Hamgyŏng dialect


The Hamgyŏng dialects, or Northeastern Korean, is a dialect of the Korean language used in southern North Hamgyŏng, South Hamgyŏng, and Ryanggang Provinces of North Korea, as well as the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and Mudanjiang of northeast China
and Russia, Central Asia of
former Soviet Union. It is one of the more divergent dialects of Korean, and contains intonation, vocabulary, and grammatical differences that distinguish it from the standard Korean of the north or south.
Specific vocabulary differences include kinship terminology. For example, "father", in standard Korean abŏji, becomes abai or aebi.
It is reflected in Koryo-mar, the dialect of Korean spoken by ethnic Koreans in the former USSR, as most of them are descendants of late 19th-century emigrants from Hamgyŏng province to the Russian Far East. The first dictionary of Korean in a European language, 's attempt at a Russian–Korean dictionary, was based largely on the Hamgyŏng dialect; the author lived in Vladivostok while composing it.

Phonology

The vowel inventory of the Hamgyŏng dialect is somewhat reduced compared to Standard Korean. /o/ and /ə/ have merged into /o/ and /u/ and /ɯ/ have merged into /ɯ/. Many instances of /o/ in Standard Korean, especially in grammatical constructions, are /u/ in Hamgyŏng dialect which is relaxed as /ɯ/ in pronunciation. For instance Standard Korean 하고 "and" is written as 하구 but is pronounced like 하그, 도 "also" is written as 두 and pronounced 드.
Umlaut is a large feature of Hamgyŏng dialect. Unlike the Pyŏngan dialects, 위 and 외 are no longer pronounced as /y/ or /ø/ but these vowels still occur by umlaut. /i/ and /j/ glides cause preceding /a ə u o/ to be fronted to /ɛ e y ø/ except after coronal consonants, e.g. 당기다 dɛŋgida, 어미 emi, 고기 gøgi, and 죽이다 tɕygida. Two successive /a/cause the second to become /ɛ/, e.g. 사람 sarɛm.
The Hamgyŏng dialect also has a distinct high-low pitch system used to distinguish what would otherwise be homophones, such as 말 "horse" or "word".

Citations