In order to reveal the generational differences of vowels, consonants and boundary intonations in the Jeju dialect of jeju people in their 70s, 50s and 20s, recording has been made on a total of 96 people(32 people per gerneration in consideration of ...
In order to reveal the generational differences of vowels, consonants and boundary intonations in the Jeju dialect of jeju people in their 70s, 50s and 20s, recording has been made on a total of 96 people(32 people per gerneration in consideration of the regional balance) across the Jeju area. The generational differences of vowels, which will be mentioned below, are the results of analysis of the recorded data on a total of 96 Jeju people.
To begin with, let us look at the monophthong system of the Jeju dialect. The nine vowel system of [i,e,ae, a, u, o,c(아래아), 으,어] is kept among the Jeju dialect speakers in their 70's. However, the pronunciation distinction of [e] and[ae] in the vowel system has generally disappeared among the Jeju dialect speakers in their 50's, though we found only a few of them(I think what matters is the place where they grew) as exceptional cases pronounced both of them distinctively according to words pronounced.
In the case of the Jeju people in their 20's, they never distinguish [e] and [ae] and both of them were pronounced as [e]. Even one jeju person in their 20's distinguishing [e] and [ae] was not found. This means that distinction of the two monophthongs does not exist among young people any more. In addition, when it comes to [c(아래아) Jeju people in their 20's do not differentiate it from other vowels, though jeju people in their 70's pronounce it distinctively from [o], [어], or [a]. But is is admitted that only a few of those people in their 20's pronounced it distinctively in some words that are frequently spoken or heard. In the case of Jeju people in their 50's, most of them pronounced it differently from other vowels. In view of this fact, we can come to a conclusion that Jeju people in their 70's keep the nine vowel system in which all of [e], [ae] and [아래아] are pronounced distinctively one another, while people in their 50's keep the eight vowel system because [e] and [ae] has already merged into one vowel and those in their 20's maintain the seven vowel system since the two vowels [ae] and [아래아] are not pronounced among them any more.
Let us consider the diphthong system of the Jeju dialect. The diphthong [yc] in the jeju dialect is spoken frequently among speakers in their 70's and 50's, but in the case of people in their 20's it is rarely spoken with the exception of those people who grew in the rural areas or have contacted elderly people frequently. As far as the two diphthongs [ㅙ] and [ㅚ] are concerned, they are distinctively pronounced among people in their 70's, but the other two generations ignore the distinction of them and pronoun both of them as [ㅚ]. In the case of [ㅢ], Jeju people in their 70's pronounce them not as the diphthong but as the monophthong of either [ㅡ] or [l], but as speakers get younger, they tend to pronounce it as the diphthong [ㅢ]. As for the two diphthongs [ㅒ] and [ㅖ], all the people regardless of age unify them and therefore there is only one diphthong [ㅖ], not the two diphthongs [ㅒ] and[ㅖ] in the Jeju dialect.
When it comes to the accentual patterns in the Jeju dialect, the words with two syllables are pronounced with the first syllable accentuated and the words with three or more syllables are uniformedly pronounced with the second syllable accentuated. These accentual patterns are maintained among Jeju dialect speakers regardless of age. In other words, there is no generational difference as to the accentual patterns in the jeju dialect.
As for the boundary tones in the intonational phrases of the Jeju dialect , the Jeju dialect shows a variety of boundary tones of H%, L%, HL%, LH%, LHL%, HLH%, HLHL%, LHLH%, LHLHL%, HLHLH% like those in Korean standard. However, in the case of Jeju people in their 70's, their boundary tones depending on the sentence patterns are so different from those in standard Korean that their Jeju dialect shows its unique tone patterns.