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Southern Amami Ōshima Language
The Southern Amami Ōshima language is a Ryukyuan language spoken in Setouchi, Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. It is generally considered to be the southern variety of the Amami Ōshima language, whereas a separate northern variety exists. According to Ethnologue, there are 1,800 speakers of Southern Amami Ōshima. The northern variety has 10,000 speakers. Both of these languages are endangered, as younger generations either speak Japanese or a local variety of Japanese known as Ton-futsūgo. See also * Amami Ōshima language * Ryukyuan languages * Amami Ōshima , also known as Amami, is the largest island in the Amami archipelago between Kyūshū and Okinawa. It is one of the Satsunan Islands. The island, 712.35 km2 in area, has a population of approximately 73,000 people. Administratively it is d ... References {{Japonic languages Ryukyuan languages Amami Islands Languages of Japan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ryukyuan People
The Ryukyuan people ( ryu, 琉球民族 (るーちゅーみんずく), Ruuchuu minzuku or ryu, どぅーちゅーみんずく, Duuchuu minzuku, label=none, ja, 琉球民族/りゅうきゅうみんぞく, Ryūkyū minzoku, also Lewchewan or Loochooan) are an East Asian ethnic group native to the Ryukyu Islands, which stretch between the islands of Kyushu and Taiwan. Administratively, they live in either the Okinawa Prefecture or the Kagoshima Prefecture within Japan. They speak one of the Ryukyuan languages, considered to be one of the two branches of the Japonic language family, the other being Japanese and its dialects. Hachijō is sometimes considered by linguists to constitute a third branch. Ryukyuans are not a recognized minority group in Japan, as Japanese authorities consider them just a subgroup of the Japanese people, akin to the Yamato people. Although officially unrecognized, Ryukyuans constitute the largest ethnolinguistic minority group in Japan, with 1.4 mil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north toward the East China Sea, Philippine Sea, and Taiwan in the south. Japan is a part of the Ring of Fire, and spans Japanese archipelago, an archipelago of List of islands of Japan, 6852 islands covering ; the five main islands are Hokkaido, Honshu (the "mainland"), Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa Island, Okinawa. Tokyo is the Capital of Japan, nation's capital and largest city, followed by Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kobe, and Kyoto. Japan is the List of countries and dependencies by population, eleventh most populous country in the world, as well as one of the List of countries and dependencies by population density, most densely populated and Urbanization by country, urbanized. About three-fourths of Geography of Japan, the c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Setouchi, Kagoshima
is a town located primarily on Amami Ōshima, in Ōshima District, Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. As of June 2013, the town had an estimated population of 9,379 and a population density of 39.1 persons per km². The total area was 239.91 km². Geography Setouchi occupies the southern portion of Amami Ōshima, facing the East China Sea to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It also includes numerous offshore islands of Amami Ōshima, including the inhabited islands of Kakeromajima, Ukejima and Yoroshima. Climate The climate is classified as humid subtropical (Köppen climate classification ''Cfa'') with very warm summers and mild winters. Precipitation is high throughout the year, but is highest in the months of May, June and September. The area is subject to frequent typhoons. Surrounding municipalities * Amami * Uken History Higashikata Village was established on April 1, 1908. It became the town of Koniya on April 1, 1936. As with all of the Amami Islands, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japonic Languages
Japonic or Japanese–Ryukyuan, 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. 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. 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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ryukyuan Languages
The , also Lewchewan or Luchuan (), are the indigenous languages of the Ryukyu Islands, the southernmost part of the Japanese archipelago. Along with the Japanese language and the Hachijō language, they make up the Japonic language family. Although Japanese is spoken in the Ryukyu Islands, the Ryukyu and Japanese languages are not mutually intelligible. It is not known how many speakers of these languages remain, but language shift toward the use of Standard Japanese and dialects like Okinawan Japanese has resulted in these languages becoming endangered language, endangered; Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, UNESCO labels four of the languages "definitely endangered" and two others "severely endangered". Overview Phonologically, the Ryukyuan languages have some cross-linguistically unusual features. Southern Ryukyuan languages have a number of syllabic consonants, including unvoiced syllabic fricatives (e.g. Ōgami Miyako language, Miyako 'breast'). Glottal consonant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Northern Ryukyuan Languages
The Northern Ryukyuan languages are a group of languages spoken in the Amami Islands, Kagoshima Prefecture and the Okinawa Islands, Okinawa Prefecture of southwestern Japan. It is one of two primary branches of the Ryukyuan languages, which are then part of the Japonic languages. The subdivisions of Northern Ryukyuan are a matter of scholarly debate. Internal classification Within the Ryukyu Kingdom, territory was divided into ''magiri'', which in turn were divided into ''shima''. A magiri was comparable to a Japanese prefecture while shima were individual villages. There were about 800 shima in the Ryukyu Kingdom. Linguists Seizen Nakasone and Satoshi Nishioka have proposed that each shima developed their own distinct dialects or accents due to people very rarely traveling outside of their shima. At high level, linguists mostly agree to make the north–south division. In this framework, Northern Ryukyuan covers the Amami Islands, Kagoshima Prefecture and the Okinawa Islands, O ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amami Languages
The Amami languages are a collection of dialect clusters spoken across the Amami Islands of Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. All dialects are members of the Ryukyuan languages, specifically its northern branch. Classification There are many distinct clusters of the Amami languages, most of which have their own ISO 639-3 codes: * Amami Ōshima ** Northern Amami Ōshima ** Southern Amami Ōshima * Kikai * Tokunoshima * Okinoerabu * Yoron Scholars are divided on the specific subgrouping of these dialects. The Okinoerabu and Yoron clusters may be grouped within the Kunigami language The Kunigami or Northern Okinawan language (), is a Ryukyuan language of Northern Okinawa Island in Kunigami District and city of Nago, otherwise known as the Yanbaru region, historically the territory of the kingdom of Hokuzan. The Nakijin .... References {{Japonic languages Ryukyuan languages Amami Islands ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amami Ōshima Language
The Amami language or languages (, , ), also known as Amami Ōshima or simply Ōshima ('Big Island'), is a Ryukyuan language spoken in the Amami Islands south of Kyūshū. The southern variety of 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 . Speakers The number of competent native speakers is not known, but native speakers are found mostly among old people—as a result of Japan's language policy which suppresses proliferation of minority languages, the younger generations speak mostly Japanese as their first language. Estimates run around 10,000 for the northern variety and 2,000 for the southern ( Setouchi) variety. 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 hypo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Writing System
The modern Japanese writing system uses a combination of logographic kanji, which are adopted Chinese characters, and syllabic kana. Kana itself consists of a pair of syllabaries: hiragana, used primarily for native or naturalised Japanese words and grammatical elements; and katakana, used primarily for foreign words and names, loanwords, onomatopoeia, scientific names, and sometimes for emphasis. Almost all written Japanese sentences contain a mixture of kanji and kana. Because of this mixture of scripts, in addition to a large inventory of kanji characters, the Japanese writing system is considered to be one of the most complicated currently in use. Several thousand kanji characters are in regular use, which mostly originate from traditional Chinese characters. Others made in Japan are referred to as “Japanese kanji” ( ja, 和製漢字, wasei kanji, label=none; also known as “country’s kanji” ja, 国字, kokuji, label=none). Each character has an intrinsic meanin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kagoshima Prefecture
is a prefecture of Japan located on the island of Kyushu and the Ryukyu Islands. Kagoshima Prefecture has a population of 1,599,779 (1 January 2020) and has a geographic area of 9,187 km2 (3,547 sq mi). Kagoshima Prefecture borders Kumamoto Prefecture to the north and Miyazaki Prefecture to the northeast. Kagoshima is the capital and largest city of Kagoshima Prefecture, with other major cities including Kirishima, Kanoya, and Satsumasendai. Kagoshima Prefecture is located at the southernmost point of Kyūshū and includes the Satsunan Islands group of the Ryukyu Islands. Kagoshima Prefecture's mainland territory extends from the Ariake Sea to Shibushi Bay on the Pacific Ocean coast, and is characterized by two large peninsulas created by Kagoshima Bay. Kagoshima Prefecture formed the core of the Satsuma Domain, ruled from Kagoshima Castle, one of the most important Japanese domains of the Edo period and the Meiji Restoration. History Kagoshima Prefecture correspo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ethnologue
''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensive catalogue of languages. It was first issued in 1951, and is now published by SIL International, an American Christian non-profit organization. Overview and content ''Ethnologue'' has been published by SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics), a Christian linguistic service organization with an international office in Dallas, Texas. The organization studies numerous minority languages to facilitate language development, and to work with speakers of such language communities in translating portions of the Bible into their languages. Despite the Christian orientation of its publisher, ''Ethnologue'' isn't ideologically or theologically biased. ''Ethnologue'' includes alternative names and autonyms, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Language
is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as the Ainu, Austroasiatic, Koreanic, and the now-discredited Altaic, but none of these proposals has gained widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), there was a massive influx of Sino-Japanese vocabulary into the language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese. Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords. The basis of the standard dialect moved f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
