Peninsular Japonic

Peninsular Japonic
Para-Japonic
Geographic distribution	Central and southern Korea
Extinct	1st millennium CE
Linguistic classification	Japonic Peninsular Japonic
Glottolog	(not evaluated)
Korea in the late 4th century
Korean name
Hangul	반도 일본어
Transcriptions Revised Romanization bando ilbon-eo
Japanese name
Kanji	半島日本語
Transcriptions Romanization Hantō nihongo

The Peninsular Japonic languages are now-extinct Japonic languages reflected in ancient placenames and glosses from central and southern parts of the Korean Peninsula.^[a] Most linguists believe that Japonic arrived in the Japanese archipelago from the Korean peninsula during the first millennium BCE. The placename evidence suggests that Japonic languages were still spoken in parts of the peninsula for several centuries before being replaced by the spread of Korean.

The most-cited evidence comes from chapter 37 of the Samguk sagi (compiled in 1145), which contains a list of pronunciations and meanings of placenames in the former kingdom of Goguryeo. As the pronunciations are given using Chinese characters, they are difficult to interpret, but several of those from central Korea, in the area south of the Han River captured from Baekje in the 5th century, seem to correspond to Japonic words. Scholars differ on whether they represent the language of Goguryeo or the people that it conquered.

Chinese and Korean texts also contain very sparse traces from the states in the south of the peninsula, and from the former Tamna kingdom on Jeju Island.

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