Jeju language

Jeju language
Jeju language
제주말
	Jeju Island (red), where the language is spoken
Native to	South Korea
Region	Jeju Island
Ethnicity	Jeju people
Native speakers	5,000 - 10,000 (2010)
Language family	Koreanic Jeju language;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	jje

The Jeju language (Jeju: 제주말, Jeju-mal) is a Koreanic language spoken on the South Korean island of Jeju. It is related to Korean.

History

The Jeju language comes from Middle Korean, which is also the ancestor of the Korean language.

Jeju became a separate language from (mainland) Korean due to its isolation as an island and because in 1629, Jejuans were banned from leaving Jeju, causing more disconnection.

Usage

UNESCO lists Jeju as a "critically endangered" language, since most of its speakers are over the age of 70.^[1] Younger Jejuans speak Korean instead. As of 2010, the language is spoken by 5,000 - 10,000 people, which is less than 2% of Jeju Island's total population.^[1]

Dialect or language

Many linguists think Jeju is its own language, mostly because mainland Koreans cannot understand it.^[2] Others think Jeju is a dialect of Korean, although a very different one. The local government calls Jeju as a separate language, and the idea of it being a language is becoming more accepted in both Korean and foreign academia. UNESCO listed Jeju as one of the world's languages in 2011.^[2]

Jeju Language Media

Jeju language vs. Jeju dialect in South Korean academic publications
Jeju inhabitants awaiting execution in late 1948
This is the analysis of the slots in the Jeju verbal paradigm as presented in Ch. 6 "Aspect, Modality, and Tense" of the 2019 monograph Jejueo: The Language of Korea's Jeju Island (Yang C., Yang S., and O'Grady 2019).
An east–west divide is salient in the Jeju words for "lizard".Eastern Seogwipo uses 장쿨레비 <span title="Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Language/data/ISO 639 override' not found. transliteration" class="Unicode" style="white-space:normal; text-decoration: none">jangkullebi while western Seogwipo uses 독다구리 <span title="Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Language/data/ISO 639 override' not found. transliteration" class="Unicode" style="white-space:normal; text-decoration: none">dokdaguri.^[3]
A north–south divide is more noticeable in the Jeju words for "crab".