or is a

Japanese dialect The of the Japanese language fall into two primary clades, Eastern (including modern capital Tokyo) and Western (including old capital Kyoto), with the dialects of Kyushu and Hachijō Island often distinguished as additional branches, the latter ...

spoken in Kesen County,

Iwate Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku region of Honshu. It is the second-largest Japanese prefecture (behind Hokkaido) at , with a population of 1,165,886 (as of July 1, 2023). Iwate Prefecture borders Aomori Pre ...

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 ...

. Kesen has been described by . Yamaura considers Kesen an independent language, related to both Japanese and

Ainu languages The Ainu languages ( ), sometimes known as Ainuic, are a small language family, often regarded as a language isolate, historically spoken by the Ainu people of northern Japan and neighboring islands, and formerly in parts of the Asian mainland, i ...

, but this is not accepted by other linguists.

Kesen

Kesen is spoken in the Kesen district of Iwate Prefecture, in the

Tōhoku region The , Northeast region, , or consists of the northeastern portion of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. This traditional region consists of six prefectures (): Akita, Aomori, Fukushima, Iwate, Miyagi, and Yamagata. Tōhoku retains ...

of eastern Japan. Kesen dialect has been described as a variety of the Tōhoku dialect. The status of Kesen as an independent language, rather than a dialect of Japanese, is disputed. Harutsugu Yamaura, who developed a writing system for Kesen in 1986 (see below), has argued that the form is a language.

Harutsugu Yamaura

Iwate language activist and medical doctor Harutsugu Yamaura described the dialect in various books, including a

dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged Alphabetical order, alphabetically (or by Semitic root, consonantal root for Semitic languages or radical-and-stroke sorting, radical an ...

, a

grammar In linguistics, grammar is the set of rules for how a natural language is structured, as demonstrated by its speakers or writers. Grammar rules may concern the use of clauses, phrases, and words. The term may also refer to the study of such rul ...

, and a translation of the

New Testament The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus, as well as events relating to Christianity in the 1st century, first-century Christianit ...

. Yamaura also created an

orthography An orthography is a set of convention (norm), conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, punctuation, Word#Word boundaries, word boundaries, capitalization, hyphenation, and Emphasis (typography), emphasis. Most national ...

for Kesen using two writing systems, the first based on the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Gree ...

, and the second using Japanese orthography. Yamaura has forwarded the theory Kesen should not be considered a

, but an independent language in its own right with an Ainu substrate, a theory that is controversial. According to Yamaura, Kesen was strongly influenced by the Emishi language. The word , for instance, comes from the Ainu term (cove at the south tip) and (scraped place). Yamaura considered the conventional Japanese kanji for an ateji imposed by Yamato Kingdom. Therefore, he used

katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...

, a writing system typically used for foreign words, to spell the name . Yamaura's effort to describe Kesen and restore people's pride in their local speech is an example of countrywide effort where the national education system has resulted in the stigmatization of local dialects, which children were historically forbidden to use. However, such efforts are routinely depicted in the Japanese media as "romantic, bizarre or quaint" and not taken seriously. Yamaura's work has been recommended by Japanese linguists as a model to be followed for other dialects.

References

External links

The Great Kesen Dictionary
fro
Mumyōsha
official website. {{Japanese language Japanese dialects Culture in Iwate Prefecture

Kesen

Harutsugu Yamaura

References

Further reading

External links