Miyakoan language
The Miyakoan language is a diverse dialect cluster spoken in the Miyako Islands, located southwest of Okinawa. The combined population of the islands is about 52,000. Miyakoan is a Southern Ryukyuan language, most closely related to Yaeyama. As of 2025, the number of competent native speakers is not definitively known. As a consequence of the Japanese government's Japanese language policy, which has traditionally referred to the language as 宮古方言, or simply a dialect of standard Japanese, it is not taught or used in schools. As a result, most people born after 1970 tend to not use the language except in songs and rituals, and the younger generation almost exclusively uses Japanese as their first language. UNESCO classified Miyakoan as a "definitely endangered" language in its Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger in February, 2009. The Endangered Languages Project currently classifies the language as "severely endangered."
Miyakoan is notable among the Japonic languages in that it allows non-nasal syllable-final consonants, something not found in most Japonic languages.
Dialects
The most divergent is the Tarama language, spoken on Tarama, Okinawa, the farthest island away. The other dialects cluster as Ikema–Irabu and Central Miyako. Given the low degree of mutual intelligibility, Tarama language is sometimes considered a distinct language in its own right.An illustrative lexeme is the plant name for Alocasia. This varies as Central Miyako , Ikema, Irabu , Tarama.
A short description of the Aragusuku dialect was published in 2022 by Wang Danning.
A descriptive grammar of Kurima dialect was published in 2024 by Alexandra Jarosz.
Phonology
The description here is mostly based on the Ōgami dialect, the Central Miyakoan dialect of the smallest of the Miyako islands, from Pellard. There is additional description based on the Irabu dialect, the Ikema-Irabu dialect of the second largest of the Irabu islands.Central Miyakoan dialects do not have pitch accent; therefore, they are of ikkei type, except for the dialects of Ikema, Karimata, Uechi, and Yonaha, which have at most three types of pitch accent. Tarama distinguishes three types of accent on the phonological word, e.g.,,,
Vowels
There are five vowels in Ōgami.| Front | Central | Back | |
| Close | ~ | ~ | ~ |
| Mid | |||
| Open |
is truly unrounded, unlike the compressed Japanese u. It is centralized after. is rounded normally, but varies as. varies from to.
Numerous vowel sequences occur, and long vowels are treated as sequences of identical vowels, keeping the inventory at five.
Historical *i and *u centralized and merged to as *e and *o rose to /i/ and /u/. The blade of the tongue in is close to the alveolar ridge, and this feature has been inaccurately described as "apical". In certain environments rises beyond vowel space to syllabic after and and, in dialects that have voiced stops, to after and :
Ōgami vowels other than are not subject to devoicing next to unvoiced consonants the way Japanese high vowels are. Sequences of phonetic consonants have been analyzed by Pellard as being phonemically consonantal as well.
In Irabu there are five main vowels and two rare mid vowels that occur in loanwords and some clitics.
| Front | Central | Back | |
| Close | |||
| Mid | |||
| Open |
Consonants
In Ōgami there are nine consonants, without a voicing contrast.| Labial | Alveolar | Dorsal | |
| Nasal | |||
| Plosive | |||
| Tap | |||
| Fricative | |||
| Approximant |
The plosives tend to be somewhat aspirated initially and voiced medially. There are maybe a dozen words with optionally voiced initial consonants, such as babe ~ pape and gakspstu ~ kakspstu 'glutton', but Pellard suggests they may be loans.
may be spirantized before : kaina 'arm', a꞊ka 'I '.
is at the end of a word, and assimilates to succeeding consonants before another consonant. When final geminates, it becomes ; compare tin 'silver' with tinnu 'silver '. It tends to devoice after and., on the other hand, does not assimilate and appears finally unchanged, as in mku 'right', mta 'earth', and im 'sea'.
is labiodental, not bilabial, and palatalizes to before the front vowels : pssi 'cold'. Some speakers insert an epenthetic between and in what would otherwise be a sequence thereof, as in ansi 'thus'.
is clearly labiodental as well and tends to become a fricative when emphasized or when geminated, as in 'calf'. It can be syllabic, as can all sonorants in Ōgami: vv 'to sell'. Final contrasts with the high back vowels: 'snake', 'stick', 'fly' are accusative with the clitic -u.
is mainly heard in complementary distribution with, only occurring before vowels.
There are 15 to 16 consonants in Irabu, which do have a voicing contrast.
- The sequences are pronounced as.
- Sequences are heard as.
- is pronounced as a velar nasal when preceding.
- is heard as within consonant clusters.
- can be heard as when preceding or.
- is phonetically an approximant, i.e. a less-fricated.
- in word-final position is heard as.
- is devoiced to when occurring after the voiceless bilabial plosive.
- Palatalization occurs when consonants are preceding a palatal glide or a high-front
- Syllabic nasal sounds, are heard in word-initial position when preceding consonants.
Phonotactics
Geminate plosives do not occur, apart from a single morpheme, the quotative particle tta.
There are a few words with no voiced sounds at all :
The contrast between a voiceless syllable and a voiced vowel between voiceless consonants can be seen in kff puskam 'I want to make ', ff꞊nkɑi 'to꞊the.comb', and paks꞊nu꞊tu 'bee꞊꞊'. There is a contrast between ff꞊mɑi 'comb꞊' and ffu꞊mɑi 'shit꞊'. With tongue twisters, speakers do not insert schwas or other voiced sounds to aid in pronunciation:
The minimal word is either VV, VC, or CC, as in aa 'millet', ui 'over', is 'rock', ff 'comb'. There are no V or CV words; however, CCV and CVV words are found, as shown above.
Syllabification is difficult to analyze, especially in words such as usnkai 'cow-' and saiafn 'carpenter-'.