a semantically adapted phonogram for *yelh, the Korean word for "ten". If so, 仇 (“enemy”) in 仇利 would be a logogram. Lee further speculates that this logogram was used because the Japanese were then considered the archetypal enemies of the ancient Silla people. (Conversely, if Lee's speculations are valid, the specific exonym may possibly have derived from a generic "enemy" sense, a semantic shift attested elsewhere.)

#### Descendants

* Middle Korean: 예〯 (Yěy, “Japanese”)
** Early Modern Korean: 예 (yey, “Japanese”) (no contemporary reflexes)

### References

* 박지용 外 (Park Ji-yong et al.) (2012) 향가 해독 자료집 [hyangga haedok jaryojip, A Sourcebook of Hyangga Interpretations], Seoul National University, page 157
* 이승재 [iseungjae] (2017) 木(목)簡(간)에 기록된 古(고)代(대)韓(한)國(국)語(어) [The Old Korean Language Inscribed on Wooden Tablets], Ilchogak, →ISBN, page 274
* Alexander Vovin (2020) “Old Korean and Proto-Korean *r and *l Revisited”, in International Journal of Eurasian Linguistics‎, volume 2, pages 94—107