Jeju Dialect

The Jeju dialect, also Jeju language or Jejumal, is the moribund Korean dialect, or in some classifications Koreanic language, of Jeju Island in South Korea (excluding the Chuja dialect of the former Bukjeju County area of Jeju City, which is a variety of Jeolla dialect). Jeju differs greatly from the dialects of the mainland, and preserves many archaic words which have been lost in other Korean dialects. It has borrowed words from foreign languages that are not found in standard Korean, including 240 from Mongolian, 53 from Chinese, 50 words from Japanese, and 22 from Manchu. There are also many words which have not been traced to external sources, and which possibly derive from the language of the ancient kingdom of Tamna.

A notable difference between Jeju and the dialects of mainland Korea is a lack of formality and honorific deference to elders. For example, while a speaker of the Seoul dialect might say 안녕하세요 annyeonghaseyo ("Hello") to an older person, a speaker of the Jeju dialect would say 반갑수다 ban-gapsuda, which is roughly equivalent to "Howdy". To many mainlanders, a child saying this to an adult would be appalling, but on the islands, a more "egalitarian" form of speech is used, perhaps a cultural idiosyncrasy that has hung on after the incorporation of Jeju itself (under the Tamna kingdom, which, though having subjugated itself to Korean states since the 7th century, was not brought under the full centralized control of a Korean state until 1404) into Korea.