Japanese dialects

Thedialects(Phương ngôn,hōgen)of theJapanese languagefall into two primary clades, Eastern (including modern capitalTokyo) and Western (including old capitalKyoto), with the dialects ofKyushuandHachijō Islandoften distinguished as additional branches, the latter perhaps the most divergent of all.TheRyukyuan languagesofOkinawa Prefectureand the southern islands ofKagoshima Prefectureform a separate branch of theJaponic family,and arenotJapanese dialects, although they are sometimes referred to as such.

Japanese
Geographic distribution	Japan
Linguistic classification	Japonic Japanese
Subdivisions	Eastern Japanese Western Japanese Kyūshū Hachijō?
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	japa1256(Japanesic) nucl1643
Map of Japanese dialects (north of the heavy grey line)

The setting of Japan with its numerous islands and mountains has the ideal setting for developing many dialects.

History

Regional variants of Japanese have been confirmed since theOld Japaneseera. TheMan'yōshū,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 compiler includedazuma uta( "eastern songs" ) that show that eastern dialect traits were distinct from the western dialect of Nara.It is not clear if the capital of Nara entertained the idea of a standard dialect, however, they had an understanding which dialect should be regarded as the standard one, the dialect of the capital.

The recorded features ofeastern dialectswere rarely inherited by modern dialects, except for a fewlanguage islandssuch asHachijo Island.In theEarly Middle Japaneseera, there were only vague records such as "rural dialects are crude". However, since theLate Middle Japaneseera, features of regional dialects had been recorded in some books, for exampleArte da Lingoa de Iapam,and the recorded features were fairly similar to modern dialects. In these works, recorded by the Christian missionaries in Japan, they regard the true colloquial Japanese as the one used by the court nobles in Kyōto. Other indications for the Kyōto dialect to be considered the standard dialect at that time are glossaries of local dialects that list the Kyōto equivalent for local expressions.

The variety of Japanese dialects developed markedly during theEarly Modern Japaneseera (Edo period) because many feudal lords restricted the movement of people to and from other fiefs. Some isoglosses agree with old borders ofhan,especially in Tohoku and Kyushu. Nevertheless, even with the political capital being moved to Edo (i.e. Tōkyō) the status of the Kyōto dialect was not threatened immediately as it was still the cultural and economic center that dominated Japan. This dominance waned as Edo began to assert more political and economic force and made investments in its cultural development. At the end of the eighteen century the Japanese that was spoken in Edo was regarded as standard as all glossaries from this period use the Edo dialect for local expressions.

In theMeiji periodthe Tōkyō dialect was assuming the role of a standard dialect that was used between different regions to communicate with each other. The Meiji government set policies in place to spread the concept of tiêu chuẩn ngữ(hyōjun-go,"standard language" ).One of the main goals was to be an equal to the western world and the unification of the language was a part to achieve this. For thehyōjun-gothe speech of the Tōkyō middle class served as a model. The Ministry of Education at this time made text books in the new standard language and fostered an inferiority complex in the minds of those who spoke in dialects besides the Tōkyō dialect. One example is a student who was forced to wear a "dialect tag"around the neck. From the 1940s to the 1960s, the period ofShōwa nationalismand thepost-war economic miracle,the push for the replacement of regionalvarietieswith Standard Japanese reached its peak.

After World War II, the concept of cộng thông ngữ(Kyōtsū-go,"common language" )was introduced that differed from the concept of the standard language in so far that it is heavily influenced by the standard language but it retains dialectical traits. So the spoken language can differ from region to region but it is still mutually intelligible.

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 asOkinawan Japanese.

Mutual intelligibility

In terms ofmutual intelligibility,a survey in 1967 found the four most unintelligible dialects (excludingRyūkyūan languagesandTohoku dialects) to students from Greater Tokyo are theKisodialect (in the deep mountains ofNagano Prefecture), theHimidialect (inToyama Prefecture), theKagoshima dialectand theManiwadialect (in the mountains ofOkayama Prefecture).The survey is based on recordings of 12- to 20- second long, of 135 to 244phonemes,which 42 students listened and translated word-by-word. The listeners were allKeio Universitystudents who grew up in theKanto region.

Intelligibility to students from Tokyo andKanto region(Date: 1967)

Dialect	Osaka City	Kyoto City	Tatsuta, Aichi	Kiso, Nagano	Himi, Toyama	Maniwa, Okayama	Ōgata, Kōchi	Kanagi, Shimane	Kumamoto City	Kagoshima City
Percentage	26.4%	67.1%	44.5%	13.3%	4.1%	24.7%	45.5%	24.8%	38.6%	17.6%

Classification

Eastern Japanese dialects are blue, Western Japanese tan.Green dialectshave both Eastern and Western features. Kyushu dialects are orange; southern Kyushu is quite distinctive.

Kyoto type (tone+downstep)

Tokyo type (downstep)

Map ofJapanese pitch-accenttypes. The divide between Kyoto and Tokyo types is used as the Eastern–Western Japanese boundary in the main map.

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, butHaruhiko Kindaichiclassified 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.Tokugawa points out the distinct eating habits, shapes of tools and utensils. One example is the kind of fish eaten in both areas. While the Eastern region eats more salmon, the West consumes more seabream.

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-typepitch accentis 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, thisisoglosslargely corresponds to several grammatical distinctions as well: West of the pitch-accent isogloss:

• The perfective form of-uverbs such asharau'to pay' isharōta(or minorityharuta), showingu-onbin,rather than Eastern (and Standard)haratta
  • The perfective form of-suverbs such asotosu'to drop' is alsootoitain Western Japanese (largely apart from Kansai dialect) vs.otoshitain Eastern
• The imperative of-ru (ichidan)verbs such asmiru'to look' ismiyoormiirather than Easternmiro(or minoritymire,though Kyushu dialect also usesmiroormire)
• The adverbial form of-iadjectival verbs such ashiroi'wide' ishirō(or minorityhirū), showingu-onbin,for examplehirōnaru(to become wide), rather than Easternhiroku,for examplehirokunaru(to become wide)
• The negative form of verbs is-nuor-nrather than-naior-nee,and uses a different verb stem; thussuru'to do' issenuorsenrather thanshinaiorshinee(apart fromSado Island,which usesshinai)
  

  

  Copula isoglosses. The blue–orangeda/jadivide corresponds to the pitch-accent divide apart from Gifu and Sado.
  (blue:da,red:ja,yellow:ya;orange and purple: iconically for red+yellow and red+blue; white: all three.)

• Thecopulaisdain Eastern andjaoryain Western Japanese, though Sado as well as some dialects further west such asSan'inuseda[see map at right]
• The verbiru'to exist' in Eastern andoruin Western, though Wakayama dialect usesaruand 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 Easternshinaiandda,all of the Western features are found west of the pitch-accent line, though a few Eastern features may crop up again further west (dain San'in,miroin Kyushu). East of the line, however, there is a zone of intermediate dialects which have a mixture of Eastern and Western features. Echigo dialect hasharōta,though notmiyo,and about half of it hashirōnaruas well. In Gifu, all Western features are found apart from pitch accent andharōta;Aichi hasmiyoandsen,and in the west (Nagoya dialect)hirōnaruas well: These features are substantial enough that Toshio Tsuzuku classifies Gifu–Aichi dialect as Western Japanese. Western Shizuoka (Enshū dialect) hasmiyoas its single Western Japanese feature.

The Western JapaneseKansai dialectwas theprestige dialectwhen 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 adverbialohayō gozaimasu(not*ohayaku), the humble existential verboru,and the polite negative-masen(not*-mashinai),which uses the Kyoto-style negative ending -n. Because the imperial court, which put emphasis on correct polite speech, was located in Kyoto for a long time, there was greater development of honorific speech forms in Kyoto, which were borrowed into Tokyo speech.Another feature that the modern Tokyo dialect shares with Kyoto is the preservation of the vowel sequences/ai/,/oi/,and/ui/:in Eastern dialects, these tend to undergo coalescence and be replaced by[eː],[eː]and[iː]respectively.Examples of words that originated in Kyoto and were adopted by Tokyo areyaru( "to give" ),kaminari( "thunder" ) andasatte( "two days from today" ).

Kyushu Japanese

Kyushu dialects are classified into three groups,Hichiku dialect,Hōnichi dialectandSatsugu (Kagoshima) dialect,and have several distinctive features:

• as noted above, Eastern-style imperativesmiro ~ mirerather than Western Japanesemiyo
• ka-adjectives in Hichiku and Satsugu rather than Western and Easterni-adjectives,as insamukaforsamui'cold',kuyakaforminikui'ugly' andnukkaforatsui'warm'
• thenominalizationand question particletoexcept for Kitakyushu and Oita, versus Western and Easternno,as intottō to?fortotte iru no?'is this taken?' andiku to taiorikuttaiforiku no yo'I'll go'
• the directional particlesai(Standardeandni), though Eastern Tohoku dialect use a similar particlesa
• the emphaticsentence-final particlestaiandbaiin Hichiku and Satsugu (Standardyo)
• a concessive particlebattenfordakedo'but, however' in Hichiku and Satsugu, though Eastern Tohoku Aomori dialect has a similar particlebatte
• /e/is pronounced[je]and palatalizess, z, t, d,as inmite[mitʃe]andsode[sodʒe],though this is a conservative (Late Middle Japanese) pronunciation found withs, z(sensei[ʃenʃei]) in scattered areas throughout Japan like the Umpaku dialect.
• as some subdialects in Shikoku and Chugoku, but generally not elsewhere, the accusative particleoresyllabifies a noun:honnoorhonnuforhon-o'book',kakyūforkaki-o'persimmon'.
• /r/is often dropped, forkoi'this' versus Western and Eastern Japanesekore
• vowel reductionis frequent especially in Satsugu andGotō Islands,as ininforinu'dog' andkuQforkubi'neck'
• Kyushu dialects share some lexical items with Ryukyuan languages, some of which appear to be innovations.Some scholars have proposed that Kyushu dialects and Ryukyuan languages are the same language group within the Japonic family.

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

Main article:Hachijō language

A small group of dialects spoken inHachijō-jimaandAogashima,islands south of Tokyo, as well as theDaitō Islandseast 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 followingcladogram:

Japanese	Kyūshū Kagoshima Hichiku Hōnichi Western Chūgoku Umpaku Shikoku Kansai Hokuriku Eastern Tōkai–Tōsan Kantō inlandHokkaidō Tōhoku coastalHokkaidō Hachijō

Theories

Theory of Peripheral Distribution of Dialectal Forms

West geographically separated areas seem to have been influenced by Eastern traits. The phonology of Tokyo has influenced Western areas like San-in, Shikoku and Kyushu. Eastern morpho-syntactic and lexical characteristics are also found in the West. These instances cannot be explained as borrowing from the Kyoto speech as Tokyo did because between the regions Eastern traits are not contiguous and there is no evidence that regions had contact with Tokyo. One theory argues that the Eastern type speech was spread all over Japan at the beginning and later Western characteristics developed. The eastward spread was prevented through the geography of Japan that divides East and West that separated the cultures in each of them socio-culturally until this day.

Kunio Yanagitabegan his discussion for this theory in analysing the local variants for the word "snail". He discovered that the newest words for snail are used in the proximity of Kyoto, the old cultural center, and older forms are found in outer areas. Since the spreading of newer forms of words is slow, older forms are observable in the areas farthest away from the center, creating in effect a situation in which older forms are surrounded by newer forms. His theory in the case of Japan argues that the spread of newer forms happens in a circular pattern with its center being the cultural center. However, this theory can only be true if the characteristics located in peripheral areas are reflections of the historical ones.

Origin of Japanese

While it is generally accepted that languages in Western Japan are older than the Tokyo dialect, there are new studies that challenge this assumption. For example, there exists a distinction between five word classes in the Osaka-Kyoto dialect while there is no such distinction made in other parts of Japan in the past.Tokugawa argues that it is unlikely that the Osaka-Kyoto speech would be first established and other systems of speech would not be affected by it. Therefore, he states that the Osaka-Kyoto speech created the distinction afterwards. He concludes that either Western Japan accent or the Eastern variant "could be taken the parent of Central Japan accent."

The Kyoto speech seems to rather have conserved its speech while peripheral dialects have made new innovations over time. However, peripheral dialects have features that are reminiscent of historical forms. The language of peripheral areas form linguistic areas of older forms that come from the central language while its phonetics are distinct from the central language. On the other hand, the central area has influenced other dialects by the propagation of innovative forms.

Dialect articles

Dialect	Classification	Location	Map
Akita	NorthernTōhoku	Akita Prefecture
Amami	Japanese with a strongRyukyuaninfluence	Amami Ōshima
Awaji	Kinki	Awaji Island
Banshū	Kinki	SouthwesternHyōgo Prefecture
Bingo	Sanyō,Chūgoku	EasternHiroshima Prefecture
Gunma	WestKantō	Gunma Prefecture
Hakata	Hichiku, Kyūshū	Fukuoka City
Hida	Gifu-Aichi, Tōkai-Tōsan	Northern Gifu Prefecture	Hida Region = Brown-yellow area
Hokkaidō	Hokkaidō	Hokkaidō
Ibaraki	East Kantō / Transitional Tōhoku	Ibaraki Prefecture
Inshū	East San'in,Chūgoku	Eastern Tottori Prefecture
Iyo	Shikoku	Ehime Prefecture
Kaga	Hokuriku	South and centralIshikawa Prefecture
Kanagawa	West Kantō	Kanagawa Prefecture
Kesen	Southern Tōhoku	Kesen District,Iwate Prefecture
Mikawa	Gifu-Aichi, Tōkai-Tōsan	EasternAichi Prefecture
Mino	Gifu-Aichi, Tōkai-Tōsan	Southern Gifu Prefecture
Nagaoka	Echigo, Tōkai-Tōsan	CentralNiigata Prefecture	Green = Nagaoka City
Nagoya	Gifu-Aichi, Tōkai-Tōsan	Nagoya,Aichi Prefecture	Purple area = Nagoya
Nairiku	Southern Tōhoku	EasternYamagata Prefecture
Nambu	Northern Tōhoku	EasternAomori Prefecture,northern and central Iwate Prefecture,KazunoRegion of Akita Prefecture	Dark blue area = Nambu
Narada	Nagano-Yamanashi-Shizuoka, Tōkai-Tōsan	Narada,Yamanashi Prefecture
Ōita	Honichi,Kyūshū	Ōita Prefecture
Okinawan Japanese	Japanese with Ryukyuan influence.	Okinawa Islands
Saga	Hichiku, Kyūshū	Saga Prefecture,Isahaya
Sanuki	Shikoku	Kagawa Prefecture
Shimokita	Northern Tōhoku	North-EasternAomori Prefecture,Shimokita peninsula	Light blue area = Shimokita
Shizuoka	Nagano-Yamanashi-Shizuoka, Tōkai-Tōsan	Shizuoka Prefecture
Tochigi	East Kantō / Transitional Tōhoku	Tochigi Prefecture(excludingAshikaga)
Tōkyō	West Kantō	Tōkyō
Tosa	Shikoku	Central and easternKōchi Prefecture
Tsugaru	Northern Tōhoku	Western Aomori Prefecture
Tsushima	Hichiku, Kyūshū	Tsushima Island,Nagasaki Prefecture

See also

• Yotsugana,the different distinctions of historical *zi, *di, *zu, *du in different regions of Japan
• Okinawan JapaneseandAmami Japanese,variants of Standard Japanese influenced by theRyukyuan languages

Bibliography

• Karimata, Shigehisa (1999). "Onsei no men kara mita Ryūkyū shohōgen". In Gengogaku kenkyūkai (ed.).Kotoba no kagaku 9.Tokyo: Mugi shobō. pp.13–85.
• Pellard, Thomas (2009).Ōgami: Éléments de description d'un parler du Sud des Ryūkyū[Ōgami: Description of a Southern Ryukyuan language] (Thesis) (in French). Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.
• Pellard, Thomas (2015)."The Linguistic archeology of the Ryukyu Islands"(PDF).In Heinrich, Patrick; Miyara, Shinshō; Shimoji, Michinori (eds.).Handbook of the Ryukyuan languages: history, structure, and use.Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp.13–38.doi:10.1515/9781614511151.ISBN9781614511618.
• de Boer, Elisabeth (2020), "The classification of the Japonic languages", in Robbeets, Martine; Savelyev, Alexander (eds.),The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages,Oxford University Press, pp.40–58,doi:10.1093/oso/9780198804628.003.0005,ISBN978-0-19-880462-8.
• Shibatani, Masayoshi (2008) [1990].The languages of Japan(Reprint ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 197.ISBN9780521369183.
• Tokugawa, M. (1972): Towards a family tree for accent in Japanese dialects. In: Papers in Japanese Linguistics 1:2, pp. 301—320.

External links

• National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics(in English)
  • Phương ngôn nghiên cứu の bộ ốc( "Dialect research room" )(in Japanese)
  • Nhật bổn ngôn ngữ địa đồ( "Linguistic Atlas of Japan" )(in Japanese)
  • Datasets of "Texts of Tape-Recorded Conversations in Japanese Dialects"(in English)
  • Datasets of "Dialect Recording Series"(in English)
  • Zenkoku Hougendanwa Database(in English)
  • Phương ngôn văn pháp toàn quốc địa đồ( "Dialect grammar maps across Japan" )(in Japanese)
  • Endangered languages of Japan(in English)
• Dialectological Circle of Japan(in Japanese)
• Center of the study of Dialectology. Tohoku University(in Japanese)
• Kansai Dialect Self-study Site for Japanese Language Learner(in English)
• Japanese Dialects(in English)
• Toàn quốc phương ngôn từ điển( "All Japan Dialects Dictionary" )(in Japanese)
• Guide to Japanese Dialects