The aspirated first consonant of "timchae" became unaspirated in "dimchɑe", then underwent palatalization in "jimchɑe". The word then became "jimchui" with the loss of the vowel "ɑ" () in Korean language, then "Kimchi", with the depalatalized word-initial consonant. In Modern Korean, the hanja characters are pronounced "chimchae" (), and are not used to refer to kimchi, or anything else. The word "Kimchi" is not considered as a Sino-Korean word. Older forms of the word are retained in many regional dialects: "jimchae" (Jeolla, Hamgyŏng dialects), "jimchi" (Chungcheong, Gangwon, Gyeonggi, Gyeongsang, Hamgyŏng, Jeolla dialects), and "dimchi" (P'yŏngan dialect).