The
dialects of the
Japanese language fall into two primary clades, Eastern (including Tokyo) and Western (including Kyoto), with the dialects of
Kyushu
is the third-largest island of Japan's five main islands and the most southerly of the four largest islands ( i.e. excluding Okinawa). In the past, it has been known as , and . The historical regional name referred to Kyushu and its surroun ...
and
Hachijō Island Hachijō can refer to:
Hachijō in Tokyo, Japan
* The island Hachijōjima (八丈島)
* The town Hachijō, Tokyo, within Tokyo, Japan, which governs Hachijōjima and Hachijōkojima.
* Hachijo dialects, the dialects of the Japanese language na ...
often distinguished as additional branches, the latter perhaps the most divergent of all. The
Ryukyuan languages of
Okinawa Prefecture
is a prefecture of Japan. Okinawa Prefecture is the southernmost and westernmost prefecture of Japan, has a population of 1,457,162 (as of 2 February 2020) and a geographic area of 2,281 km2 (880 sq mi).
Naha is the capital and largest city o ...
and the southern islands of
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 P ...
form a separate branch of the
Japonic family, and are not Japanese dialects, although they are sometimes referred to as such.
History
Regional variants of Japanese have been confirmed since the
Old Japanese era. The ''
Man'yōshū
The is the oldest extant collection of Japanese (poetry in Classical Japanese), compiled sometime after AD 759 during the Nara period. The anthology is one of the most revered of Japan's poetic compilations. The compiler, or the last in ...
'', the oldest existing collection of Japanese poetry, includes poems written in
dialects of the capital (
Nara) and eastern Japan, but other dialects were not recorded. The recorded features of eastern dialects were rarely inherited by modern dialects, except for a few
language islands such as
Hachijo Island. In the
Early Middle Japanese era, there were only vague records such as "rural dialects are crude". However, since the
Late Middle Japanese era, features of regional dialects had been recorded in some books, for example ''
Arte da Lingoa de Iapam'', and the recorded features were fairly similar to modern dialects. The variety of Japanese dialects developed markedly during the
Early Modern Japanese era (
Edo period) because many feudal lords restricted the movement of people to and from other fiefs. Some isoglosses agree with old borders of ''
han'', especially in Tohoku and Kyushu. From the
Nara period to the Edo period, the dialect of
Kinai (now central Kansai) had been the ''de facto'' standard form of Japanese, and the dialect of
Edo
Edo ( ja, , , "bay-entrance" or "estuary"), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo.
Edo, formerly a ''jōkamachi'' (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the ''de facto'' capital of ...
(now Tokyo) took over in the late Edo period.
With modernization in the late 19th century, the government and the intellectuals promoted establishment and spread of the
standard language
A standard language (also standard variety, standard dialect, and standard) is a language variety that has undergone substantial codification of grammar and usage, although occasionally the term refers to the entirety of a language that includes ...
. The regional languages and dialects were slighted and suppressed, and so, locals had a sense of inferiority about their "bad" and "shameful" languages. The
language of instruction was Standard Japanese, and some teachers administered punishments for using non-standard languages, particularly in the Okinawa and Tohoku regions (see also
Ryukyuan languages#Modern history and
Dialect card) like as
vergonha in France or
welsh not in
Wales. From the 1940s to the 1960s, the period of
Shōwa nationalism and the
post-war economic miracle, the push for the replacement of regional
varieties with Standard Japanese reached its peak.
Now Standard Japanese has spread throughout the nation, and traditional regional varieties are declining because of education, television, expansion of traffic, urban concentration etc. However, regional varieties have not been completely replaced with Standard Japanese. The spread of Standard Japanese means the regional varieties are now valued as "nostalgic", "heart-warming" and markers of "precious local identity", and many speakers of regional dialects have gradually overcome their sense of inferiority regarding their natural way of speaking. The contact between regional varieties and Standard Japanese creates new regional speech forms among young people, such as
Okinawan Japanese.
Mutual intelligibility
In terms of
mutual intelligibility, a survey in 1967 found the four most unintelligible dialects (excluding
Ryūkyūan 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.
Al ...
and
Tohoku dialects) to students from Greater Tokyo are the
Kiso dialect (in the deep mountains of
Nagano Prefecture
is a landlocked prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshū. Nagano Prefecture has a population of 2,052,493 () and has a geographic area of . Nagano Prefecture borders Niigata Prefecture to the north, Gunma Prefecture to the ...
), the
Himi dialect (in
Toyama Prefecture), the
Kagoshima dialect and the
Maniwa
270px, Maniwa City Hall
270px, Aerial view of Kuse area of Maniwa
is a city located in Okayama Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 42,477 in 17568 households and a population density of 51 persons per km². The total are ...
dialect (in the mountains of
Okayama Prefecture
is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Chūgoku region of Honshu. Okayama Prefecture has a population of 1,906,464 (1 February 2018) and has a geographic area of 7,114 Square kilometre, km2 (2,746 sq mi). Okayama Prefectur ...
).
The survey is based on recordings of 12- to 20- second long, of 135 to 244
phonemes, which 42 students listened and translated word-by-word. The listeners were all
Keio University
, mottoeng = The pen is mightier than the sword
, type = Private research coeducational higher education institution
, established = 1858
, founder = Yukichi Fukuzawa
, endowmen ...
students who grew up in the
Kanto region
Kantō (Japanese)
Kanto is a simplified spelling of , a Japanese word, only omitting the diacritics.
In Japan
Kantō may refer to:
*Kantō Plain
*Kantō region
*Kantō-kai, organized crime group
*Kanto (Pokémon), a geographical region in the ' ...
.
Classification
There are several generally similar approaches to classifying Japanese dialects. Misao Tōjō classified mainland Japanese dialects into three groups: Eastern, Western and Kyūshū dialects. Mitsuo Okumura classified Kyushu dialects as a subclass of Western Japanese. These theories are mainly based on grammatical differences between east and west, but
Haruhiko Kindaichi
Haruhiko Kindaichi (金田一 春彦, ''Kindaichi Haruhiko''; April 3, 1913 – May 19, 2004) was a Japanese linguist and a scholar of Japanese linguistics (known as ''kokugogaku''). He was well known as an editor of Japanese dictionaries and his ...
classified mainland Japanese into concentric circular three groups: inside (Kansai, Shikoku, etc.), middle (Western Kantō, Chūbu, Chūgoku, etc.) and outside (Eastern Kantō, Tōhoku, Izumo, Kyushu, Hachijō, etc.) based on systems of accent, phoneme and conjugation.
Eastern and Western Japanese
A primary distinction exists between Eastern and Western Japanese. This is a long-standing divide that occurs in both language and culture. The map in the box at the top of this page divides the two along phonological lines. West of the dividing line, the more complex Kansai-type
pitch accent is found; east of the line, the simpler Tokyo-type accent is found, though Tokyo-type accents also occur further west, on the other side of Kansai. However, this
isogloss
An isogloss, also called a heterogloss (see Etymology below), is the geographic boundary of a certain linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or the use of some morphological or syntactic feature. Major d ...
largely corresponds to several grammatical distinctions as well: West of the pitch-accent isogloss:
[
* The perfective form of ''-u'' verbs such as ''harau'' 'to pay' is ''harōta'' (or minority ''haruta''), rather than Eastern (and Standard) ''haratta''
** The perfective form of ''-su'' verbs such as ''otosu'' 'to drop' is also ''otoita'' in Western Japanese (largely apart from Kansai dialect) vs. ''otoshita'' in Eastern
* The imperative of ''-ru ( ichidan)'' verbs such as ''miru'' 'to look' is ''miyo'' or ''mii'' rather than Eastern ''miro'' (or minority ''mire'', though Kyushu dialect also uses ''miro'' or ''mire'')
* The adverbial form of ''-i'' adjectival verbs such as ''hiroi'' 'wide' is ''hirō'' (or minority ''hirū'') as ''hirōnaru'', rather than Eastern ''hiroku'' as ''hirokunaru''
* The negative form of verbs is ''-nu'' or ''-n'' rather than ''-nai'' or ''-nee'', and uses a different verb stem; thus ''suru'' 'to do' is ''senu'' or ''sen'' rather than ''shinai'' or ''shinee'' (apart from Sado Island, which uses ''shinai'')]
* The copula is ''da'' in Eastern and ''ja'' or ''ya'' in Western Japanese, though Sado as well as some dialects further west such as San'in use ''da'' ee map at right* The verb ''iru'' 'to exist' in Eastern and ''oru'' in Western, though Wakayama dialect uses ''aru'' and some Kansai and Fukui subdialects use both
While these grammatical isoglosses are close to the pitch-accent line given in the map, they do not follow it exactly. Apart from Sado Island, which has Eastern ''shinai'' and ''da'', all of the Western features are found west of the pitch-accent line, though a few Eastern features may crop up again further west (''da'' in San'in, ''miro'' in Kyushu). East of the line, however, there is a zone of intermediate dialects which have a mixture of Eastern and Western features. Echigo dialect has ''harōta'', though not ''miyo'', and about half of it has ''hirōnaru'' as well. In Gifu, all Western features are found apart from pitch accent and ''harōta''; Aichi has ''miyo'' and ''sen'', and in the west ( Nagoya dialect) ''hirōnaru'' as well: These features are substantial enough that Toshio Tsuzuku classifies Gifu–Aichi dialect as Western Japanese. Western Shizuoka (Enshū dialect) has ''miyo'' as its single Western Japanese feature.[
The Western Japanese Kansai dialect was the prestige dialect when Kyoto was the capital, and Western forms are found in literary language as well as in honorific expressions of modern Tokyo dialect (and therefore Standard Japanese), such as adverbial ''ohayō gozaimasu'' (not ''*ohayaku''), the humble existential verb ''oru'', and the polite negative ''-masen'' (not ''*-mashinai'').][Masayoshi Shibatani, 1990. ''The languages of Japan'', p. 197.]
Kyushu Japanese
Kyushu dialects are classified into three groups, Hichiku dialect, Hōnichi dialect
The Hōnichi dialect (豊日方言, ''Hōnichi hōgen'') is a group of the Japanese dialects spoken in eastern Kyushu. It is closer in some ways to Western Japanese (Chūgoku dialect) that it is to other Kyushu dialects. The name ''Hōnichi'' ( ...
and Satsugu (Kagoshima) dialect, and have several distinctive features:
*as noted above, Eastern-style imperatives ''miro ~ mire'' rather than Western Japanese ''miyo''
*''ka''-adjectives in Hichiku and Satsugu rather than Western and Eastern ''i''-adjectives, as in ''samuka'' for ''samui'' 'cold', ''kuyaka'' for ''minikui'' 'ugly' and ''nukka'' for ''atsui'' 'hot'
*the nominalization
In linguistics, nominalization or nominalisation is the use of a word that is not a noun (e.g., a verb, an adjective or an adverb) as a noun, or as the head of a noun phrase. This change in functional category can occur through morphological tr ...
and question particle ''to'' except for Kitakyushu and Oita, versus Western and Eastern ''no'', as in ''tottō to?'' for ''totte iru no?'' 'is this taken?' and ''iku to tai'' or ''ikuttai'' for ''iku no yo'' 'I'll go'
*the directional particle ''sai'' (Standard ''e'' and ''ni''), though Eastern Tohoku dialect use a similar particle ''sa''
*the emphatic sentence-final particles ''tai'' and ''bai'' in Hichiku and Satsugu (Standard ''yo'')
*a concessive particle ''batten'' for ''dakedo'' 'but, however' in Hichiku and Satsugu, though Eastern Tohoku Aomori dialect has a similar particle ''batte''
* is pronounced and palatalizes ''s, z, t, d,'' as in ''mite'' and ''sode'' , though this is a conservative ( Late Middle Japanese) pronunciation found with ''s, z'' (''sensei'' ) in scattered areas throughout Japan like the Umpaku dialect.
*as some subdialects in Shikoku and Chugoku, but generally not elsewhere, the accusative particle ''o'' resyllabifies a noun: ''honno'' or ''honnu'' for ''hon-o'' 'book', ''kakyū'' for ''kaki-o'' 'persimmon'.
* is often dropped, for ''koi'' 'this' versus Western and Eastern Japanese ''kore''
*vowel reduction
In phonetics, vowel reduction is any of various changes in the acoustic ''quality'' of vowels as a result of changes in stress, sonority, duration, loudness, articulation, or position in the word (e.g. for the Creek language
The Muscogee lang ...
is frequent especially in Satsugu and Gotō Islands, as in ''in'' for ''inu'' 'dog' and ''kuQ'' for ''kubi'' 'neck'
Much of Kyushu either lacks pitch accent or has its own, distinctive accent. Kagoshima dialect is so distinctive that some have classified it as a fourth branch of Japanese, alongside Eastern, Western, and the rest of Kyushu.
Hachijō Japanese
A small group of dialects spoken in Hachijō-jima and Aogashima, islands south of Tokyo, as well as the Daitō Islands east of Okinawa. Hachijō dialect is quite divergent and sometimes thought to be a primary branch of Japanese. It retains an abundance of inherited ancient Eastern Japanese features.
Cladogram
The relationships between the dialects are approximated in the following cladogram:[Pellard (2009), Karimata (1999), and Hirayama (1994)]
Dialect articles
See also
* Yotsugana, the different distinctions of historical *zi, *di, *zu, *du in different regions of Japan
* Okinawan Japanese, a variant of Standard Japanese influenced by the Ryukyuan languages
References
External links
National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics
全国方言談話データベース
(The conversation database of dialects in all Japan)
方言談話資料
(The conversation data of dialects)
方言録音資料シリーズ
(The recording data series of dialects)
『日本言語地図』地図画像
(Linguistic Atlas of Japan)
方言研究の部屋
(The room of dialect)
(What is a dialect?)
Kansai Dialect Self-study Site for Japanese Language Learner
Japanese Dialects
全国方言辞典
(All Japan Dialects Dictionary)
方言ジャパン
{{DEFAULTSORT:Japanese Dialects