The Sound System Of The North Korean Dialect Of Hamgyeong

The Korean language can be divided into six major dialects, which corresponds to the provincial-level administrative divisions. Although Standard Korean (i.e. the Seoul dialect) is a non-tonal language, there are pitch differences in the Gyeongsang dialect spoken in the southeastern part of South Korea and the Hamgyeong dialect in the northeastern part of North Korea. This research aims to examine the sound system and pitch patterns of monosyllabic words of the Hamgyeong dialect. The researcher compiled two wordlists in order to analyze the sound system and pitch differences of minimal pairs. Two native speakers of the Hamgyeong dialect who had been emigres for no longer than 3 years were selected for the sound system analysis. Five informants with the same qualifications are chosen for acoustic analysis with respect to fundamental frequency. The results show that the North Korean dialect of Hamgyeong consists of 19 consonant and 8 vowel phonemes just like Standard Korean, except for the vowel quality of /o/ and /ʌ/. As for monosyllabic words, pitch that was used to distinguish meanings of words in the past no longer exists in citation form, which is an intriguing piece of evidence of language change in the North Korean dialect of Hamgyeong. The findings thus differ from those in past analyses of tones and pitches in this dialect.