Koryo-mar

This article is about language of the Koryo-saram. For Korean language as spoken during the Goryeo dynasty, see Middle Korean.

Koryo-mar
고려말/Корё маль
Spoken in	Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan
Native speakers	217,000  (1989) second-language speakers, largely ethnic Korean, in the tens of thousands
Language family	Korean Hamgyŏng dialect Koryo-mar
Writing system	Hangul, Cyrillic
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–

Koryo-mar
Hangul	고려말
Hanja	高麗말
Revised Romanization	Goryeomal
McCune–Reischauer	Koryŏmal

Koryo-mar, Goryeomal or Koryŏmal (Hangul: 고려말; Russian: Корё маль; Standard Korean: 중앙아시아 한국어, literally Central Asian Korean language) is the dialect of the Korean language spoken by the Koryo-saram, ethnic Koreans in the former USSR. It is descended from the Hamgyŏng dialect. Koryo-saram often report difficulty understanding speakers of standard Korean; this may be compounded by the fact that the majority of Koryo-saram today use Russian and not Korean as their mother tongue.

Orthography

Koryo-mar is generally not a literary language; written Korean during Soviet days tended to follow the North Korean standard, while after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, both Northern and Southern forms could be seen. However, some modern writers, most notably Lavrenti Son, have created plays and short stories in Koryo-mar, written using the Hangul alphabet.

There was a movement for the latinization of Koryo-mar in the late 1930s, promoted by various government officials and linguists, but it did not have much success.

Pedagogy

Koryo-mar is not taught as a subject or used as the medium of instruction in any schools. The Korean language as taught in universities of the former USSR is that of North or South Korea, with instructors being native to or trained in one of those countries. In one instance, a South Korean professor tried to teach Koryo-mar at Almaty State University, but he did not achieve much success.

See also

• Kontsevich system of Romanization
• Dungan language, the Mandarin Chinese-descended language spoken by Hui peoples in Central Asia
• Korean dialects