Hamgyŏng dialect

The Hamgyŏng dialect, or Northeastern Korean, is a dialect of the

The characteristic features of Hamgyŏng include a

The Hamgyŏng dialect is the Korean variety spoken in northeastern

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 natural language 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-enforced North 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 in Vladivostok while composing it.^[5]

Phonology

Like the southeastern

The Hamgyŏng dialect has palatalized both Middle Korean t(h)i-, t(h)y- and k(h)i-, k(h)y- into c(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 from internal reconstruction suggests that these consonants arose from lenition 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 formerly t-irregular verbs cause reinforcement of the following consonant. This is again identical to the reflexes of t-irregularity in the Gyeongsang dialect.^[11]

The Hamgyŏng dialect traditionally had ten vowels, corresponding to the ten vowels of very conservative Seoul Korean speakers. However, /ø/ and /y/ have now diphthongized 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 emergent areal feature in North Korean dialects since the mid-twentieth century, also shared by the modern Pyongan dialect.^[1] Many instances of /o/ in Standard Korean, especially in grammatical constructions, are /u~ɯ/ in Hamgyŏng. For instance, the Seoul conjunction 하고 ha-ko [hago] "and" is realized as 하그 ha-ku [hagɯ].^[1]

There is a productive system of

In native vocabulary, Middle Korean CjV sequences have monophthongized: Middle Korean 혀 hye /hjə/ > Hamgyŏng 헤 hey /he/. In Sino-Korean vocabulary, CjV sequences have merged into umlauted monophthongs which have now become diphthongized again: compare Seoul 교실 kyosil /kjosil/ "classroom" to Hamgyŏng 괴실 koysil /køsil~kwesil/.^[1][a]

Grammar

As with all

Most analyses identify three

Highly unusually, the Hamgyŏng negative particle (such as ai '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]

Lexicon

Specific vocabulary differences include kinship terminology. For example, "father", in standard Korean abŏji (아버지), becomes abai (아바이) or aebi (애비).^[18]

Notes

References

Citations

Sources