Jeolla Dialect

The Jeolla dialect, also called Southwestern Korean, is spoken in the Jeolla, or Honam, region of South Korea, including the city of Gwangju, and divides into northern and southern subvarieties with further eastern and western variation. It is marked by distinctive verb endings such as rau and jirau in place of the standard forms, a characteristic sentence-final ing particle comparable to the Canadian eh, reduction of diphthongs to single vowels, and vocabulary such as the placeholder word geosigi, roughly equivalent to whatchamacallit. Southern Jeolla speech carries two main tonal patterns, and the dialect as a whole is often perceived, with mixed attitudes across Korea, as strongly accented and fast.