Beautiful Jeju Island and Her Disappearing Native Language
South Korea’s Little Island Jewel, Jeju-do.
We’ve visited Jeju-do a few times over the past years. I learned how to scuba dive there, taking lessons from some locals over the course of three days, living at a humble diver school and wearing a wet-suit from early morning to evening. One of my aunties owns a small house on the island, so I visit just to live that slow Jeju life every now and then. Cedric and I also visited for two short days and saw as much of the island as we could in that time. We captured our moments in the video below. It’s one of my favorites to this day.
But I wanted to speak about something more hidden than the natural beauty of Jeju’s geography.
If you are a mainland Korean speaker, you might discover some Jeju residents speaking in a dialect that you cannot understand. This would be 제주어, or the Jeju language. We often use the word 사투리 to describe an accent related to a specific part of the country, but Jeju-eo is more than a simple accent.
As the island province developed individually from mainland Korea, so did the language due to the nature of its isolation and the history of the island - like the Jeju Uprising of 1948-1949. Jeju-eo has many loanwords from Japanese, Chinese and Mongolian which we don’t use in the mainland Korean. There are even Jeju diaspora living in Osaka who still speak Jeju-eo and say they cannot understand mainland Korean at all as the language has evolved so much in modern times. The language is closely related to Jeju’s roots in Shamanism and according to this very informative blog post the language is also influenced by the the natural makeup of the land. Jeju, since ancient times, has been a land filled with stones, women and wind.
Due to the wind that swirls around the island at all times, the language uses the consonant “ㅇ” (i-eong) much more frequently than mainland Korean does to help the listener hear what you are saying better! For some examples:
Mainland Korean “어서보고 가세요”
Jeju-eo “왕방 갑서”
Mainland Korean “천천히 보세요”
Jeju-eo “놀멍놀멍 봅서”
I recorded myself reading the phrases to give you an idea of how different it sounds. I’m not a Jeju-eo speaker and know I’m lacking the Jeju flair!
You can find a lot more wonderful examples and phrases here . I spent a good 30 minutes scrolling down and reading the Jeju-eo out loud, letting the unfamiliar words roll around my mouth. It’s very fun to try and learn.
Which wouldn’t be a waste of time at all if I did spend time trying to learn it. In 2011, UNESCO included Jeju-eo in the Atlas of World’s Endangered Languages. At this time, there are maybe five to ten thousand native speakers left, all born before 1950. Without a concerted effort to retain the language, there’s a good chance it will be completely extinct soon.
Here’s a nice video of some native Jeju speakers, with included “Korean” subtitles to help non-Jeju-eo speakers to follow along :)
Come see some more photos we took from Jeju here
In Jeju, Korean Language