Yukjin Korean

The Yukjin dialect (Yukjin Korean: 육진말; Hanja: 六鎮말; RR: Yukjinmal) is a variety of Korean or a separate Koreanic language spoken in the historic Yukjin region of northeastern Korea, south of the Tumen River. Its phonology and lexicon are unusually conservative, preserving many Middle Korean forms. Thus, Alexander Vovin classified it as a distinct language.

Yukjin speakers currently live not only in the Tumen River homeland, now part of North Korea, but also in the Korean diaspora in Northeast China and Central Asia that formed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The dialect is under pressure from the Gyeonggi ("Seoul") dialect, the prestige dialect, as well as local Chinese and Central Asian languages.

History and distribution

The Sino-Korean term 六鎭 ryukchin 'six garrisons' refers to the six towns of Hoeryŏng, Chongsŏng, Onsŏng, Kyŏngwŏn, Kyŏnghŭng, and Puryŏng, all located south of a bend of the Tumen River. The area of these towns belonged to the Tungusic-speaking Jurchen people until the early fifteenth century, when King Sejong conquered the area into Korea's Hamgyong Province and peopled the six towns with immigrants from southeastern Korea. The Yukjin dialect is the distinctive Koreanic variety spoken by their descendants.

The Jaegaseung, descendants of Jurchen people who lived in the Tumen River valley, also spoke Yukjin Korean despite their isolation from mainstream Korean society.

The Yukjin dialect of the six towns is further divided into an eastern variety, typified by the speech of Onsŏng and Kyŏngwŏn, and a western variety as spoken in Hoeryŏng and Chongsŏng.