Located in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula, the DPRK is informally called North Korea. Like its southern neighbor, North Korea's official language is Korean. It is spread throughout the peninsula and has several dialects that roughly correspond to the geographical regions.
Some statistics and facts
- Most of the Korean dialects are named after the Eight Provinces.
- The official language of North Korea is the Pyongyang dialect of Korean.
- In total, at least 78 million people speak Korean in the world. The largest diasporas outside the peninsula are concentrated in China, Japan, Russia and the United States.
- Korean has an extra musical accent.
- A large number of borrowings from Chinese is another feature of the state language of the DPRK. It is also characterized by borrowings from Russian, while in South Korea there are many English words.
Eight Korean provinces
This notion of the administrative structure of the Korean Peninsula uses a capital letter in its name for a reason. Korea was divided into eight provinces in the first third of the 15th century during the reign of the Joseon dynasty. The boundaries remained unchanged until the end of the 19th century and determined not only administrative divisions and regional differences, but also the territories where a particular dialect of the Korean language was spread.
Some dialects are in use in both Koreas, but even their various variants are understandable to residents of both the northern and southern parts of the peninsula.
Features of Korean
For writing, the inhabitants of the DPRK use the phonetic signs "Hangul", developed in the 15th century. In addition to Hangul in South Korea, the Chinese characters hancha are used. In the 30s of the last century, at the initiative of the USSR, measures were taken to Latinize the Korean writing system. As a result, the Latin alphabet was officially approved, but in practice it was never used.
An interesting feature of the state language of North Korea is the different styles of speech, the use of which is regulated by the age of the interlocutors and their social status. A "courtesy system" is achieved by using different verb suffixes with the same root.
Tourist notes
If you happen to be in North Korea, don't worry about understanding problems. In any case, a guide-translator will be assigned to you, without which you will not be able to travel without any desire.
