The Ubiquity of the Gloss

This paper argues that glossing is an essential stage in the borrowing of writing systems. I use the term “glossing” in a somewhat extended sense to refer to a process where a text in one language is prepared (annotated, marked) to be read in another. I argue that this process of “vernacular reading” – reading a text written in the script, orthography, lexicon and grammar of a more prestigious “cosmopolitan” language out loud in the vernacular language – has been a standard and widespread process throughout the history of written languages. The fact that reading, throughout its history, has generally been an oral practice plays an important role in this argument. I suggest that many cases where a cosmopolitan language seems to supplant a vernacular written language are of exactly this type: the cosmopolitan text is in fact read in the vernacular; glossing is evidence for this. I discuss kugyŏl glossing in Korea and kunten glossing in Japan and the historical relationship between them. I introduce examples of glossing from medieval Europe to show that this type of glossing practice is by no means unique to East Asia.