| Northeast Korean | |
|---|---|
| Hamgyŏng Dialect | |
| Native to | North Korea |
| Region | Hamgyŏng |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | hamg1238 |
| Korean name | |
| Chosŏn'gŭl | 동북 방언 |
| Hancha | 東北方言 |
| Revised Romanization | Dongbuk bangeon |
| McCune–Reischauer | Tongbuk pangŏn |
TheNortheast Dialect, sometimes called theHamgyong Dialect (Korean: 함경 방언hamgyŏng pang'ŏn), is a dialect of theKorean language used in most ofNorth andSouth Hamgyŏng andRyanggang provinces of northeasternNorth Korea, all of which were originally united asHamgyŏng Province. Since the nineteenth century, it has also been spoken byKorean diaspora communities inNortheast China and theformer Soviet Union.
Characteristic features of Hamgyŏng include apitch accent closely aligned toMiddle Korean tone, extensivepalatalization, widespreadumlaut, preservation of pre-Middle Korean intervocalic consonants, distinctive verbal suffixes, and an unusual syntactic rule in which negative particles intervene between theauxiliary and the main verb.
The Hamgyŏng dialect is the Korean variety spoken in northeasternHamgyŏng Province, now further divided as the North Korean provinces ofNorth Hamgyŏng,South Hamgyŏng, andRyanggang. However, not all of Hamgyŏng speaks the dialect. The Koreanvariety spoken south of a bend of theTumen River, on Korea's border with China and Russia, is classified as a separateYukjin dialect which is significantly more conservative than the mainstream Hamgyŏng dialect. The far southern counties ofKŭmya andKowŏn, while within South Hamgyŏng's administrative jurisdiction, speak a dialect which is usually not classified as Hamgyŏng because it lacks a pitch accent.[1]
The dialect is now spoken outside of Korea, in both China and Central Asia. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in response to poor harvests and theJapanese annexation of Korea, many Koreans, including Hamgyŏng speakers, emigrated from the northern parts of the peninsula to easternManchuria (nowNortheast China) and the southern part ofPrimorsky Krai in the Russian Far East. The descendants of these immigrants to Manchuria continue to speak, read, and write varieties of Korean while living in China, where they enjoy regional autonomy.[2] In the 1930s,Stalin had the entire Korean population of the Russian Far East, some 250,000 people,forcibly deported toSoviet Central Asia, particularlyUzbekistan andKazakhstan.[3] There are small Korean communities scattered throughout central Asia maintaining forms of Korean known collectively asKoryo-mar, but their language is under severe pressure from local languages and Standard Seoul Korean and has been expected to go extinct within the early 21st century.[2]
The most conservative forms of Hamgyŏng dialect are currently found in Central Asian communities, because the Korean language's lack of vitality there has put an end to naturallanguage change. Among the communities where Hamgyŏng remains widely spoken, the Chinese diaspora dialect is more conservative than the modern North Korean dialect, as the latter has been under extensive pressure from the state-enforcedNorth Korean standard language since the 1960s.[4]
The first dictionary of Korean in a European language,Putsillo 1874's attempt at a Russian–Korean dictionary, was based largely on the Hamgyŏng dialect; the author lived inVladivostok while composing it.[5]
Like the southeasternGyeongsang dialect but unlike other Korean dialects, the Hamgyŏng dialect has a distinct high-lowpitch accent system used to distinguish what would otherwise be homophones. Pitch-accentminimal pairs do not have tone in isolation, but only in the presence of a particle or copula. For instance, the word배pay—homophonous in the toneless standard Korean dialect of Seoul—may mean both "pear" and "belly" in Hamgyŏng as well, so long as the word exists in isolation. But when attached to thetopic marker는-nun,pear-TOP is realized aspay-nún with a high pitch on the second syllable, whilebelly-TOP is realized aspáy-nun with high pitch on the first syllable.[6] Unlike Gyeongsang pitches, Hamgyŏng pitches are regular reflexes of fifteenth-centuryMiddle Korean tones. The Middle Korean high and rising tones have become the Hamgyŏng high pitch, and the Middle Korean low tone has become the Hamgyŏng low pitch.Vowel length is notphonemic.[1][a]
The Hamgyŏng dialect haspalatalized both Middle Koreant(h)i-,t(h)y- andk(h)i-,k(h)y- intoc(h)i-,c(h)- like the majority of Korean dialects, but unlike Seoul Korean, which has palatalized only the latter pair.[7][a]
Middle Korean had voiced fricatives/ɣ/,/z/, and/β/, which have disappeared in most modern dialects, but not in Gyeongsang and other southern provinces.[8] Evidence frominternal reconstruction suggests that these consonants arose fromlenition of/k/,/s/, and/p/ in voiced environments.[9] Again like Gyeongsang, Hamgyŏng often retains/k/,/s/, and/p/ in these words.[1][10]
In the Hamgyŏng dialect, the "t-irregular verbs", which are Middle Korean verb stems that end in[t] before a consonant-initial suffix and in[ɾ] before a vowel-initial one, are regularly realized as[l] even before a vowel. However, unlike verb stems that always ended in[l] even in Middle Korean, the formerlyt-irregular verbs cause reinforcement of the following consonant. This is again identical to the reflexes oft-irregularity in the Gyeongsang dialect.[11]
The Hamgyŏng dialect traditionally had ten vowels, corresponding to theten vowels of very conservative Seoul Korean speakers. However,/ø/ and/y/ have nowdiphthongized into/wɛ/ and/wi/, as in Seoul, and there is an ongoing merger of/u/ and/ɯ/, now almost complete, and increasingly also of/o/ and/ə/. The end result is expected to be a much-reduced six-vowel inventory.[12] The merger of/u/ and/ɯ/ and/o/ and/ə/ is a newly emergentareal feature in North Korean dialects since the mid-twentieth century, also shared by the modernPyongan dialect.[1] Many instances of /o/ in Standard Korean, especially in grammatical constructions, are /u~ɯ/ in Hamgyŏng. For instance, the Seoul conjunction하고ha-ko[hago] "and" is realized as하그ha-ku[hagɯ].[1]
There is a productive system ofumlaut in the Hamgyŏng dialect./a/,/ə/,/u/,/o/, and/ɯ/ arefronted to/ɛ/,/e/,/y~wi/,/ø~wɛ/, and/i/, respectively, when followed by a sequence of a non-coronal consonant and a front andclose vowel or glide, such as/i/. In some cases, this has becomelexicalized; compare Hamgyŏng괴기/køki~kwɛki/ "meat" to Seoul고기/koki "id." Umlaut is also common in Gyeongsang.[13]
In native vocabulary, Middle Korean CjV sequences havemonophthongized: Middle Korean혀hye/hjə/ > Hamgyŏng헤hey/he/. InSino-Korean vocabulary, CjV sequences have merged into umlauted monophthongs which have now become diphthongized again: compare Seoul교실kyosil/kjosil/ "classroom" to Hamgyŏng괴실koysil/køsil~kwesil/.[1][a]
As with allKoreanic varieties, case markers are attached to nouns to shownoun case.
| Case | After consonant | After vowel | Seoul cognate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | 이-i,이가-ika | 이-i,가-ka | |
| Accusative | 으-u | 르-lu | 을-ul,를-lul |
| Instrumental | 으르-ulu | 르-lu | 으로-ulo,로-lo |
| Dative-locative | 에-ey,이-i forinanimates and-(으)게-(u)key for animates | 에-ey,에게-eykey | |
| Genitive | 으-u | 의-uy | |
| Comitative | 가-ka | 와-oa,과-koa | |
Most analyses identify threespeech levels of differing formality and deference to the addressee, which are marked by sentence-final verb-ending suffixes, as in other Korean dialects.[15] Some of the more distinctive Hamgyŏng verb enders include지비-cipi, a casual suffix which elicits confirmation or agreement; the formal suffix우/수다-(s)wuta and the neutral-level suffix음/슴메-(s)ummey, both of which may be used—depending on theintonation—fordeclarative,interrogative, andimperativemoods alike; and the neutral-levelpropositive suffixㅂ세-psey.[15][16] The informal-level suffixes are identical to Standard Korean ones.[15][a]
Highly unusually, the Hamgyŏng negative particle (such asai 'not',mos 'cannot') intervenes between the main verb and the auxiliary, unlike in other Koreanic varieties (except Yukjin, also spoken in Hamgyŏng) where the particle either precedes the main verb or follows the auxiliary.[1][17][a]
Specific vocabulary differences includekinship terminology. For example, "father", in standard Koreanabŏji (아버지), becomesabai (아바이) oraebi (애비).[18] Another example would be the use of (슴)음둥(sŭm)ŭmdung in the Northeast dialect, as opposed to the standard -습니다seumnida, or the use of -으eu instead of -의ui, 으르eureu instead of -으로euro, or -으/르eu/reu instead of 을/를eul/reul.
Example sentences
나는 꼬부랑국수르 먹였다. nanŭn kkoburangguksurŭ mŏgyŏtta "I ate instant noodles." 선생님으르서 드와드리겠음둥. sŏnsaengnimŭrŭsŏ tŭwadŭrigessŭmdung "As a teacher, I will help you." 이것은 이 님으 조선옷. igŏs'ŭn nimŭ chosŏnot "This is that man'sChosŏn-ot. |