The
dialects of the
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 ...
fall into two primary clades, Eastern (including Tokyo) and Western (including Kyoto), with the dialects of
Kyushu and
Hachijō Island often distinguished as additional branches, the latter perhaps the most divergent of all. The
Ryukyuan languages of
Okinawa Prefecture and the southern islands of
Kagoshima Prefecture 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 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
is a stage of the Japanese language between 794 and 1185, which is known as the Heian Period(). The successor to Old Japanese(), it is also known as Late Old Japanese. However, the term "Early Middle Japanese" is preferred, as it is closer to ...
era, there were only vague records such as "rural dialects are crude". However, since the
Late Middle Japanese
was a stage of the Japanese language following Early Middle Japanese and preceding Early Modern Japanese. It was a period of transition in which the language shed many of its archaic features and became closer to its modern form.
The period s ...
era, features of regional dialects had been recorded in some books, for example ''
Arte da Lingoa de Iapam
The ''Art of the Japanese Language'' ( pt, Arte da Lingoa de Iapam and in modern Portuguese: '; ja, , ''Nihon Daibunten'') is an early 17th-century Portuguese grammar of the Japanese language. It was compiled by João Rodrigues, a Portugues ...
'', and the recorded features were fairly similar to modern dialects. The variety of Japanese dialects developed markedly during the
Early Modern Japanese
was the stage of the Japanese language after Middle Japanese and before Modern Japanese. It is a period of transition that shed many of the language's medieval characteristics and became closer to its modern form.
The period spanned roughly ...
era (
Edo period
The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was character ...
) 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. 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
A was a system of punishment used in Japanese regional schools in the post- Meiji period to promote standard speech.
During the Edo period under the Tokugawa shogunate most Japanese people could not travel outside of their home domain. As a r ...
) like as
vergonha
In Occitan, ''vergonha'' (, meaning "shame") refers to the effects of various language discriminatory policies of the government of France on its minorities whose native language was deemed a ''patois'', where a Romance language spoken in the co ...
in France or
welsh not
The Welsh Not was a token used by teachers at some schools in Wales in the 19th century to discourage children from speaking Welsh at school, by marking out those who were heard speaking the language. Accounts suggest that its form and the natu ...
in
Wales
Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...
. 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
is the Japanese language as spoken by the people of Okinawa Islands. Okinawan Japanese's accents and words are influenced by the traditional Okinawan and Kunigami languages. Okinawan Japanese has some loanwords from American English due to ...
.
Mutual intelligibility
In terms of
mutual intelligibility
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as ...
, 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), 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).
The survey is based on recordings of 12- to 20- second long, of 135 to 244
phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...
s, which 42 students listened and translated word-by-word. The listeners were all
Keio University 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 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
Prestige refers to a good reputation or high esteem; in earlier usage, ''prestige'' meant "showiness". (19th c.)
Prestige may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media Films
* ''Prestige'' (film), a 1932 American film directed by Tay Garnet ...
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
The Hichiku dialect is a group of the Japanese dialects spoken in western Kyushu. The name ''Hichiku'' (肥筑) is constructed by extracting a representative kanji from ''Hizen'' (肥前), '' Higo'' (肥後), '' Chikuzen'' (筑前) and '' Chikug ...
, 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 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
was a stage of the Japanese language following Early Middle Japanese and preceding Early Modern Japanese. It was a period of transition in which the language shed many of its archaic features and became closer to its modern form.
The period s ...
) 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 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
is a volcanic island to the south of Japan in northernmost Micronesia. It is the southernmost and most isolated inhabited island of the Izus, which are politically and administratively part of Japan but geographically not part of the Japanese ...
, islands south of Tokyo, as well as the Daitō Islands
The are an archipelago consisting of three isolated coral islands in the Philippine Sea southeast of Okinawa. The islands have a total area of and a population of 2,107.
Administratively, the whole group belongs to Shimajiri District of Oki ...
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
is the Japanese language as spoken by the people of Okinawa Islands. Okinawan Japanese's accents and words are influenced by the traditional Okinawan and Kunigami languages. Okinawan Japanese has some loanwords from American English due to ...
, 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