[KS] Re: North-South Standard Dialects, Regionalism

[Henny Savenije]

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>As far as I am aware, regionalism is the result of the geographic 
>composition of the peninsula. This created very difficult terrain to cross 
>in the Yi and previous periods prior to modernization, which lent its hand 
>at creating regional differences through separation.

Mm, I think regionalism existed everywhere, at least in the old world where 
people traveled less a century ago. When I grew up it still existed but due 
to modernization a lot of it has gone but, at least in the Netherlands lots 
of regions were pretty independent and dialects differed greatly. My sister 
taught at a school where half of her students were almost unable to 
communicate with the other half, since the village lies on the border of 
Friesland and Groningen. Frisian is a different language than Dutch, 
Groningen dialect is pretty different too. My grandparents (only living 10 
km away, spoke already a different dialect than we did. I don't think the 
terrain in Holland was so difficult to cross, at least not in the region 
where I lived. Agreed mountains will add to greater differences, but I 
don't think this is the only explanation and a too easy one. As for the 
official language, neither the people in the Hague nor the people in 
Amsterdam speak the official language. That privilege is taken by Haarlem. 
Also in London the people don't speak the Queens English, that privilege is 
only taken by her ;-) I think people of the New World tend to forget that 
dialects and regionalism in the old world are a phenomena which is not easy 
to understand. The difference between Liverpool English and London English 
is much bigger than New York English and Los Angeles English or even Texan, 
to mention only a few examples.

I know we are not studying Dutch history and language here, but I thought 
it was good to make some comparisons. I hope others will throw in their 
ideas as well.

>The dialect question is an interesting and good one. I had always taken 
>the "Seoul" position at face value without questioning it.

Seoul, till the end of the 19th century was a relative small city as 
compared to other cities, it was only the "Kings City".
-----------------------------
Henny  (Lee Hae Kang)

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