When I traveled around Korea last summer, something that was obvious to me were the different types of dialects people used depending on which area they live in Korea. If I was to receive a research grant to conduct a linguistic study of Korean language and culture, I would want to learn more about the influences on how different dialects were formed and how a region’s culture evolved as the dialect was developed. Korea has six main dialects, also known as saturis, which were most likely divided up by mountain ranges. In America where some say “soda” while others say “pop”; in the same way, some Korean saturis can call the same objects different names. My mom speaks the standard dialect while my dad grew up with the Jeolla-do saturi, so communicating with my dad’s parents have been more difficult for me. I think that the formation of different dialects is fascinating, and I would like to understand more about how they came to be.
Another aspect of Korea I would like to further study is how other countries influenced their culture. With so many other surrounding countries like China and Japan, I want to find out what parts of their culture they have in common with each other. When looking at language, Korean is pretty much its own family but have many words are similar to those in Chinese and Japanese. Since they were close enough to have some overlap in vocabulary, I want to also find the overlap of their customs and traditions.
Comments
Hi So Myung, again, thanks for the sharing. For my unachievable research project, I also want to learn about the development of different dialects in Korean! And it is also very interesting to know that you want to study other countries's influences on Korean in the past or even in the present!