Notes on the Sources of Terms in the Korean Language (On the Example of Educational Terms) and Special Dictionary Compilation

The study aims to identify the sources of words coinage in the Korean language based on whether the vocabulary belongs to the category of commonly used words or terminological units. The Korean language corpus, as well as the Korean-Russian glossary of educational terms, compiled to achieve the purpose of the study, have been analyzed. The glossary is compiled in accordance with the concept, developed by one of the authors of this article for the lexicographic description of educational terms. The proposed dictionary contains more than 700 words and phrases and covers the Korean language terminology of general education, higher education, pedagogy, psychology, and etc. The article discusses the major classifications of terms; special emphasis is put on the linguistic classification of terms according to the sources of new words. According to this classification, terms are divided into traditional, borrowed, international, and hybrid. This classification is used in the study to analyze the sources of origin of Korean terms. Traditionally, the Korean language has three main layers of lexicon: traditional Korean lexicon, Sino-Korean lexicon, and the lexicon borrowed from foreign languages. Based on quantitative and comparative methods, the ratio between the sources of commonly used words and terminological units are examined and presented in a graph form convenient for visualizing quantitative results of the study. The findings suggest that the bulk of the lexicon found in the Korean Language Corpus is traditional Korean and Sino-Korean lexicon, and Si-no-Korean lexicon dominates in educational terminology. Another suggestion is that the current terminology of education is quite traditional and “closed” for many neologisms that occur in different languages due to the influence of American and European systems of education preserving the Korean educational system from the external factors.