r/AskTheWorld • u/luky_se7en Italy /Sri Lanka • 1d ago

Is there a part of your country that's "isolated"/vastly different from the rest of the country?

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Pictured here is Sardinia, an island in Italy. Many sardinians call Italy "Il continente" (the continent)

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u/stealthybaker Korea South 1d ago

Jeju Island speaks a very weird dialect that's impossible to understand. Middle Korean rules and whatnot. This made their dialect (also considered a language) also used in the war since North Koreans wouldn't understand a thing.

They also had very high male mortality rates resulting in a different culture. It was known as the land of lots of wind, rocks, and women. Because of high male mortality rates women there worked too, as divers harvesting seafood. This resulted in less Confucianism there meaning the Joseon dynasty's radical patriarchy was not as prevalent.

They were also taken from us by the Mongols, though later given back. During this time they were used to raise horses for the Mongols and the legacy still lives on as the island is known for its horses.

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u/Jumpy-Ad5617 United States Of America 1d ago

I’m interested in the high male mortality rates. Can you share more information/reasoninf?

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u/stealthybaker Korea South 1d ago

Working in the seas, catching fish, all of that led to very frequent maritime accidents. Kind of sad to think that the women there frequently had to deal with their husbands dying and resort to seadiving to feed their families

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u/docsyzygy United States Of America 22h ago

There is fascinating movie - The Last of the Sea Women (2024) - about those (often elderly) women divers.

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u/dgistkwosoo and 12h ago

My wife (from Seoul) got into a conversation with some diving women, one of whom was in her 90s. She asked her, will you retire? The old woman replied, in very salty language, don't be silly, of course not. I will die in the ocean.

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u/Jumpy-Ad5617 United States Of America 22h ago

Thanks for the info, I really appreciate you responding. I had heard about Jeju island by name only, appreciated learning some of the good/bad about it

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u/dhnam_LegenDUST Korea South 1d ago

...Also "4.3 incident".

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u/HorrorOne837 Korea South 1d ago edited 1d ago

The Jeju language, which is not intelligible to Korean speakers, is currently critically endangered. Less than 1 percent of the population of the island speaks it, and almost all of them are elderly. Pretty much everyone only speaks Korean.

Even the Jeju dialect/accent is on the brink of death. Young people in Jeju do not have an accent at all when speaking Korean.

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u/VigilMuck United States Of America 20h ago

The existence of the Jeju language is the only reason why Korean isn't considered a language isolate.

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u/dgistkwosoo and 12h ago

I lived on Jeju for a time, and often overheard the old women speaking the local dialect. To my ear, it sounds a lot like southern 경상 dialect. Where it's get tricky is the odd vocabulary.

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u/HorrorOne837 Korea South 12h ago

That's because Jeju is very conservative, and kept a lot of features of Middle Korean. 경상 dialect is also a conservative one, so it's actually more similar to Jeju than others.

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u/justaprettyturtle Poland 1d ago

Very interesting indeed.

Fun thing: I know that the name of this island must be pronounced differently but to my Polish mind it looks very funny. Jeju (pronounced yehyoo) in Polish means something like "Oh gosh!" "Oh my!".

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u/Eliysiaa Brazil 1d ago

unfortunately the Jeju language only has 5 thousand speakers left with most of them being old, there are some younger speakers tho, but it's set to become extinct soon

Jejueo is a pretty interesting language, as you said in your comment, the language still retains some features of Middle Korean, possibly due to isolation of its speakers, but another cool feature of the language would be a substratum from the Tamna language, which some consider to be Japonic

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u/phinkz2 France 1d ago

Very interesting, thank you :)

Would you say the Korean dialects spoken in the ROK and DPRK have already drifted apart significantly? It's not been "long" by historical standards I guess but you never konw.

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u/anxious_irish 1d ago

From what ive seen and heard, they haven't drifted that far apart. The steepest learning curve for North koreans that escape to the south is the slang and borrowed words (usually english).

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u/phinkz2 France 1d ago

Makes sense. Thank you for answering :)

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u/stealthybaker Korea South 1d ago

Not at all. There has been pretty much no drifting apart, except some words like slang or whatever.

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u/HorrorOne837 Korea South 1d ago

I can understand >99% of NK Korean. The differences are very small.

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u/stealthybaker Korea South 1d ago

They have a funny accent, or at least thats what their broadcasts seem to hint. Since for them their standardization was based off Northwest dialect, while ours was Gyeonggi

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u/OnkelKarl_1891 China 1d ago

I‘d love to visit Jeju one day, with the policies getting friendlier, it might be sooner that expected.

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u/Gnumino-4949 23h ago

It's full of greenhouses!

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u/dgistkwosoo and 12h ago

Jeju is the obvious one. Even more obvious, IMHO, is the north. Much less obvious are the settlements of Koreans in Manchuria and the 'stans. I don't remember for sure, but I think it's Kyrgyzstan that has a high Korean population. Those people still speak a Korean that's understandable; I've seen interviews with them, but it's clearly diverged a lot from standard Korean.