Jeolla dialect
The Jeolla dialect of the Korean language, also known as Southwestern Korean, is spoken in the Jeolla region of South Korea, including the metropolitan city of Gwangju. This area was known as Jeolla Province during the Joseon era. However, it is believed that the dialect dates to the Baekje kingdom with Chungcheong Dialect. Like the Chungcheong dialect, the Jeolla dialect is considered non-standard. Pansori texts are written in the Jeolla dialect.
Grammar
Verb endings
In place of the usual -seumnida or -seyo endings, a southern Jeolla person will use -rau or -jirau appended to the verb.For a causal verb ending, expressed in standard language with a -nikka ending, Jeolla people use -ngkkei, so the past tense of the verb "did", haesseunikka, becomes haesseungkke. A similar sound is used for the quotative ending, "somebody said...". The usual verb endings are -dago and -rago. Jeolla dialect prefers -dangkke.
Jeolla dialect speakers have a tendency to end their sentences with -ing, especially when asking a favor. This can be compared to the word "eh", as used by some Canadians.
Tone
Pitch and intonations
There are two major accentual patterns in the Southern Jeolla dialect: low-high-low and high-high-low. The use between the two is determined by a phrase's initial segment. If it has a spread or constricted laryngeal feature, the high-high-low pattern would be used while the low-high-low pattern characterizes all other phrases. These laryngeal features produce aspirated consonants and its use in determining accent patterns can be seen in onomatopoeia.For example, panchak meaning "twinkle" can be accented as so:
L-H-L: panc' akpanc'ak "twinkle twinkle"
H-H-L: p'anc'akp'anc'ak "much more twinkling than usual"
In Gwangju, studies have concluded that there are three major accentual patterns:
- The first is when the high accent appears only in the initial syllable. This accentual pattern is generally characterized by an initial long vowel syllable. For example, ha:n.kuk "Korea" follows this H-L pattern.
- The second pattern consists of two initial high syllables and it pertains to words with a tense, aspirated initial consonant. Words that follow this H-H pattern include tho.k'i "rabbit" and t'ak.t'a.ku.ri "woodpecker."
- The third pattern, L-H, occurs when only the second syllable has a high accent and it applies to all other words such as ka.ɯr "autumn" and min.tɯr.re "dandelion"
Pronunciation
Vowel transformations
Regarding pronunciation differences, there is often a tendency to pronounce only the second vowel in a diphthong. For example, the verb ending that indicates "since," -neundae, becomes -neundi. The name of the large city of Gwangju becomes Gangju, and the verb 'to not have, to be absent', eopda 없다, becomes very close to upda.Other instances of vowel transformation called umlauting occurs in the Jeolla dialect. The word "caught" is "japhida" in standard Korean, yet in the Jeolla dialect it is pronounced "jaephida". Because of the "i" vowel following it, the "a" vowel turns into an "ae". This transformation occurs in several other words:
- RABBIT: toekki rather than tokki
- MEAT: goegi rather than gogi
Short and long vowels
The Southern Jeolla dialect, unlike several other Korean dialects, has distinctions between long and short vowel sounds. There is a "vowel shortening rule" where a word-initial syllable becomes short when the word occurs non-initially in a compound such as saaram "a man" of nuuns' aram "a snowman" or when the word is placed in certain non-initial positions such as:i' "this" + saram "a man" becomes i saram "this man"Short vowel sounds can also be replaced by long vowels causing a greater ‘dragging’ emphasis on vowels in the Jeolla dialect than standard Korean. The tendency is for "i" sounds to be pronounced as "eu", as in the word "lie," or geojitmal, which is pronounced as geu~jitmal. In addition, "e" is pronounced as "i" instead as it is in the word "pillow" or baege, which is pronounced as bi~ge.