![Japonic languages](https://www.english.nina.az/wikipedia/image/aHR0cHM6Ly91cGxvYWQud2lraW1lZGlhLm9yZy93aWtpcGVkaWEvY29tbW9ucy90aHVtYi9lL2VjL0phcGFuZXNlX2RpYWxlY3RzLWVuLnBuZy8xNjAwcHgtSmFwYW5lc2VfZGlhbGVjdHMtZW4ucG5n.png )
Japonic or Japanese–Ryukyuan (Japanese: 日琉語族, romanized: Nichiryū gozoku), sometimes also Japanic, is a language family comprising Japanese, spoken in the main islands of Japan, and the Ryukyuan languages, spoken in the Ryukyu Islands. The family is universally accepted by linguists, and significant progress has been made in reconstructing the proto-language, Proto-Japonic. The reconstruction implies a split between all dialects of Japanese and all Ryukyuan varieties, probably before the 7th century. The Hachijō language, spoken on the Izu Islands, is also included, but its position within the family is unclear.
Japonic | |
---|---|
Japanese–Ryukyuan, Japanic | |
Geographic distribution | Japan, possibly formerly on the Korean Peninsula |
Linguistic classification | One of the world's primary language families |
Proto-language | Proto-Japonic |
Subdivisions | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-5 | jpx |
ISO 639-3 | – |
Glottolog | japo1237 |
![]() Japonic languages and dialects |
Most scholars believe that Japonic was brought to the Japanese archipelago from the Korean peninsula with the Yayoi culture during the 1st millennium BC. There is some fragmentary evidence suggesting that Japonic languages may still have been spoken in central and southern parts of the Korean peninsula (see Peninsular Japonic) in the early centuries AD.
Possible genetic relationships with many other language families have been proposed, most systematically with Koreanic, but no genetic relationship has been conclusively demonstrated.
Classification
The extant Japonic languages belong to two well-defined branches: Japanese and Ryukyuan. Most scholars believe that Japonic was brought to northern Kyushu from the Korean peninsula around 700 to 300 BC by wet-rice farmers of the Yayoi culture and spread throughout the Japanese archipelago, replacing indigenous languages. The former wider distribution of Ainu languages is confirmed by placenames in northern Honshu ending in -betsu (from Ainu pet 'river') and -nai (from Ainu nai 'stream'). Somewhat later, Japonic languages also spread southward to the Ryukyu Islands. There is fragmentary placename evidence that now-extinct Japonic languages were still spoken in central and southern parts of the Korean peninsula several centuries later.
Japanese
Japanese is the de facto national language of Japan, where it is spoken by about 126 million people. The oldest attestation is Old Japanese, which was recorded using Chinese characters in the 7th and 8th centuries. It differed from Modern Japanese in having a simple (C)V syllable structure and avoiding vowel sequences. The script also distinguished eight vowels (or diphthongs), with two each corresponding to modern i, e and o. Most of the texts reflect the speech of the area around Nara, the eighth-century Japanese capital, but over 300 poems were written in eastern dialects of Old Japanese.
The language experienced a massive influx of Sino-Japanese vocabulary after the introduction of Buddhism in the 6th century and peaking with the wholesale importation of Chinese culture in the 8th and the 9th centuries. The loanwords now account for about half the lexicon. They also affected the sound system of the language by adding compound vowels, syllable-final nasals, and geminate consonants, which became separate morae. Most of the changes in morphology and syntax reflected in the modern language took place during the Late Middle Japanese period (13th to 16th centuries).
Modern mainland Japanese dialects, spoken on Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku, and Hokkaido, are generally grouped as follows:
- Eastern Japanese, including most dialects from Nagoya east, including the modern standard Tokyo dialect.
- Western Japanese, including most dialects west of Nagoya, including the Kyoto dialect.
- Kyushu dialects, spoken on the island of Kyushu, including the Kagoshima dialect/Satsugū dialect, spoken in Kagoshima Prefecture in southern Kyushu.
The early capitals of Nara and Kyoto lay within the western area, and their Kansai dialect retained its prestige and influence long after the capital was moved to Edo (modern Tokyo) in 1603. Indeed, the Tokyo dialect has several western features not found in other eastern dialects.
The Hachijō language, spoken on Hachijō-jima and the Daitō Islands, including Aogashima, is highly divergent and varied. It has a mix of conservative features inherited from Eastern Old Japanese and influences from modern Japanese, making it difficult to classify. Hachijō is an endangered language, with a small population of elderly speakers.
Ryukyuan
![image](https://www.english.nina.az/wikipedia/image/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZW5nbGlzaC5uaW5hLmF6L3dpa2lwZWRpYS9pbWFnZS9hSFIwY0hNNkx5OTFjR3h2WVdRdWQybHJhVzFsWkdsaExtOXlaeTkzYVd0cGNHVmthV0V2WTI5dGJXOXVjeTkwYUhWdFlpOWpMMk5rTDFKNWRXdDVkVjlKYzJ4aGJtUnpMbk4yWnk4ek16QndlQzFTZVhWcmVYVmZTWE5zWVc1a2N5NXpkbWN1Y0c1bi5wbmc=.png)
The Ryukyuan languages were originally and traditionally spoken throughout the Ryukyu Islands, an island arc stretching between the southern Japanese island of Kyushu and the island of Taiwan. Most of them are considered "definitely" or "critically endangered" because of the spread of mainland Japanese.
Since Old Japanese displayed several innovations that are not shared with Ryukyuan, the two branches must have separated before the 7th century. The move from Kyushu to the Ryukyus may have occurred later and possibly coincided with the rapid expansion of the agricultural Gusuku culture in the 10th and 11th centuries. Such a date would explain the presence in Proto-Ryukyuan of Sino-Japanese vocabulary borrowed from Early Middle Japanese. After the migration to the Ryukyus, there was limited influence from mainland Japan until the conquest of the Ryukyu Kingdom by the Satsuma Domain in 1609.
Ryukyuan varieties are considered dialects of Japanese in Japan but have little intelligibility with Japanese or even among one another. They are divided into northern and southern groups, corresponding to the physical division of the chain by the 250 km-wide Miyako Strait.
Northern Ryukyuan languages are spoken in the northern part of the chain, including the major Amami and Okinawa Islands. They form a single dialect continuum, with mutual unintelligibility between widely separated varieties. The major varieties are, from northeast to southwest:
- Kikai, on the island of Kikaijima.
- Northern Amami Ōshima, spoken in most of Amami Ōshima
- Southern Amami Ōshima, spoken in Setouchi on the southern end of Amami Ōshima.
- Tokunoshima, on the island of Tokunoshima.
- Okinoerabu, on the island of Okinoerabujima
- Yoron, on the island of Yoronjima.
- Kunigami or Northern Okinawan, spoken in the northern part of Okinawa Island, including the cities of Nakijin and Nago.
- (Central) Okinawan, spoken in the central and southern parts of Okinawa Island, and neighboring islands. The prestige dialect is spoken in Naha, and the former city of Shuri. The Shuri dialect was the lingua franca of the Ryukyuan Kingdom, and was first recorded in the 16th century, particularly in the Omoro Sōshi anthology.
There is no agreement on the subgrouping of the varieties. One proposal, adopted by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, has three subgroups, with the central "Kunigami" branch comprising varieties from Southern Amami to Northern Okinawan, based on similar vowel systems and patterns of lenition of stops. Pellard suggests a binary division based on shared innovations, with an Amami group including the varieties from Kikai to Yoron, and an Okinawa group comprising the varieties of Okinawa and smaller islands to its west.
Southern Ryukyuan languages are spoken in the southern part of the chain, the Sakishima Islands. They comprise three distinct dialect continua:
- Miyako is spoken in the Miyako Islands, with dialects on Irabu and Tarama.
- Yaeyama is spoken in the Yaeyama Islands (except Yonaguni), with dialects on each island, but primarily Ishigaki Island, Iriomote Island, and Taketomi Island.
- Yonaguni, spoken on Yonaguni Island, is phonologically distinct but lexically closer to other Yaeyama varieties.
The southern Ryukyus were settled by Japonic-speakers from the northern Ryukyus in the 13th century, leaving no linguistic trace of the indigenous inhabitants of the islands.
Alternative classifications
An alternative classification, based mainly on the development of the pitch accent, groups the highly divergent Kagoshima dialects of southwestern Kyushu with Ryukyuan in a Southwestern branch. Kyushu and Ryukyuan varieties also share some lexical items, some of which appear to be innovations. The internal classification by Elisabeth de Boer includes Ryukyuan as a deep subbranch of a Kyūshū–Ryūkyū branch:
- Japonic
- Eastern
- Central
- Izumo–Tōhoku
- Kyūshū–Ryūkyū
She also proposes a branch consisting of the Izumo dialect (spoken on the northern coast of western Honshu) and the Tōhoku dialects (northern Honshu), which show similar developments in the pitch accent that she attributes to sea-borne contacts.
Peninsular Japonic
There is fragmentary evidence suggesting that now-extinct Japonic languages were spoken in the central and southern parts of the Korean peninsula. Vovin calls these languages Peninsular Japonic and groups Japanese and Ryukyuan as Insular Japonic.
The most-cited evidence comes from chapter 37 of the Samguk sagi (compiled in 1145), which contains a list of pronunciations and meanings of placenames in the former kingdom of Goguryeo. As the pronunciations are given using Chinese characters, they are difficult to interpret, but several of those from central Korea, in the area south of the Han River captured from Baekje in the 5th century, seem to correspond to Japonic words. Scholars differ on whether they represent the language of Goguryeo or the people that it conquered.
Traces from the south of the peninsula are very sparse:
- The Silla placenames listed in Chapter 34 of the Samguk sagi are not glossed, but many of them can be explained as Japonic words.
- Alexander Vovin proposes Japonic etymologies for two of four Baekje words given in the Book of Liang (635).
- A single word is explicitly attributed to the language of the southern Gaya confederacy, in Chapter 44 of the Samguk sagi. It is a word for 'gate' and appears in a similar form to the Old Japanese word to2, with the same meaning.
- Vovin suggests that the ancient name for the kingdom of Tamna on Jeju Island, tammura, may have a Japonic etymology tani mura 'valley settlement' or tami mura 'people's settlement'.
Proposed external relationships
According to Shirō Hattori, more attempts have been made to link Japanese with other language families than for any other language. None of the attempts has succeeded in demonstrating a common descent for Japonic and any other language family.
The most systematic comparisons have involved Korean, which has a very similar grammatical structure to Japonic languages.Samuel Elmo Martin, John Whitman, and others have proposed hundreds of possible cognates, with sound correspondences. However, Alexander Vovin points out that Old Japanese contains several pairs of words of similar meaning in which one word matches a Korean form, and the other is also found in Ryukyuan and Eastern Old Japanese, suggesting that the former is an early loan from Korean. He suggests that to eliminate such early loans, Old Japanese morphemes should not be assigned a Japonic origin unless they are also attested in Southern Ryukyuan or Eastern Old Japanese. That procedure leaves fewer than a dozen possible cognates, which may have been borrowed by Korean from Peninsular Japonic.
Typology
Most Japonic languages have voicing opposition for obstruents, with exceptions such as the Miyako dialect of Ōgami.Glottalized consonants are common in North Ryukyuan languages but are rarer in South Ryukyuan. Proto-Japonic had only voiceless obstruents, like Ainu and proto-Korean. Japonic languages also resemble Ainu and modern Korean in having a single liquid consonant phoneme. A five-vowel system like Standard Japanese /a/, /i/, /u/, /e/ and /o/ is common, but some Ryukyuan languages also have central vowels /ə/ and /ɨ/, and Yonaguni has only /a/, /i/, and /u/.
In most Japonic languages, speech rhythm is based on a subsyllabic unit, the mora. Each syllable has a basic mora of the form (C)V but a nasal coda, geminate consonant, or lengthened vowel counts as an additional mora. However, some dialects in northern Honshu or southern Kyushu have syllable-based rhythm.
Like Ainu, Middle Korean, and some modern Korean dialects, most Japonic varieties have a lexical pitch accent, which governs whether the moras of a word are pronounced high or low, but it follows widely-different patterns. In Tokyo-type systems, the basic pitch of a word is high, with an accent (if present) marking the position of a drop to low pitch. In Kyushu dialects, the basic pitch is low, with accented syllables given high pitch. In Kyoto-type systems, both types are used.
Japonic languages, again like Ainu and Korean, are left-branching (or head-final), with a basic subject–object–verb word order, modifiers before nouns, and postpositions. There is a clear distinction between verbs, which have extensive inflectional morphology, and nominals, with agglutinative suffixing morphology. Ryukyuan languages inflect all adjectives in the same way as verbs, while mainland varieties have classes of adjectives that inflect as nouns and verbs respectively.
Most Japonic languages mark singular and plural number, but some Northern Ryukyuan languages also have the dual. Most Ryukyuan languages mark a clusivity distinction in plural (or dual) first-person pronouns, but no Mainland varieties do so. The most common type of morphosyntactic alignment is nominative–accusative, but neutral (or direct), active–stative and (very rarely) tripartite alignment are found in some Japonic languages.
Proto-Japonic
The proto-language of the family has been reconstructed by using a combination of internal reconstruction from Old Japanese and by applying the comparative method to Old Japanese (including eastern dialects) and Ryukyuan. The major reconstructions of the 20th century were produced by Samuel Elmo Martin and Shirō Hattori.
Proto-Japonic words are generally polysyllabic, with syllables having the form (C)V. The following proto-Japonic consonant inventory is generally agreed upon, except that some scholars argue for voiced stops *b and *d instead of glides *w and *j:
Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Nasal | *m | *n | ||
Stop | *p | *t | *k | |
Fricative | *s | |||
Approximant | *w | *j | ||
Liquid | *r |
The Old Japanese voiced consonants b, d, z and g, which never occurred word-initially, are derived from clusters of nasals and voiceless consonants after the loss of an intervening vowel.
Most authors accept six Proto-Japonic vowels:
Front | Central | Back | |
---|---|---|---|
Close | *i | *u | |
Mid | *e | *ə | *o |
Open | *a |
Some authors also propose a high central vowel *ɨ. The mid vowels *e and *o were raised to Old Japanese i and u respectively, except word-finally. Other Old Japanese vowels arose from sequences of Proto-Japonic vowels.
It is generally accepted that a lexical pitch accent should be reconstructed for Proto-Japonic, but its precise form is controversial.
Notes
- Roy Andrew Miller identified the arrival of Japonic with the Early Jōmon period (c. 3000 BC), but this is difficult to reconcile with the relatively shallow depth of Japonic and the presence of Japonic placenames on the Korean peninsula in the 1st millennium AD.
References
- Robbeets, Martine (2017-01-01). "Austronesian influence and Transeurasian ancestry in Japanese: A case of farming/language dispersal". Language Dynamics and Change. 7 (2): 210–251. doi:10.1163/22105832-00702005. ISSN 2210-5832.
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- Frellesvig (2010), p. 50.
Works cited
- Beckwith, Christopher (2007), Koguryo, the Language of Japan's Continental Relatives, BRILL, ISBN 978-90-04-16025-5.
- de Boer, Elisabeth (2020), "The classification of the Japonic languages", in Robbeets, Martine; Savelyev, Alexander (eds.), The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages, Oxford University Press, pp. 40–58, doi:10.1093/oso/9780198804628.003.0005, ISBN 978-0-19-880462-8.
- Frellesvig, Bjarke (2010), A History of the Japanese Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-65320-6.
- Frellesvig, Bjarke; Whitman, John (2008), "Introduction", in Frellesvig, Bjarke; Whitman, John (eds.), Proto-Japanese: Issues and Prospects, John Benjamins, pp. 1–9, ISBN 978-90-272-4809-1.
- Grimes, Barbara (2003), "Japanese – Language list", in Frawley, William (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, vol. 2 (2nd ed.), Oxford University Press, p. 335, ISBN 978-0-19-513977-8.
- Heinrich, Patrick; Ishihara, Masahide (2017), "Ryukyuan languages in Japan", in Seals, Corinne A.; Shah, Sheena (eds.), Heritage Language Policies around the World, Routledge, pp. 165–184, ISBN 978-1-317-27404-9.
- Hudson, Mark J. (1999), Ruins of Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Japanese Islands, University of Hawai'i Press, ISBN 978-0-8248-2156-2.
- Izuyama, Atsuko (2012), "Yonaguni", in Tranter, Nicolas (ed.), The Languages of Japan and Korea, Routledge, pp. 412–457, ISBN 978-0-415-46287-7.
- Kindaichi, Haruhiko (1978) [1957], The Japanese Language, Tuttle, ISBN 978-1-4629-0266-8.
- Lee, Ki-Moon; Ramsey, S. Robert (2011), A History of the Korean Language, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-1-139-49448-9.
- Martin, Samuel Elmo (1987), The Japanese Language through Time, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, ISBN 978-0-300-03729-6.
- Miyake, Marc Hideo (2003), Old Japanese: A Phonetic Reconstruction, London; New York: RoutledgeCurzon, ISBN 978-0-415-30575-4.
- Patrie, James (1982), The Genetic Relationship of the Ainu Language, Oceanic Linguistics Special Publications, vol. 17, University of Hawai'i Press, ISBN 978-0-8248-0724-5, JSTOR 20006692.
- Pellard, Thomas (2015), "The linguistic archeology of the Ryukyu Islands", in Heinrich, Patrick; Miyara, Shinsho; Shimoji, Michinori (eds.), Handbook of the Ryukyuan languages: History, structure, and use, De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 13–37, doi:10.1515/9781614511151.13, ISBN 978-1-61451-161-8, S2CID 54004881.
- ——— (2018), "The comparative study of the Japonic languages", Approaches to endangered languages in Japan and Northeast Asia: Description, documentation and revitalization, Tachikawa, Japan: National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics.
- Serafim, Leon A. (2008), "The uses of Ryukyuan in understanding Japanese language history", in Frellesvig, Bjarke; Whitman, John (eds.), Proto-Japanese: Issues and Prospects, John Benjamins, pp. 79–99, ISBN 978-90-272-4809-1.
- Shibatani, Masayoshi (1990), The Languages of Japan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-36918-3
- Shimabukuro, Moriyo (2007), The Accentual History of the Japanese and Ryukyuan Languages: a Reconstruction, London: Global Oriental, ISBN 978-1-901903-63-8.
- Shimoji, Michinori (2010), "Ryukyuan languages: an introduction", in Shimoji, Michinori; Pellard, Thomas (eds.), An Introduction to Ryukyuan Languages (PDF), Tokyo: Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, pp. 1–13, ISBN 978-4-86337-072-2.
- ——— (2012), "Northern Ryukyuan", in Tranter, Nicolas (ed.), The Languages of Japan and Korea, Routledge, pp. 351–380, ISBN 978-0-415-46287-7.
- ——— (2022), "The Japonic Languages: an Introduction", in Shimoji, Michinori (ed.), An Introduction to the Japonic Languages: Grammatical Sketches of Japanese Dialects and Ryukyuan Languages, Endangered and Lesser-Studied Languages and Dialects, vol. 1, Leiden: Brill, pp. 1–24, doi:10.1163/9789004519107, ISBN 978-90-04-51910-7.
- Sohn, Ho-Min (1999), The Korean Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-36123-1.
- Tamura, Suzuko (2000), The Ainu Language, ICHEL Linguistic Studies, vol. 2, Tokyo: Sanseido, ISBN 978-4-385-35976-2.
- Tranter, Nicholas (2012), "Introduction: typology and area in Japan and Korea", in Tranter, Nicolas (ed.), The Languages of Japan and Korea, Routledge, pp. 3–23, ISBN 978-0-415-46287-7.
- Vovin, Alexander (2010), Korea-Japonica: A Re-evaluation of a Common Genetic Origin, University of Hawaii Press, ISBN 978-0-8248-3278-0, JSTOR j.ctt6wqz03.
- ——— (2013), "From Koguryo to Tamna: Slowly riding to the South with speakers of Proto-Korean", Korean Linguistics, 15 (2): 222–240, doi:10.1075/kl.15.2.03vov.
- ——— (2017), "Origins of the Japanese Language", Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.277, ISBN 978-0-19-938465-5.
- Whitman, John (2011), "Northeast Asian Linguistic Ecology and the Advent of Rice Agriculture in Korea and Japan", Rice, 4 (3–4): 149–158, Bibcode:2011Rice....4..149W, doi:10.1007/s12284-011-9080-0.
- ——— (2012), "The relationship between Japanese and Korean" (PDF), in Tranter, Nicolas (ed.), The Languages of Japan and Korea, Routledge, pp. 24–38, ISBN 978-0-415-46287-7.
Further reading
- Shimoji, Michinori, ed. (2022), An Introduction to the Japonic Languages: Grammatical Sketches of Japanese Dialects and Ryukyuan Languages, Endangered and Lesser-Studied Languages and Dialects, vol. 1, Leiden: Brill, doi:10.1163/9789004519107, ISBN 978-90-04-51910-7.
- Vovin, Alexander (1994), "Long-distance Relationships, Reconstruction Methodology, and the Origins of Japanese", Diachronica, 11 (1): 95–114, doi:10.1075/dia.11.1.08vov.
External links
- Research Resources on dialectical and historical linguistics at the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics
- 『日本言語地図』地図画像 (Linguistic Atlas of Japan)
Japonic or Japanese Ryukyuan Japanese 日琉語族 romanized Nichiryu gozoku sometimes also Japanic is a language family comprising Japanese spoken in the main islands of Japan and the Ryukyuan languages spoken in the Ryukyu Islands The family is universally accepted by linguists and significant progress has been made in reconstructing the proto language Proto Japonic The reconstruction implies a split between all dialects of Japanese and all Ryukyuan varieties probably before the 7th century The Hachijō language spoken on the Izu Islands is also included but its position within the family is unclear JaponicJapanese Ryukyuan JapanicGeographic distributionJapan possibly formerly on the Korean PeninsulaLinguistic classificationOne of the world s primary language familiesProto languageProto JaponicSubdivisionsJapanese Ryukyuan Hachijō Peninsular Language codesISO 639 5 a href https iso639 3 sil org code jpx class extiw title iso639 3 jpx jpx a ISO 639 3 Glottologjapo1237Japonic languages and dialects Most scholars believe that Japonic was brought to the Japanese archipelago from the Korean peninsula with the Yayoi culture during the 1st millennium BC There is some fragmentary evidence suggesting that Japonic languages may still have been spoken in central and southern parts of the Korean peninsula see Peninsular Japonic in the early centuries AD Possible genetic relationships with many other language families have been proposed most systematically with Koreanic but no genetic relationship has been conclusively demonstrated ClassificationThe extant Japonic languages belong to two well defined branches Japanese and Ryukyuan Most scholars believe that Japonic was brought to northern Kyushu from the Korean peninsula around 700 to 300 BC by wet rice farmers of the Yayoi culture and spread throughout the Japanese archipelago replacing indigenous languages The former wider distribution of Ainu languages is confirmed by placenames in northern Honshu ending in betsu from Ainu pet river and nai from Ainu nai stream Somewhat later Japonic languages also spread southward to the Ryukyu Islands There is fragmentary placename evidence that now extinct Japonic languages were still spoken in central and southern parts of the Korean peninsula several centuries later Japanese Japanese is the de facto national language of Japan where it is spoken by about 126 million people The oldest attestation is Old Japanese which was recorded using Chinese characters in the 7th and 8th centuries It differed from Modern Japanese in having a simple C V syllable structure and avoiding vowel sequences The script also distinguished eight vowels or diphthongs with two each corresponding to modern i e and o Most of the texts reflect the speech of the area around Nara the eighth century Japanese capital but over 300 poems were written in eastern dialects of Old Japanese The language experienced a massive influx of Sino Japanese vocabulary after the introduction of Buddhism in the 6th century and peaking with the wholesale importation of Chinese culture in the 8th and the 9th centuries The loanwords now account for about half the lexicon They also affected the sound system of the language by adding compound vowels syllable final nasals and geminate consonants which became separate morae Most of the changes in morphology and syntax reflected in the modern language took place during the Late Middle Japanese period 13th to 16th centuries Modern mainland Japanese dialects spoken on Honshu Kyushu Shikoku and Hokkaido are generally grouped as follows Eastern Japanese including most dialects from Nagoya east including the modern standard Tokyo dialect Western Japanese including most dialects west of Nagoya including the Kyoto dialect Kyushu dialects spoken on the island of Kyushu including the Kagoshima dialect Satsugu dialect spoken in Kagoshima Prefecture in southern Kyushu The early capitals of Nara and Kyoto lay within the western area and their Kansai dialect retained its prestige and influence long after the capital was moved to Edo modern Tokyo in 1603 Indeed the Tokyo dialect has several western features not found in other eastern dialects The Hachijō language spoken on Hachijō jima and the Daitō Islands including Aogashima is highly divergent and varied It has a mix of conservative features inherited from Eastern Old Japanese and influences from modern Japanese making it difficult to classify Hachijō is an endangered language with a small population of elderly speakers Ryukyuan Southern and central Ryukyu islands The Ryukyuan languages were originally and traditionally spoken throughout the Ryukyu Islands an island arc stretching between the southern Japanese island of Kyushu and the island of Taiwan Most of them are considered definitely or critically endangered because of the spread of mainland Japanese Since Old Japanese displayed several innovations that are not shared with Ryukyuan the two branches must have separated before the 7th century The move from Kyushu to the Ryukyus may have occurred later and possibly coincided with the rapid expansion of the agricultural Gusuku culture in the 10th and 11th centuries Such a date would explain the presence in Proto Ryukyuan of Sino Japanese vocabulary borrowed from Early Middle Japanese After the migration to the Ryukyus there was limited influence from mainland Japan until the conquest of the Ryukyu Kingdom by the Satsuma Domain in 1609 Ryukyuan varieties are considered dialects of Japanese in Japan but have little intelligibility with Japanese or even among one another They are divided into northern and southern groups corresponding to the physical division of the chain by the 250 km wide Miyako Strait Northern Ryukyuan languages are spoken in the northern part of the chain including the major Amami and Okinawa Islands They form a single dialect continuum with mutual unintelligibility between widely separated varieties The major varieties are from northeast to southwest Kikai on the island of Kikaijima Northern Amami Ōshima spoken in most of Amami Ōshima Southern Amami Ōshima spoken in Setouchi on the southern end of Amami Ōshima Tokunoshima on the island of Tokunoshima Okinoerabu on the island of Okinoerabujima Yoron on the island of Yoronjima Kunigami or Northern Okinawan spoken in the northern part of Okinawa Island including the cities of Nakijin and Nago Central Okinawan spoken in the central and southern parts of Okinawa Island and neighboring islands The prestige dialect is spoken in Naha and the former city of Shuri The Shuri dialect was the lingua franca of the Ryukyuan Kingdom and was first recorded in the 16th century particularly in the Omoro Sōshi anthology There is no agreement on the subgrouping of the varieties One proposal adopted by the UNESCO Atlas of the World s Languages in Danger has three subgroups with the central Kunigami branch comprising varieties from Southern Amami to Northern Okinawan based on similar vowel systems and patterns of lenition of stops Pellard suggests a binary division based on shared innovations with an Amami group including the varieties from Kikai to Yoron and an Okinawa group comprising the varieties of Okinawa and smaller islands to its west Southern Ryukyuan languages are spoken in the southern part of the chain the Sakishima Islands They comprise three distinct dialect continua Miyako is spoken in the Miyako Islands with dialects on Irabu and Tarama Yaeyama is spoken in the Yaeyama Islands except Yonaguni with dialects on each island but primarily Ishigaki Island Iriomote Island and Taketomi Island Yonaguni spoken on Yonaguni Island is phonologically distinct but lexically closer to other Yaeyama varieties The southern Ryukyus were settled by Japonic speakers from the northern Ryukyus in the 13th century leaving no linguistic trace of the indigenous inhabitants of the islands Alternative classifications An alternative classification based mainly on the development of the pitch accent groups the highly divergent Kagoshima dialects of southwestern Kyushu with Ryukyuan in a Southwestern branch Kyushu and Ryukyuan varieties also share some lexical items some of which appear to be innovations The internal classification by Elisabeth de Boer includes Ryukyuan as a deep subbranch of a Kyushu Ryukyu branch Japonic Eastern Central Izumo Tōhoku Kyushu Ryukyu She also proposes a branch consisting of the Izumo dialect spoken on the northern coast of western Honshu and the Tōhoku dialects northern Honshu which show similar developments in the pitch accent that she attributes to sea borne contacts Peninsular Japonic Korea in the late 5th century There is fragmentary evidence suggesting that now extinct Japonic languages were spoken in the central and southern parts of the Korean peninsula Vovin calls these languages Peninsular Japonic and groups Japanese and Ryukyuan as Insular Japonic The most cited evidence comes from chapter 37 of the Samguk sagi compiled in 1145 which contains a list of pronunciations and meanings of placenames in the former kingdom of Goguryeo As the pronunciations are given using Chinese characters they are difficult to interpret but several of those from central Korea in the area south of the Han River captured from Baekje in the 5th century seem to correspond to Japonic words Scholars differ on whether they represent the language of Goguryeo or the people that it conquered Traces from the south of the peninsula are very sparse The Silla placenames listed in Chapter 34 of the Samguk sagi are not glossed but many of them can be explained as Japonic words Alexander Vovin proposes Japonic etymologies for two of four Baekje words given in the Book of Liang 635 A single word is explicitly attributed to the language of the southern Gaya confederacy in Chapter 44 of the Samguk sagi It is a word for gate and appears in a similar form to the Old Japanese word to2 with the same meaning Vovin suggests that the ancient name for the kingdom of Tamna on Jeju Island tammura may have a Japonic etymology tani mura valley settlement or tami mura people s settlement Proposed external relationships According to Shirō Hattori more attempts have been made to link Japanese with other language families than for any other language None of the attempts has succeeded in demonstrating a common descent for Japonic and any other language family The most systematic comparisons have involved Korean which has a very similar grammatical structure to Japonic languages Samuel Elmo Martin John Whitman and others have proposed hundreds of possible cognates with sound correspondences However Alexander Vovin points out that Old Japanese contains several pairs of words of similar meaning in which one word matches a Korean form and the other is also found in Ryukyuan and Eastern Old Japanese suggesting that the former is an early loan from Korean He suggests that to eliminate such early loans Old Japanese morphemes should not be assigned a Japonic origin unless they are also attested in Southern Ryukyuan or Eastern Old Japanese That procedure leaves fewer than a dozen possible cognates which may have been borrowed by Korean from Peninsular Japonic TypologyMost Japonic languages have voicing opposition for obstruents with exceptions such as the Miyako dialect of Ōgami Glottalized consonants are common in North Ryukyuan languages but are rarer in South Ryukyuan Proto Japonic had only voiceless obstruents like Ainu and proto Korean Japonic languages also resemble Ainu and modern Korean in having a single liquid consonant phoneme A five vowel system like Standard Japanese a i u e and o is common but some Ryukyuan languages also have central vowels e and ɨ and Yonaguni has only a i and u In most Japonic languages speech rhythm is based on a subsyllabic unit the mora Each syllable has a basic mora of the form C V but a nasal coda geminate consonant or lengthened vowel counts as an additional mora However some dialects in northern Honshu or southern Kyushu have syllable based rhythm Like Ainu Middle Korean and some modern Korean dialects most Japonic varieties have a lexical pitch accent which governs whether the moras of a word are pronounced high or low but it follows widely different patterns In Tokyo type systems the basic pitch of a word is high with an accent if present marking the position of a drop to low pitch In Kyushu dialects the basic pitch is low with accented syllables given high pitch In Kyoto type systems both types are used Japonic languages again like Ainu and Korean are left branching or head final with a basic subject object verb word order modifiers before nouns and postpositions There is a clear distinction between verbs which have extensive inflectional morphology and nominals with agglutinative suffixing morphology Ryukyuan languages inflect all adjectives in the same way as verbs while mainland varieties have classes of adjectives that inflect as nouns and verbs respectively Most Japonic languages mark singular and plural number but some Northern Ryukyuan languages also have the dual Most Ryukyuan languages mark a clusivity distinction in plural or dual first person pronouns but no Mainland varieties do so The most common type of morphosyntactic alignment is nominative accusative but neutral or direct active stative and very rarely tripartite alignment are found in some Japonic languages Proto JaponicThe proto language of the family has been reconstructed by using a combination of internal reconstruction from Old Japanese and by applying the comparative method to Old Japanese including eastern dialects and Ryukyuan The major reconstructions of the 20th century were produced by Samuel Elmo Martin and Shirō Hattori Proto Japonic words are generally polysyllabic with syllables having the form C V The following proto Japonic consonant inventory is generally agreed upon except that some scholars argue for voiced stops b and d instead of glides w and j Proto Japonic consonants Bilabial Alveolar Palatal VelarNasal m nStop p t kFricative sApproximant w jLiquid r The Old Japanese voiced consonants b d z and g which never occurred word initially are derived from clusters of nasals and voiceless consonants after the loss of an intervening vowel Most authors accept six Proto Japonic vowels Proto Japonic vowels Front Central BackClose i uMid e e oOpen a Some authors also propose a high central vowel ɨ The mid vowels e and o were raised to Old Japanese i and u respectively except word finally Other Old Japanese vowels arose from sequences of Proto Japonic vowels It is generally accepted that a lexical pitch accent should be reconstructed for Proto Japonic but its precise form is controversial NotesRoy Andrew Miller identified the arrival of Japonic with the Early Jōmon period c 3000 BC but this is difficult to reconcile with the relatively shallow depth of Japonic and the presence of Japonic placenames on the Korean peninsula in the 1st millennium AD ReferencesRobbeets Martine 2017 01 01 Austronesian influence and Transeurasian ancestry in Japanese A case of farming language dispersal Language Dynamics and Change 7 2 210 251 doi 10 1163 22105832 00702005 ISSN 2210 5832 Shimabukuro 2007 p 1 Tranter 2012 p 3 Serafim 2008 p 98 Vovin 2017 Hudson 1999 pp 86 87 Whitman 2011 p 155 Patrie 1982 p 4 Tamura 2000 p 269 Hudson 1999 p 98 Vovin 2013 pp 222 224 Sohn 1999 pp 35 36 Frellesvig 2010 pp 12 20 Shibatani 1990 p 121 Shibatani 1990 p 122 Miyake 2003 p 159 Frellesvig 2010 pp 23 24 151 153 Shibatani 1990 pp 120 121 Shibatani 1990 pp 142 143 Shibatani 1990 pp 121 122 167 170 Frellesvig 2010 pp 2 326 Shibatani 1990 pp 187 189 Shibatani 1990 p 1999 Shibatani 1990 p 207 Pellard 2015 pp 16 17 Pellard 2018 p 2 Shimoji 2012 p 352 Pellard 2015 pp 21 22 Pellard 2015 pp 30 31 Pellard 2015 p 23 Shimoji 2010 p 4 Shibatani 1990 p 191 Serafim 2008 p 80 Grimes 2003 p 335 Tranter 2012 p 4 Heinrich amp Ishihara 2017 p 166 Pellard 2015 pp 17 18 Shibatani 1990 p 194 Shimabukuro 2007 pp 2 41 43 de Boer 2020 p 55 de Boer 2020 p 52 de Boer 2020 p 58 Lee amp Ramsey 2011 pp 37 43 Beckwith 2007 pp 50 92 Vovin 2013 p 232 Lee amp Ramsey 2011 pp 46 47 Beckwith 2007 p 40 Vovin 2013 pp 236 237 Kindaichi 1978 p 31 Vovin 2010 p 3 Shibatani 1990 pp 99 100 Sohn 1999 pp 29 35 Vovin 2010 pp 92 94 Vovin 2010 p 6 Vovin 2010 pp 237 240 Shimoji 2010 pp 4 5 Shimoji 2010 p 5 Tranter 2012 p 7 Izuyama 2012 p 413 Shimoji 2010 p 6 Shibatani 1990 pp 158 159 Shibatani 1990 p 160 Shimoji 2010 p 7 Shibatani 1990 pp 180 181 Shibatani 1990 p 182 Shibatani 1990 pp 182 184 Tranter 2012 p 6 Shimoji 2010 p 8 Shimoji 2010 pp 9 10 Shimoji 2022 p 11 Shimoji 2022 pp 14 15 Shimoji 2022 p 13 Shimoji 2022 pp 15 18 Frellesvig amp Whitman 2008 p 1 Martin 1987 Frellesvig amp Whitman 2008 p 3 Whitman 2012 p 27 Whitman 2012 p 26 Frellesvig 2010 pp 45 47 Vovin 2010 pp 35 36 Frellesvig amp Whitman 2008 p 5 Frellesvig 2010 p 47 Frellesvig 2010 p 50 Works cited Beckwith Christopher 2007 Koguryo the Language of Japan s Continental Relatives BRILL ISBN 978 90 04 16025 5 de Boer Elisabeth 2020 The classification of the Japonic languages in Robbeets Martine Savelyev Alexander eds The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages Oxford University Press pp 40 58 doi 10 1093 oso 9780198804628 003 0005 ISBN 978 0 19 880462 8 Frellesvig Bjarke 2010 A History of the Japanese Language Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 65320 6 Frellesvig Bjarke Whitman John 2008 Introduction in Frellesvig Bjarke Whitman John eds Proto Japanese Issues and Prospects John Benjamins pp 1 9 ISBN 978 90 272 4809 1 Grimes Barbara 2003 Japanese Language list in Frawley William ed International Encyclopedia of Linguistics vol 2 2nd ed Oxford University Press p 335 ISBN 978 0 19 513977 8 Heinrich Patrick Ishihara Masahide 2017 Ryukyuan languages in Japan in Seals Corinne A Shah Sheena eds Heritage Language Policies around the World Routledge pp 165 184 ISBN 978 1 317 27404 9 Hudson Mark J 1999 Ruins of Identity Ethnogenesis in the Japanese Islands University of Hawai i Press ISBN 978 0 8248 2156 2 Izuyama Atsuko 2012 Yonaguni in Tranter Nicolas ed The Languages of Japan and Korea Routledge pp 412 457 ISBN 978 0 415 46287 7 Kindaichi Haruhiko 1978 1957 The Japanese Language Tuttle ISBN 978 1 4629 0266 8 Lee Ki Moon Ramsey S Robert 2011 A History of the Korean Language Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 1 139 49448 9 Martin Samuel Elmo 1987 The Japanese Language through Time New Haven and London Yale University Press ISBN 978 0 300 03729 6 Miyake Marc Hideo 2003 Old Japanese A Phonetic Reconstruction London New York RoutledgeCurzon ISBN 978 0 415 30575 4 Patrie James 1982 The Genetic Relationship of the Ainu Language Oceanic Linguistics Special Publications vol 17 University of Hawai i Press ISBN 978 0 8248 0724 5 JSTOR 20006692 Pellard Thomas 2015 The linguistic archeology of the Ryukyu Islands in Heinrich Patrick Miyara Shinsho Shimoji Michinori eds Handbook of the Ryukyuan languages History structure and use De Gruyter Mouton pp 13 37 doi 10 1515 9781614511151 13 ISBN 978 1 61451 161 8 S2CID 54004881 2018 The comparative study of the Japonic languages Approaches to endangered languages in Japan and Northeast Asia Description documentation and revitalization Tachikawa Japan National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics Serafim Leon A 2008 The uses of Ryukyuan in understanding Japanese language history in Frellesvig Bjarke Whitman John eds Proto Japanese Issues and Prospects John Benjamins pp 79 99 ISBN 978 90 272 4809 1 Shibatani Masayoshi 1990 The Languages of Japan Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 36918 3 Shimabukuro Moriyo 2007 The Accentual History of the Japanese and Ryukyuan Languages a Reconstruction London Global Oriental ISBN 978 1 901903 63 8 Shimoji Michinori 2010 Ryukyuan languages an introduction in Shimoji Michinori Pellard Thomas eds An Introduction to Ryukyuan Languages PDF Tokyo Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa pp 1 13 ISBN 978 4 86337 072 2 2012 Northern Ryukyuan in Tranter Nicolas ed The Languages of Japan and Korea Routledge pp 351 380 ISBN 978 0 415 46287 7 2022 The Japonic Languages an Introduction in Shimoji Michinori ed An Introduction to the Japonic Languages Grammatical Sketches of Japanese Dialects and Ryukyuan Languages Endangered and Lesser Studied Languages and Dialects vol 1 Leiden Brill pp 1 24 doi 10 1163 9789004519107 ISBN 978 90 04 51910 7 Sohn Ho Min 1999 The Korean Language Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 36123 1 Tamura Suzuko 2000 The Ainu Language ICHEL Linguistic Studies vol 2 Tokyo Sanseido ISBN 978 4 385 35976 2 Tranter Nicholas 2012 Introduction typology and area in Japan and Korea in Tranter Nicolas ed The Languages of Japan and Korea Routledge pp 3 23 ISBN 978 0 415 46287 7 Vovin Alexander 2010 Korea Japonica A Re evaluation of a Common Genetic Origin University of Hawaii Press ISBN 978 0 8248 3278 0 JSTOR j ctt6wqz03 2013 From Koguryo to Tamna Slowly riding to the South with speakers of Proto Korean Korean Linguistics 15 2 222 240 doi 10 1075 kl 15 2 03vov 2017 Origins of the Japanese Language Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 acrefore 9780199384655 013 277 ISBN 978 0 19 938465 5 Whitman John 2011 Northeast Asian Linguistic Ecology and the Advent of Rice Agriculture in Korea and Japan Rice 4 3 4 149 158 Bibcode 2011Rice 4 149W doi 10 1007 s12284 011 9080 0 2012 The relationship between Japanese and Korean PDF in Tranter Nicolas ed The Languages of Japan and Korea Routledge pp 24 38 ISBN 978 0 415 46287 7 Further readingShimoji Michinori ed 2022 An Introduction to the Japonic Languages Grammatical Sketches of Japanese Dialects and Ryukyuan Languages Endangered and Lesser Studied Languages and Dialects vol 1 Leiden Brill doi 10 1163 9789004519107 ISBN 978 90 04 51910 7 Vovin Alexander 1994 Long distance Relationships Reconstruction Methodology and the Origins of Japanese Diachronica 11 1 95 114 doi 10 1075 dia 11 1 08vov External linksResearch Resources on dialectical and historical linguistics at the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics 日本言語地図 地図画像 Linguistic Atlas of Japan Portals JapanLanguages