| Hachijō | |
| Nativename: | 島言葉 |
| States: | Japan |
| Region: | Southern Izu Islands and the Daitō Islands |
| Speakers: | < 1000 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| Familycolor: | Altaic |
| Fam1: | Japonic |
| Fam2: | Japanese? |
| Ancestor: | Proto-Japonic |
| Ancestor2: | Old Japanese? |
| Ancestor3: | Eastern Old Japanese |
| Iso6: | hhjm |
| Glotto: | hach1239 |
| Glottorefname: | Hachijō |
| Script: | Japanese writing system (katakana, hiragana, rōmaji) |
| Map: | Map of Izu Islands.png |
| Mapalt: | Map of Izu Islands |
The small group of , natively called, depending on classification, either are the most divergent form of Japanese, or comprise a branch of Japonic (alongside mainland Japanese, Northern Ryukyuan, and Southern Ryukyuan).[1] Hachijō is currently spoken on two of the Izu Islands south of Tokyo (Hachijō-jima and the smaller Aogashima) as well as on the Daitō Islands of Okinawa Prefecture, which were settled from Hachijō-jima in the Meiji period. It was also previously spoken on the island of Hachijō-kojima, which is now abandoned. Based on the criterion of mutual intelligibility, Hachijō may be considered a distinct Japonic language, rather than a dialect of Japanese.
Hachijō is a descendant of Eastern Old Japanese, retaining several unique grammatical and phonetic features recorded in the Azuma-dialect poems of the 8th-century Man'yōshū and the Fudoki of Hitachi Province. Hachijō also has lexical similarities with the dialects of Kyushu and even the Ryukyuan languages; it is not clear if these indicate that the southern Izu islands were settled from that region, if they are loans brought by sailors traveling among the southern islands, or if they might be independent retentions from Old Japanese.[2]
Hachijō is a moribund language with a small and dwindling population of primarily elderly speakers. Since at least 2009, the town of Hachijō has supported efforts to educate its younger generations about the language through primary school classes, karuta games, and Hachijō-language theater productions. Nevertheless, native speakers are estimated to number in the "low hundreds," and younger generations are not learning or using the language at home.
The Izu Islands dialects of Hachijō are classified into eight groups according to the various historical villages within Hachijō Subprefecture. On Hachijō-jima, these are Ōkagō, Mitsune, Nakanogō, Kashitate, and Sueyoshi; on Hachijō-kojima, these were Utsuki and Toriuchi; and the village of Aogashima is its own group. The dialects of Ōkagō and Mitsune are very similar, as are those of Nakanogō and Kashitate, while the Aogashima and Sueyoshi dialects are distinct from these two groups. The Utsuki and Toriuchi dialects have not been subcategorized within Hachijō, though the Toriuchi dialect has been noted to be very similar to the Ōkagō dialect in phonology. The dialect(s) of the Daitō Islands also remain uncategorized.
The Hachijō language and its dialects are classified by John Kupchik and the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (NINJAL), respectively, within the Japonic family as follows:
The dialects of Aogashima and Utsuki are quite distinct from the other varieties (and each other). The Aogashima dialect exhibits slight grammatical differences from other varieties, as well as noticeable lexical differences. The Utsuki dialect, on the other hand, is lexically similar to the Toriuchi dialect and those of Hachijō-jima, but has undergone several unique sound shifts such as the elimination of the phonemes pronounced as //s// and pronounced as //ɾ//; the loss of the latter is referred to as being sitagirecjaQcja "cut-tongued" by those of other villages, or citagije in Utsuki.
The dialects of Hachijō-jima are, like its villages, often referred as being or . The villages of Ōkagō and Mitsune in the northwest are Downhill, while the villages of Nakanogō, Kashitate, and Sueyoshi in the south are Uphill—though the Sueyoshi dialect is not particularly close to those of the other "Uphill" villages. Therefore, the Sueyoshi dialect is often excluded from the term "Uphill dialects."
As the number of remaining speakers of Hachijō as a whole is unknown, the numbers of remaining speakers of each dialect are also unknown. Since the abandonment of Hachijō-kojima in 1969, some speakers of the Utsuki and Toriuchi dialects have moved to Hachijō-jima and continue to speak the Hachijō language, though their speech seems to have converged with that of the Downhill dialects. As late as 2009, the Toriuchi dialect had at least one remaining speaker, while the Utsuki dialect had at least five.[3]
Like Standard Japanese, Hachijō syllables are (C)(j)V(C), that is, with an optional syllable onset C, optional medial glide pronounced as //j//, a mandatory syllable nucleus V, and an optional coda pronounced as //N// or pronounced as //Q//. The coda pronounced as //Q// can only be present word-medially, and syllable nuclei can be short or long vowels.
The medial glide pronounced as //j// represents palatalization of the consonant it follows, which also involves a change in place or manner of articulation for certain consonants. Like in Japanese, these changes can also be analyzed phonemically using separate sets of palatalized and non-palatalized consonants. However, from a morphological and cross-dialectal perspective, it is more straightforward to treat palatalized consonants as sequences of consonants and pronounced as //j//, as is done in this article, following the phonemic analysis made by Kaneda (2001). Furthermore, when a vowel begins with the close front vowel pronounced as //i//, the preceding consonant (if any) becomes palatalized just as if a medial pronounced as //j// were present.
Hachijō contrasts three syllable weights depending on their rimes:
Unlike light and heavy syllables, superheavy syllables are strongly avoided in Hachijō, and they are forbidden outright in most verbal inflections. Where they would occur, they are generally resolved by deletion of the coda or by shortening of the long vowel. Where the latter occurs, it can be written with a tie or as a short vowel, e.g., ⟨kogo͡oN⟩ or ⟨kogoN⟩ "in this way"; the former practice will be followed here. Though these shortened vowels are pronounced the same length as short vowels, they still follow the dialectal correspondences for long vowels (listed below).
Finally, there are a small number of words that contain N as a syllable nucleus instead of a vowel, such as NNmakja "tasty" pronounced as /ja/ (stem NNma-, cognate to Japanese Japanese: 美味い uma-i).
There are five short vowels found in all varieties of Hachijō:
| Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||
| Mid | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||
| Open | pronounced as /link/ |
Many of Hachijō’s long vowels are properly diphthongs, though the majority of them vary in quality based on region, being long monophthongs in some dialects and diphthongs in others. Therefore, in this article, the term "long vowel" will be used to include diphthongs as well. There are relatively straightforward correspondences between the dialectsʼ long vowels:
| Kashitate | pronounced as /iː/ | pronounced as /uː/ | pronounced as /aː/ | pronounced as /ia~jaː/ | pronounced as /iː~ɪː~e̝ː/ | pronounced as /oɐ/ | pronounced as /ʊː~oː/ | pronounced as /ai/ | pronounced as /ui/ | pronounced as /oi/ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nakanogō | pronounced as /iː/ | pronounced as /uː/ | pronounced as /aː/ | pronounced as /ea~jaː/ | pronounced as /ɪː~e̝ː~eː/ | pronounced as /oɐ/ | pronounced as /ʊː~oː/ | pronounced as /ai/ | pronounced as /ui/ | pronounced as /oi/ | |
| Sueyoshi | pronounced as /iː/ | pronounced as /uː/ | pronounced as /aː/ | pronounced as /eː/ | pronounced as /iː/ | pronounced as /aː/ | pronounced as /oː/ | pronounced as /ai/ | pronounced as /ui/ | pronounced as /oi/ | |
| Mitsune | pronounced as /iː/ | pronounced as /uː/ | pronounced as /aː/ | pronounced as /eː~ei/ | pronounced as /ei/ | pronounced as /oː~ou/ | pronounced as /ou/ | pronounced as /ai/ | pronounced as /ui/ | pronounced as /oi/ | |
| Ōkagō | pronounced as /iː/ | pronounced as /uː/ | pronounced as /aː/ | pronounced as /eː/ | pronounced as /eː/ | pronounced as /oː/ | pronounced as /oː/ | pronounced as /ai/ | pronounced as /ui/ | pronounced as /oi/ | |
| Toriuchi | pronounced as /iː/ | pronounced as /uː/ | pronounced as /aː/ | pronounced as /eː/ | pronounced as /eː/ | pronounced as /oː/ | pronounced as /oː/ | pronounced as /ai/ | pronounced as /ui/ | pronounced as /oi/ | |
| Utsuki | pronounced as /iː/ | pronounced as /uː/ | pronounced as /aː/ | pronounced as /eː/ | pronounced as /ɐi/ | pronounced as /oː/ | pronounced as /ɐu/ | pronounced as /ɐi/ | pronounced as /ui/ | pronounced as /oi/ | |
| Aogashima | pronounced as /iː/ | pronounced as /uː/ | pronounced as /aː/ | pronounced as /eː/ | pronounced as /ei~eː/ | pronounced as /oː/ | pronounced as /ɔu/ | pronounced as /ai/ | pronounced as /ui/ | pronounced as /oi/ | |
| Minami Daitō[4] | pronounced as /iː/ | pronounced as /uː/ | pronounced as /aː/ | pronounced as /eː/ | pronounced as /(eː?)/ | pronounced as /(oː?)/ | pronounced as /oː/ | pronounced as /ai/ | pronounced as /ui/ | pronounced as /oi/ |
The long vowels aĭ, uĭ, and oĭ are comparatively rare, arising mainly from contractions.
Lastly, there are a very small number of discourse markers that contain nasal vowels, such as oĩ "Oh my!" and hõõ "Oh?" or "Oho!"
Hachijō contains roughly the same consonants as Standard Japanese, with most consonants able to be followed by all vowels as well as by the medial glide pronounced as //j//.
| Coronal | Velar | Laryngeal | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| Plosive / Affricate | Voiceless | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ (c) | pronounced as /link/ | ||
| Voiced | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ (z) | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| Fricative | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| Tap | pronounced as /link/ (r) | ||||||
| Approximant | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| Special morae | pronounced as //N//, /Q/ | ||||||
In addition to the variations described above, Hachijō also exhibits a handful of other conditioned sound alternations:
When followed by the high vowels pronounced as //u// or pronounced as //i// (short or long), the plosive consonants t pronounced as //t// and d pronounced as //d// become sibilant affricates, merging into c pronounced as //t͡s// and z pronounced as //d͡z// respectively, which is also reflected in orthography (as shown here). This change happens in addition to the palatalization of coronal consonants described below.
When followed by the vowel pronounced as //i// (short or long), or when combined with the medial glide pronounced as //j//, the coronal nasal n as well as all coronal obstruents—namely, t, d, c, z, s—change from an alveolar place of articulation to a palatal one. This change happens in addition to the affrication of t and d mentioned previously. Thus, t-j and c-j become cj pronounced as /ja/, d-j and z-j become zj pronounced as /ja/, s-j becomes sj pronounced as /ja/, and n-j becomes nj pronounced as /ja/.
The consonant j pronounced as //j// is already palatal in articulation, reducing any would-be sequences of pronounced as /**/jj// to simply pronounced as //j//.
Lastly, the coronal affricates c and z have a tendency to be sporadically palatalized to cj and zj; compare Utsuki mizoma pronounced as /ja/ and Kashitate mizjoma pronounced as /ja/ "sewer, drainage," cognate to Japanese 溝 mizo "ditch."
Hachijō generally disallows vocalic segments in hiatus except for in the long vowels listed above. Where such a hiatus would appear (from compounding, affixation, consonant elision, etc.), coalescence generally occurs instead. For combinations of two vowels, the following chart gives a general overview:
| -e | -i | -o | -u | -wa | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a- | ee | oo | ee | oo | awa, oo |
| e- | ei | ei | ei | ei | ewa, ja |
| i- | je | ii | jo |