Linguistics of Yanbian Korean

Yanbian is a Korean autonomous prefecture in China. 36% of the 2.1 million people living in the prefecture are ethnically Korean, with the Korean population exceeding 50% in cities such as Yanji, Longjing, Tumen, Helong. The origin of the Korean population in Yanbian dates to the 19th century and early 20th century, with the majority coming from Hamkyŏng-do in the northern Korean peninsula (Park, Y. 2003). From the early to mid twentieth century, the Korean language in Yanbian suffered from political oppression. Korean language in the region first received official recognition in the 1946s, although state support for the language after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 has varied widely depending on minority language cultural policy, which included periods of active suppression especially during the Cultural Revolution Period (1966–1976). Nevertheless, the Korean language has been actively used amongst the Koreans in Yanbian (Park, Y., 2003). It is currently supported by the 1985 “Law on the Yanbian Korean Chinese Autonomous Prefecture.” It is currently taught in primary and secondary schools, and at the university level in Yanbian University. The language of the Yanbian community exhibits influences from Chinese, northern Korean dialects, Standard North Korean and Contemporary Standard Korean. 

Yanbian Korean has linguistic features that make it distinct from Contemporary Standard Korean used in South Korea, including but not limited to lexicon (vocabulary), orthography (spelling),  morphology (word forms), syntax (word order), phonology (pronunciation), and loanword phonology (pronunciation of words from foreign languages). For example, one of the most distinctive orthographic differences between Yanbian Korean and Contemporary Standard Korean are the names of the consonants ‘ㄱ’, ‘ㄷ’, ‘ㅅ’. In Yanbian Korean, they are read as kiŭk, tiŭt, siŭt, (‘기윽, 디읃, 시읏'),  while in Contemporary Standard Korean, they are read kiyŏk, tigŭt, siŏt (‘기역, 디귿, 시옷') (Yi 2017). 

There are also differences in syntax— the set of rules for word order in a language. According to Barnes-Sadler and Yeon (2019), one example of the syntactic difference between Yanbian Korean and Contemporary Standard Korean is how a statement is made into the negative (negation). In Contemporary Standard Korean, negating particles must be placed before verbs. See for example how one would say: “There’s a part that I didn’t understand”: 

(1) Contemporary Standard Korean 

[mot-ar-atɨl-ɨn                                      pubun-do      is'ək’o] 

못 알아들은                                       부분도          있었고

NEG-know-CONN-hear-M.PST        portion-too    be present-PST.DM

In the above example, negating particle mot- is placed before both main (know) and auxiliary (hear) verbs. However, in Yanbian Korean, it is allowed to have the negating particle in between the main and auxiliary verbs. See Example (2) for details (Modified from Barnes-Sadler and Yeon, 2019). 

(2) Yanbian Korean 

[ar-a-mo-tɨl-ɨn                                    pubun-do            is'ək’o] 

알아 못 들은                                    부분도                있었고

know-CONN-NEG-hear-M.PST       portion-too         be present-PST.DM

Additionally, there are also differences in morphology—word forms— between Yanbian Korean and Contemporary Standard Korean (Modified from Barnes-Sadler and Yeon, 2019):

Table 1. Attested Contemporary Standard Korean and Yanbian Korean case particles. 

The highlighted particles are variations that exist in Yanbian Korean but do not exist in Contemporary Standard Korean. This chart uses Yale Romanization to reflect Korean orthography. 

As shown  in Table 1, there are more variations of morphological case particles in Yanbian Korean than in Contemporary Standard Korean.

Another morpho-syntactic difference between Yanbian Korean and Contemporary Seoul Korean is related to the subject particle. For instance, subject particles can be used along with another particle in the grammar of Yanbian Korean, although this would be marked ungrammatical in Contemporary Standard Korean. See the following example from Barnes-Sadler and Yeon (2019):

Example 3. Subject Particle with Present Particle in Yanbian Korean
 

(3) Yanbian Korean

[se           Ji͡dʒaŋ-iga-do                  ik’o]

새           시장이가도                    있고

new         market-SUBJ-also          be present-DM

‘There is a new market, too’ 

In Example 3., the subject particle -iga is co-used with the present particle -ko. This is allowed in Yanbian Korean, but not in contemporary standard Korean. For this sentence to be grammatical in Contemporary Standard Korean, the subject particle -iga needs to be omitted. See Example 4 for the details (Modified from Barnes-Sadler and Yeon (2019):

Example 4. Subject Particle with Present Particle in Contemporary Standard Korean 

(4) Contemporary Standard Korean   

[se           Ji͡dʒaŋ-do                  ik’o]

새           시장도                    있고

new         market-also              be present-DM

‘There is a new market, too’ 

There are also phonological differences between Contemporary Standard Korean and Yanbian Korean. One example is how Contemporary Standard Korean and Yanbian Korean use different vowels. These are described in Table 2 (Modified from Yu et al., 2022):

Table 2. Contemporary Standard Korean and Yanbian Korean vowel phoneme inventory. 

Vowels in bold are written differently, but are no longer distinctive in speech (i.e. speakers no longer pronounce them differently)

As noted in the table above, although /y/ and /ø/ existed in the earlier stage of Korean, in both Contemporary Standard Korean and Yanbian Korean, they are now realized as diphthongs /wi/ and /we/ (a combination of two vowel sounds), rather than as monophthongs (a pure vowel sound) (Yu Cho, 2016). It is important to note, however, that the low unrounded vowel /ɛ/ 애 merged to /e/ 에 in Contemporary Standard Korean, but not Yanbian Korean. Although /ɛ/ is still written orthographically as 애 in Contemporary Standard Korean, it has lost its phonemic realization. In other words, speakers of Contemporary Standard Korean pronounce /ɛ/ 애 as /e/ 에. For example, consider the words /ke/ 게 (‘crab)’ and /kɛ/ 개 (‘dog’). Many Contemporary Standard Korean speakers would pronounce both words as [ke], while Yanbian Korean speakers pronounce the two words differently, maintaining the /e/ and /ɛ/ distinction. 

Ko (2009) performed an experiment in which Yanbian speakers and Contemporary Standard Korean speakers were asked to produce target words in a spontaneous speech, by looking at the target pictures. Table 3 is part of the stimuli used for this experiment (Modified from Ko, 2009). 

Table 3. Words with /e/ and /ɛ/.

By analyzing the speakers’ pronunciation, Ko’s (2009) study showed that Yanbian speakers would say the /e/ vowel in the first column differently the  /ɛ/ vowel in the second. But, Contemporary Standard Korean speakers tend to say the two vowels the same way. 

Prolonged exposure to Contemporary Standard Korean at workplace or school results in the /e/ and /ɛ/ merger for speakers of Yanbian Korean as well. If speakers of Yanbian Korean have close contact with people speaking Contemporary Standard Korean, they would start producing /e/ and /ɛ/ similarly, with the two vowels losing their distinction (Yu et al. 2022). 

Language change due to the influence of another language is neither a novel phenomenon nor restricted to phonology. Yanbian Korean features loanwords that are not used in Contemporary Standard Korean. The accents of these loanwords in Yanbian Korean will vary depending on the source language (Ito, 2014). Particularly, the loanwords from English, Japanese, and Mandarin will be adapted differently because the source languages have three different prosodic systems (stress, pitch accent, and tone, respectively). 

It is crucial to note here that Yanbian Korean along with Contemporary Standard Korean is a pitch-accent language, in which the prominent syllables in words are determined by a different pitch rather than by a tone or stress. Because Yanbian Korean is a pitch language, regardless of the prosodic system of a source language, all of their loanwords get translated into pitch accent. In other words, stress turns into pitch accent for English loanwords, and tone turns into pitch accent for Mandarin. As Japanese is a pitch-accent language like Yanbian Korean, pitch plays a role in determining pitch accent in Yanbian Korean. Pitch-accents are indicated by H (high pitch) or L (low pitch). 

See the following examples for the loanword adaptations:

English:  jú.mə (HL), ‘humor’ 

Japanese: ta.má (LH), ‘ball’

Mandarine: hó.ma (HL), hàomǎ 号码 ‘number’

 Syllable weight plays an important role in deciding the accent placement in English and Japanese loanwords (Ito 2014). In Mandarin loanwords, suprasegmental types (in this case, the tone) have greater influence over where the accent gets placed. This is due to the fact that English and Japanese are heavily influenced by a syllable weight effect, while Mandarin is not. 

Table 4 describes the effect of syllable weight and suprasegmental type for English, Japanese, and Mandarin. “+” indicates that there is an effect of each factor (syllable weight or suprasegmental type), “(+)” indicates that there is a partial effect, and “-” indicates that there is no strong effect. 

Table 4. Yanbian loanwords (Modified from Ito, 2014).

There are other features of Yanbian Korean that set it apart from Contemporary Standard Korean. These differences have to do with the unique history of the language, the migration history of its speakers, and the particular socio-linguistic situations its speakers have confronted in the last one hundred years. 

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