Jeolla dialect

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Jeolla dialect (Hangul: 전라도 방언; Hanja: 全羅道方言) is used in the Jeolla (Honam) region of South Korea, including the city of Gwangju.

It is considered in popular culture, along with Chungcheong dialect to a lesser degree, to be real country bumpkin speech, somewhat like an Ozarks dialect in the US. Perhaps the most obvious, to a foreigner, difference is in the common verb endings. In place of the usual -sumnida or -saeyo endings, a southern Jeolla person will use -raoo or -jee-raoo appended to the verb. For a causative verb ending, expressed in standard language with a -neeka ending, Jeolla people use -ngkay, so the past tense of the verb 'did', hessuneeka, becomes hessungkay. A similar sound is used for the quotative ending, "somebody said...". The usual verb endings are -dahgo and -rahgo. Jeolla dialect prefers -dahngkay.

Regarding pronunciation differences, there is a strong tendency to go to the second vowel in a diphthong. For example, the verb ending that indicates 'since', -nunday, becomes -nundee. The name of the large city Kwangju becomes Kangju, and the verb 'to not have, to be absent', ohpta, becomes very close to 'oopta'. There are some words that are dialect as well: "aut-chay-so" for "why", "shee-bang" for "now", and the ever-popular "twee-gahn" for "outhouse". Rather like rural Canadians, Jeolla dialect speakers have a tendency to end their sentences with "eeng", especially questions.