Korean language in China


The Chinese Korean language is the variety of the Korean language spoken by Ethnic Koreans in China, primarily located in Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning.
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 significantly similar to the North Korean standard, as is orthography; a major exception of orthography is that the spelling of some Chinese cities is different ; exceptions of vocabulary are all related to China.

Background

Language standardization

Due to the People's Republic of China having maintained favorable relations with North Korea, and also the proximity of the two nations, the standardized dialect of Korean amongst Chinese-Koreans is similar to that of North Korea.

Regional variations

Koreans primarily use Hamgyŏng dialect. Pyong'an 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, which have been simplified into and in standard Korean. The southeastern variant of Chinese Korean does not differentiate the respective pronunciations for and .
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.

Grammar

The copula "-ᆸ니까/-습니까" in Standard Korean is rendered as "-ᆷ둥/-슴둥" in dialects of Korean spoken in Northeastern Jilin, and "-ᆷ니꺼/-심니꺼" in dialects spoken in Southwestern Heilongjiang.
At the same time, there are grammatical influences from Standard Chinese, for example:
Vocabulary is another differentiating factor in comparison with other varieties of Korean, with usage of words such as 개구리 and 개구락지. 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 공인 and 판공실.
There are also some loanwords that are phonetically transliterated from Japanese that standard Korean doesn't have:
EnglishJapaneseYanbian KoreanStandard KoreanRemark
Oniontext=たまねぎ Tamanegi다마네기 Tamanaegi양파 Yangpa
Radioラジオ Rajio라지오 Raji'o라디오 Rati'oSpelling difference