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Yaeyama Language
The Yaeyama language (, ''Yaimamuni'') is a Southern Ryukyuan language spoken in the Yaeyama Islands, the southernmost inhabited island group in Japan, with a combined population of about 53,000. The Yaeyama Islands are situated in the Southern Ryukyu Islands, southwest of the Miyako Islands and to the east of Taiwan. Yaeyama (''Yaimamunii'') is most closely related to Miyako. The number of competent native speakers is not known; as a consequence of Japanese language policy which refers to the language as the , reflected in the education system, people below the age of 60 tend to not use the language except in songs and rituals, and the younger generation exclusively uses Japanese as their first language. As compared to the Japanese ''kokugo,'' or Japanese national language, other Ryukyuan languages such as Okinawan and Amami have also been referred to as dialects of Japanese. Yaeyama is noted as having a comparatively lower "language vitality" among neighboring Ryukyuan lang ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea in the south. The Japanese archipelago consists of four major islands—Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu—and List of islands of Japan, thousands of smaller islands, covering . Japan has a population of over 123 million as of 2025, making it the List of countries and dependencies by population, eleventh-most populous country. The capital of Japan and List of cities in Japan, its largest city is Tokyo; the Greater Tokyo Area is the List of largest cities, largest metropolitan area in the world, with more than 37 million inhabitants as of 2024. Japan is divided into 47 Prefectures of Japan, administrative prefectures and List of regions of Japan, eight traditional regions. About three-quarters of Geography of Japan, the countr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ishigaki Island
, also known as ''Ishigakijima'', is a Japanese island south-west of Okinawa Hontō and the second-largest island of the Yaeyama Island group, behind Iriomote Island. It is located approximately south-west of Okinawa Hontō. It is within the City of Ishigaki in Okinawa Prefecture. The city functions as the business and transport center of the archipelago. The island is served by New Ishigaki Airport, the largest airport in the Yaeyamas. Much of the island and surrounding waters including Mount Omoto and Kabira Bay are protected as part of Iriomote-Ishigaki National Park. Ishigaki Island, like the rest of Okinawa, is culturally influenced by both Japan and Taiwan due to its location, about off the north eastern coast of Taiwan. History A tsunami of record height hit Ishigaki Island in 1771. One of the perpetrators of Aum Shinrikyo's sarin gas attack, Yasuo Hayashi, was arrested on Ishigaki Island 21 months after the attacks and from the scene of the crime. On 11 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pharyngealization
Pharyngealization is a secondary articulation of consonants or vowels by which the pharynx or epiglottis is constricted during the articulation of the sound. IPA symbols In the International Phonetic Alphabet, pharyngealization can be indicated by one of two methods: #A tilde or swung dash (IPA Number 428) is written through the base letter (typographic overstrike). It is the older and more generic symbol. It indicates velarization, uvularization or pharyngealization, as in , the guttural equivalent of . #The symbol (IPA Number 423) – a superscript variant of , the voiced pharyngeal approximant – is written after the base letter. It indicates specifically a pharyngealized consonant, as in , a pharyngealized . Computing codes Since Unicode 1.1, there have been two similar superscript characters: IPA () and Semiticist (). U+02E4 is formally a superscript (, = reversed glottal stop), and in the Unicode charts looks like a simple superscript , though in some f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Japanese
is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language, recorded in documents from the Nara period (8th century). It became Early Middle Japanese in the succeeding Heian period, but the precise delimitation of the stages is controversial. Old Japanese was an early member of the Japonic language family. No genetic links to other language families have been proven. Old Japanese was written using man'yōgana, which is a writing system that employs Chinese characters as syllabograms or (occasionally) logograms. It featured a few phonemic differences from later forms, such as a simpler syllable structure and distinctions between several pairs of syllables that have been pronounced identically since Early Middle Japanese. The phonetic realization of these distinctions is uncertain. Internal reconstruction points to a pre-Old Japanese phase with fewer consonants and vowels. As is typical of Japonic languages, Old Japanese was primarily an agglutinative language with a subject–obj ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Northern Ryukyuan Languages
The Northern Ryukyuan languages, also known as the Amami–Okinawan 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 prefectures of Japan, 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 cover ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yonaguni Language
The Yonaguni language ( ''Dunan Munui'') is a Southern Ryukyuan language spoken by around 400 people on the island of Yonaguni, in the Ryukyu Islands, the westernmost of the chain lying just east of Taiwan. It is most closely related to Yaeyama. Due to the Japanese policy on languages, the language is not recognized by the government, which instead calls it the . As classified by UNESCO, the Yonaguni language is one of the most endangered languages in all of Japan, after the Ainu language. Phonology Vowels The table below shows the vowels present in the Yonaguni language. Vowels which are only allophonic or marginal appear in parentheses. : can also be recognized as an independent phoneme and not just as an allophone of . However, its distribution is very limited. Excluding a few interjections, the only morpheme in which it appears is the sentence-final, exclamatory particle ''do''. Consonants The table below shows the consonants present in the Yonaguni language. Plosi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yonaguni Island
, one of the Yaeyama Islands, is the westernmost island of Japan, lying from the east coast of Taiwan, between the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea. The island is administered as the Towns of Japan, town of Yonaguni, Okinawa, Yonaguni, Yaeyama, Okinawa, Yaeyama Gun, Okinawa Prefecture, Okinawa, and there are three settlements: Sonai, Kubura, and Higawa. There have been discussions to establish direct ferry services with Taiwan in order to bolster tourism. Name The name ''Yonaguni'' is an exonym related to the native name ''Dunan'' in Yonaguni language, Yonaguni, with the regular sound change of ''*y-'' to ''d-'' and elision of the intervocalic ''*-g-'' in Yonaguni. The form ''yona-'' likely means "grain, rice", seen in other toponyms such as Yonabaru, Okinawa, Yonabaru, hence possibly meaning "grain country". History Early human migration from Taiwan to Yonaguni island has long been the subject of scholarly debate. In 2019, a team of Japanese and Taiwanese researchers suc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mutual Intelligibility
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intelligibility is sometimes used to distinguish languages from dialects, although sociolinguistic factors are often also used. Intelligibility between varieties can be asymmetric; that is, speakers of one variety may be able to better understand another than vice versa. An example of this is the case between Afrikaans and Dutch. It is generally easier for Dutch speakers to understand Afrikaans than for Afrikaans speakers to understand Dutch. In a dialect continuum, neighbouring varieties are mutually intelligible, but differences mount with distance, so that more widely separated varieties may not be mutually intelligible. Intelligibility can be partial, as is the case with Azerbaijani and Turkish, or significant, as is the case with Bul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hateruma
Hateruma (波照間島; ''Hateruma-jima''; Yaeyama: ''Patirooma'', Hateruma dialect: ''Besїma'' "our island", Okinawan: ''Hatiruma'', Northern Ryukyuan: ''Patara'') is an island in the Yaeyama District of Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. It is the southernmost inhabited island in Japan. It is one of the Yaeyama Islands, and is located south of Iriomote-jima, the largest of the island group. Hateruma, which is composed of corals, has of area and approximately 600 inhabitants. The primary products of the island include sugarcane, pineapple, refined sugar, and ''Awanami'', a type of the alcoholic beverage awamori. Its southern location makes it one of the few places in Japan where the Southern Cross can be observed. Tourism Hateruma is frequently visited by tourists from Ishigaki on day trips, as it boasts the southernmost tip of land of Japan. In addition, the southernmost school and the southernmost police station of Japan are tourist attractions. In the only village, seve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iriomote-jima
is the largest of the Yaeyama Islands of Japan, and the second largest in Okinawa Prefecture after Okinawa Island itself. The island has an area of and a 2005 population of 2,347. The island does not have an airstrip, and most visitors—over 390,000 in 2006—arrive from Ishigaki by ferry, a ride to on Iriomote's northeast coast or on the southeast coast. Administratively, the island belongs to Taketomi Town, Okinawa Prefecture. Its infrastructure is limited to a single coastal road connecting the hamlets on the northern and eastern shores. Wildlife The island is famed for the Iriomote cat, a critically endangered wild cat found only on Iriomote. , the population size is estimated to be 100–109 individuals. The island has a venomous snake, '' Protobothrops elegans'' or "elegant pit viper", known locally as the ''habu'', a species whose bite has a fatality rate of 3% and a permanent disability rate of 6–8%.U.S. Navy (1991). ''Poisonous Snakes of the World''. New Yor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aragusuku Islands
The Aragusuku Islands ( Japanese: 新城島, ''Aragusuku-jima'', Yaeyama: パナリ, ''Panari'') consist of two smaller islets, named Kamiji and Shimoji. They are located in the Yaeyama Islands of Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. Aragusuku has a population of 15, all of them living on Kamiji. Shimoji is used as a pasture for cattle. Aragusuku is administered by the town of Taketomi on nearby Iriomote. The island can be accessed via tours. History The Aragusuku Islands used to be a part of the Ryukyu Kingdom until 1879. During the Ryukyuan era, the islands had as many as 700 people. After World War II, the islands were administered by the United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands before being returned to Japan in 1972, along with the rest of Okinawa. Culture The Aragusuku Islands, like Hamahiga, is known for its preservation of traditional lifestyles. Among locals, the island is referred to as "パナリ (Panari)", meaning "separated" in the Aragusuku dialect of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hatoma
Hatoma (鳩間島, ''Hatoma-jima''; Yaeyama: ''Patuma''; Okinawan: ''Hatuma'') is a small island of the Yaeyama Islands, approximately in diameter. It is under the administration of Taketomi District, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. In local language, the island's name is pronounced ''Patuma''. Geography Hatoma is located just north of Iriomote. It is a tiny island, with an area of just , a circumference of , and a population of about 48. History Hatoma has been continuously inhabited for at least several centuries, if not longer. Excavations on the island have shown that until recent times, Hatoma residents subsisted largely on shellfish gathered in the surrounding shallow waters, and vegetables. Unlike nearby Iriomote, Hatoma was not infested by malaria; hence its long-term settlement. In the early 1900s, Hatoma flourished as a skipjack tuna fishing port. At that time, the population of the island numbered in the hundreds. In 1968, because of the declining economic viabi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
