This is a thread for Korean language learners to share resources, progress, experiences, or ask questions.
Question : where can I learn the northern dialect ?
I have been trying to find some good resources to learn it but can’t find anything sadly on the web .
I have learned the pronunciation of the letters and vocals as they are pronounced in the north part of the korean peninsula .
And I can read and write it but can’t speak it.
Can some of you recommend me a pdf book or other type of materials to learn the northern dialect , Like words and phrases book ?
thanks 😊
Unfortunately I don’t have guides like that other than what I mentioned in my previous reply in this thread, but maybe someone else does.
I want to mention, if your goal is mainly to be able to understand what people are saying and to be able to communicate (rather than to have the same accent and blend in perfectly), you don’t need to use only northern materials for study. There are different dialects all over Korea, but they are largely mutually intelligible. So it doesn’t really hurt to study with easy to find resources (which are usually southern sources about 표준어) while exposing yourself to vocabulary, pronunciation, and phrases from other dialects (for example by watching/reading media from there or meeting people from there) which may have less easy to find study materials. My apologies if this is not helpful to you but I wanted to mention it.
Aww 🥰 thank you for your response. I really appreciate it ☺️.
Yeah I’m trying mostly on learning to understand and to have conversations with it .
And I know very well that there are other dialects of the language out there ( by the way I love all of them )
By the way talking about the dialects of the korean language. Do you have heard about the zainichi Korean dialect ( 재일조선어 ) ?
Edit :
Question : is 제주말/제주어 a dialect of 조선어 or a different language separate from the koreanic language family .?
Jeju language is a Koreanic language, but it is a separate language from Korean. It was commonly called a dialect for a long time, but now it is acknowledged as a separate language. However, it has an endangered status, and not everyone in Jeju speaks it fluently. Instead people in Jeju usually speak Korean but with some influences of Jeju language.
I don’t know a lot of information about Zainichi Koreans’ way of speaking but I have been listening to some information about Korean schools in Japan lately, so I will probably learn some more about it and hear it more as I listen to interviews of people.
Other Question : is it true that people in the Korean peninsula still use the 한자 (漢字) to some extent ? like for historical documents , paperwork , classical poetries and other things ?
Yes, you will see it sometimes, although you’d be able to get around in daily life without knowing any (although knowing some will be helpful). People do learn some 한자 in school usually, so people are able to recognize the common ones. Sometimes you’ll see it in newspapers/news broadcasts too. It’s also included in dictionaries next to Sino-Korean words to clarify their meaning.
Learning 한자 is good for improving your vocabulary comprehension because you will start to be able to guess what words mean if you know which 한자 are associated with a certain syllable. Like “가” can be 歌 (song/music), or 家 (house), or 價 (value/price), or various other things, and the more you know about these, then it helps you guess what a word with “가” in it means. But being able to read and write the 한자 itself is not really necessary for this, just knowing that they exist and which sound(s) and meanings they are associated with is enough for this purpose.
Here are some resources for anyone wanting to know more about differences between Korean as spoken in north and south:
How to Speak the North Korean Language - A series of blog posts explaining some particularities of Korean as spoken in the north. (Resource is in English)
North and South Vocabulary Comparison List - A searchable list of north and south Korean vocabulary side by side for comparison. (Resource is in Korean)
Language Differences Between North and South - A page with a topic by topic overview of language differences between north and south. (Resource is in Korean)
