Korean language in China

The Chinese Korean language (, ) is the variety of the Korean language spoken by ethnic Koreans in China, primarily located in the northeastern provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning, the latter two of which share borders with North Korea.

All varieties of Korean except the Jeju language are spoken by members of the Korean diaspora who settled in China before 1949. The educational standard is the North Korean standard language. Chinese Korean vocabulary is very similar to the North Korean standard, as is orthography; a major exception of orthography is that the spelling of some Chinese cities is different (for example, Hong Kong is referred to by the Sino-Korean name of , , Hyanghang, rather than the North and South Korean transcription of English Hongk'ong, ); exceptions of vocabulary are all related to China.

Background

Language standardization

The text used in the Korean language of Yanbian was originally in Korean mixed script, which made it difficult for a large number of grassroots Korean people to read articles. In 1949, the local newspaper Northeast Korean People's Daily in Yanbian published the "workers and peasants version" which used all-hangul in text, in addition to the existing "cadre version" that had mixed script for the convenience of grassroots Korean people. Starting April 20, 1952, the newspaper abolished the "cadre version" and published in hangul only, soon the entire publishing industry adopted the hangul-only style. On June 28, 1963, Zhou Enlai instructed that the Korean language of Yanbian should be based on the Pyongyang standard of North Korea. Subsequently, the Yanbian Language and History Research Committee standardized the Korean language of Yanbian on the basis of North Korean standard. Currently, the standardized dialect of Korean amongst Chinese-Koreans is similar to that of North Korea due to China's favorable relations with North Korea, and also the proximity of the two nations.

In 1989, the GB 12052 character set standard was established for text processing on computers.

Regional variations

Yanbian Koreans primarily use Hamgyŏng dialect. Pyongan dialect is spoken by ethnic Korean communities in Liaoning, while Kyŏngsang dialect is spoken in Heilongjiang.

Characteristics

Phonetics

The southwestern variant of Chinese Korean retains the pronunciation for ㅚ and for (ㅟ), which have been simplified into and respectively in standard Korean. The southeastern variant of Chinese Korean does not differentiate the respective pronunciations for (ㅐ) and (ㅔ).

Additionally, in the northeast and the southeast regions of this dialect, pitch accent is used.

Chinese Korean also simplifies diphthongs in loanwords into single vowels, such as in the word 땐노 (ttaenno, "computer"; from Chinese 电脑 diànnǎo).

Grammar

The copula "-ㅂ니까/-습니까" in Standard Korean is rendered as "-ㅁ둥/-슴둥" in dialects of Korean spoken in Northeastern Jilin, and "-ㅁ니꺼/-심니꺼" in dialects spoken in Southwestern Heilongjiang.

At the same time, there are grammatical influences from Standard Chinese, for example:

• 전화 치다 "make a phone call" (Standard Korean: 전화 걸다). In Chinese, the same sentence 电话 literally means to physically "hit" a telephone, hence the word 치다, "to hit", is used to describe making a phone call.
• 뭘 주면 뭘 먹는다 "eat whatever is given" (Standard Korean: 주는 ê±´ 다 먹는다)

Vocabulary

Vocabulary is another differentiating factor in comparison with other varieties of Korean, with usage of words such as and (frog). As a result of Chinese influence, there are many words that arise from Modern Standard Chinese.

Some words arise from the eum pronunciation of hanja, for example (, worker, Standard Korean: , ) and (, office, Standard Korean: , ).

There are also some loanwords that are phonetically transliterated from Japanese that standard Korean doesn't have (probably due to influence of Manchukuo's rule):

References