Koryo-mar

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This article is about language of the Koryo-saram. For Korean language as spoken during the Goryeo dynasty, see Middle Korean.

Koryo-mar 고려말/Корё мар
Spoken in:	Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan
Total speakers:	216,811 as mother tongue (1989); additional second-language speakers number, largely ethnic Korean, number in the tens of thousands
Language family:	Unclassified: perhaps an Altaic language or a language isolate
Writing system:	Hangul; occasionally Cyrillic
Official status
Official language of:	none
Regulated by:	None
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	`to be added`
ISO/FDIS 639-3:	—
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key.

Koryo-mar (Hangul: 고려말; Russian: Корё мар; Standard Korean: 중앙아시아한국어, literally Central Asia Korean language) is the dialect of the Korean language spoken by the Koryo-saram, ethnic Koreans in the former USSR. It is descended from the Hamgyŏng dialect. Koryo-saram often report difficulty understanding speakers of standard Korean; this may be compounded by the fact that the majority of Koryo-saram today use Russian and not Korean as their mother tongue.^[1]

1 Orthography
2 Pedagogy
3 References
4 See also

[edit] Orthography

Koryo-mar is generally not a literary language; written Korean during Soviet days tended to follow the North Korean standard, while after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, both Northern and Southern forms could be seen. However, some modern writers, most notably Lavrenti Son, have created plays and short stories in Koryo-mar, written using the Hangul alphabet.^[2]

There was a movement for the Latinization of Koryo-mar in the late 1930s, promoted by various government officials and linguists, but it did not have much success.^[3]

[edit] Pedagogy

Koryo-mar is not taught as a subject or used as the medium of instruction in any schools. The Korean language as taught in universities of the former USSR is that of North or South Korea, with instructors being native to or trained in one of those countries. In one instance, a South Korean professor tried to teach Koryo-mar at Almaty State University, but he did not achieve much success.^[4]