Z dziejów językowych kontaktów polsko-koreańskich. Wyrazy koreańskie w książce Wacława Sieroszewskiego Korea. Klucz Dalekiego Wschodu

The subject matter of the paper falls into the field of interlanguage contacts and concerns Korean lexis in the form of an extensive set of borrowings, references and quotations in the book titled Korea. Klucz Dalekiego Wschodu (Korea. The key of the Far East) of 1905 by Wacław Sieroszewski. It is at the same time the first example of adapting Korean words as heard or read by the author in their phonetic form to the Polish language. These are words representing various categories of lexis, including common words, nouns, verbs, and adjectives, some idioms and conversational phrases, as well as proper names, toponyms and anthroponyms. Sieroszewski mixes various spelling conventions modelled also on early (mainly Russian and English) transcription systems of Korean. Sieroszewski’s limited knowledge of Korea’s language position resulted also in Japanised forms of some toponyms in his text.