Amami Ōshima language


The Amami language or languages, also known as Amami Ōshima or simply Ōshima, is a Ryukyuan language spoken in the Amami Islands south of Kyūshū. The southern variety of the Setouchi township may be a distinct language more closely related to Okinawan than it is to northern Ōshima.
As Amami does not have recognition within Japan as a language, it is officially known as the Amami dialect.

Speakers

The number of native speakers is uncertain, but they are predominantly elderly. It is estimated that there are approximately 10,000 speakers of the Northern dialect and approximately 2,000 speakers of the Southern dialect. The Japanese government, via the Ministry of Education, is implementing measures to protect these endangered languages.

Classification

Linguists mostly agree on the validity of the Amami–Okinawan languages as a family. The subdivisions of Amami–Okinawan, however, remain a matter of scholarly debate, with two major hypotheses:
  • In a two-branch hypothesis, posited by Nakasone, Hirayama and Nakamoto, among others, Amami–Okinawan divides into Amami and Okinawan, with the northern and southern varieties of Amami Ōshima both falling within the Amami branch.
  • In a three-subdivision hypothesis, proposed by Uemura as one of several possible classifications and supported by Karimata, Northern Amami Ōshima and Central/Southern Okinawa form two branches, while the intervening varieties - Southern Amami Ōshima, Kunigami, and the dialects/languages of the islands between - form a third branch. In this proposal, Amami Ōshima does not constitute a single language, and the northern and southern varieties are not even more closely related to each other than they are to other Ryukyuan languages.
The two-subdivision hypothesis is convenient for discussing the modern languages since the posited linguistic boundary corresponds to the centuries-old administrative boundary that today separates Kagoshima and Okinawa Prefectures. In addition, several isoglosses do group Northern and Southern Amami together. In Amami, word-medial is changed to or even dropped when it is surrounded by, or. This can rarely be observed in Okinawan. Japanese becomes in Amami and in Okinawan.
The three-subdivision hypothesis is more phylogenetically-oriented. A marked isogloss is the vowel systems. Japanese language corresponds to in Northern Amami Ōshima while it was merged into in Southern Amami Ōshima through Okinawan.
The vowel system-based classification is not without complication. The northern three communities of Kikai Island share the seven-vowel system with Amami Ōshima and Tokunoshima to the south, while the rest of Kikai falls in with Okinoerabu and Yoron even further south.
Based on other evidence, however, Karimata and Lawrence tentatively group Kikai dialects together.

Dialects

Amami Ōshima can be divided into Northern Amami Ōshima and Southern Amami Ōshima despite conflicting patterns of isoglosses.
The distribution of Southern Amami Ōshima roughly corresponds to Setouchi Town, including offshore islands. The rest of the main island speaks Northern Amami Ōshima.
Shibata et al. takes a lexicostatistic approach to subgrouping Northern Amami Ōshima dialects:
In addition, Sani, a small community on a peninsula at the northern tip of the island, is known to have distinct phonology.
Based on phonetic and lexical evidence, Shibata et al. subdivide Southern Amami Ōshima into
  • Higashi Magiri
  • Nishi Magiri
reflecting the administrative divisions during the Edo period. While Uke Island belonged to the Nishi Magiri district, its dialect is closer to that of Higashi Magiri.
Southern Amami Ōshima contrasts with Northern Amami Ōshima in its final unreleased consonants. For example, "shrimp" is in Ōshama and in Tatsugō ; "blade" is in Ōshama and in Tatsugō.

Names

According to Osada Suma, the dialect of Yamatohama, Yamato Village of Amami Ōshima had for 'language', for 'island language' and for the language of mainland Japan. Another term, shimaguchi, is absent from Osada's dictionary. According to Kurai Norio, a local historian from Amami Ōshima, shimaguchi contrasted with Yamatoguchi, while shimayumuta was associated with accentual and intonational differences among various shima. Ebara Yoshimori, a folklorist from Naze, Amami Ōshima, conjectured that shimaguchi was of relatively recent origin, possibly made through analogy with Yamatoguchi. He thought that the dialect of one's home community was better referred to as .

Phonology

Consonants

Historically, vowel-initial words acquired an epenthetic glottal stop. When *wo and *we later became and without an initial glottal stop, the glottal stop elsewhere became phonemic. When still later initial vowels were elided, an initial glottal stop merged with the following consonant, establishing a series of "glottalized" consonants. While the nasals are truly glottalized, the "glottalized" stops are merely tenuis, contrasting with the default aspirated stops.

Closed syllables

In the southern Shodon dialect, the consonants occur at the end of a word or syllable, as in 'neck', 'cherry blossom' and 'well'.
Other dialects are similar. Final consonants are usually the result of eliding high front vowels. Elision is partly conditioned by pitch accent. In Shodon dialect, for example, the noun with accent classes 2.1 and 2.2 are realized as and while 2.3-5 nouns retain final vowels, e.g., and .

Vowels

There are seven distinct vowel qualities in Amami Ōshima, in addition to a phonemic distinction between long and short vowels and in some dialects oral and nasal vowels.
FrontCentralBack
High
Mid
Low

and are generally transcribed "ï" and "ë" in the literature.
derives from *e and merges with after alveolar consonants. mostly derives from a merger of *ae and *ai, and so is usually long. In several northern dialects, the nasal vowels developed from the loss of a word-medial :
Kasarisani dialect has 11 oral and nasal vowels, while Sani dialect adds long vowels for a total of 18, the largest inventory of any Ryukyuan languages.

Resources

Amami hōgen bunrui jiten by Osada Suma, Suyama Nahoko and Fujii Misako. A dictionary for the dialect of Osada's home community, Yamatohama, Yamato Village of Amami Ōshima. Its phonemic romanization was designed by Hattori Shirō. He also supervised the early compilation process. This dictionary is partially available online as the Amami Dialect Dictionary .
  • The Phonetics and Vocabulary of the Sani Dialect by Karimata Shigehisa. Sani is known as a language island.Kikaijima hōgen-shū by Iwakura Ichirō. A dictionary for the author's home community, Aden, and a couple of other southern communities on Kikai Island of the Amami Islands. Can also be accessed at the NDL Digital Collections .
  • Samuel E. Martin, 1970. '
  • Shigehisa Karimata, 1995–1996. The Phonemes of the Shodon dialect in Amami-Oshima''