Chapter 6: Korean Dialects 1 6 Korean dialects: a general survey Jaehoon Yeon 6.1 Introduction The Korean language is relatively homogeneous and the dialects from different areas can be mutually intelligible to a great extent. Nevertheless, the dialects of Korean exhibit considerable variety in phonology, morphology, and vocabulary. They are finely differentiated into a number of areas based on regional differences. There is no obvious correlation between the modern dialects and the ancient historical divisions of Korea, i.e. the Three Kingdom period. Silla and Paekche roughly coincide with the current southeastern dialect and southwestern dialect respectively, but northeastern, northwestern, central, and Cheju dialects cannot be correlated with any one ancient historical kingdom in Korea. Since Korea is mountainous, the language is quite naturally divided finely into different dialects according to topography. Most scholars seem to agree on six major dialectal zones based roughly on different geographical regions: (1) The northwestern dialects (P‟yŏngan province) (2) The northeastern dialects (Hamgyŏng province) (3) The central dialects (including Kyŏnggi, Hwanghae, Kangwon and Ch‟ungch‟ŏng provinces) (4) The southwestern dialects (Chŏlla province) (5) The southeastern dialects (Kyŏngsang province) (6) Cheju dialect (Cheju island) The dialect used by the Korean community in the Yanbian Autonomous Prefecture of China in Manchuria can be included in the Hamgyŏng dialects because their mutual similarity is due to the early immigration of Hamgyŏng people to that area and their subsequent linguistic contact. The language spoken by Koreans in Central Asia, i.e. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan has evolved from the Yukchin dialect that is part of the Hamgyŏng dialects, but it has many archaic forms as well as innovations compared with the original Yukchin dialects (King 1992). In addition to the regional dialects, North Korean and South Korean reveal a considerable linguistic divergence resulting from North and South division in 1945 and the subsequent Korean War in 1950. In this section we will examine the dialectal differences in Korean, salient phonological isoglosses, typical features of each dialect, and the linguistic divergence between North and South Korean. In the body of the text, we transcribe all Korean words in Yale Romanization, but Korean proper names are transcribed in McCune-Reischauer system according to the common practice. In addition, we also adopt a slightly modified version of phonetic symbols for some linguistic/phonetic examples when necessary. Dialect subzones can be classified by identifying the isoglosses of certain phonological features and morphological/grammatical features as well as lexical features. From the distribution of isoglosses, one can establish many dialectal subareas, but two or more dialectal areas may overlap in certain particular features. Earlier studies on Korean dialects include Ogura (1944); Lee, Sung-Nyong, et al. (1971); Ramsey (1978); Kim, Yong-Hwang (1982); T.K. Kim (1986); H.K. Choy (1987); King (1991); Lee, Ik-seop, et al. (1997); Lee, Ki-gap, et al. (1998); Sohn, Ho-min (1999); Lee & Ramsey (2000); Pangen Yenkwuhoy (2001), among