| Kunigami | |
| Nativename: | 山原言葉/ヤンバルクトゥーバ, Yanbaru Kutūba |
| States: | Japan |
| Region: | Northern Okinawa Islands |
| Speakers: | 5,000 |
| Date: | 2004 |
| Ref: | e18 |
| Familycolor: | Altaic |
| Fam1: | Japonic |
| Fam2: | Ryukyuan |
| Fam3: | Northern Ryukyuan |
| Iso3: | xug |
| Glotto: | kuni1268 |
| Glottorefname: | Kunigami |
| Map: | Boundaries of the Okinawan Languages.svg |
| Notice: | IPA |
| Script: | Japanese |
The Kunigami or Northern Okinawan language, is a Ryukyuan language of Northern Okinawa Island in Kunigami District and city of Nago, otherwise known as the Yanbaru region, historically the territory of the kingdom of Hokuzan.
The Nakijin dialect is often considered representative of Kunigami, analogous to the Shuri-Naha dialect of Central Okinawan. The number of fluent native speakers of Kunigami is not known. As a result of Japanese language policy, the younger generation mostly speaks Japanese as their first language.
In addition to the northern portion of Okinawa Island, Kunigami is spoken on the small neighboring islands of Ie, Tsuken and Kudaka.[1]
Glottolog, following Pellard (2009), classifies Kunigami with Central Okinawan as the two Okinawan languages. Ethnologue adds Okinoerabu and Yoron; these (along with all other languages of the northern Ryukyu Islands) are classified as Amami languages by Glottolog. The UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, following Uemura (2003), includes Okinoerabu and Yoron as varieties of Kunigami.[2]
The speakers of Kunigami have various words for "language", "dialect", and "style of speech". For example, linguist Nakasone Seizen (1907–1995) stated that the dialect of his home community Yonamine, Nakijin Village had (corresponding Standard Japanese word forms in parentheses): pronounced as //kʰu⸢tsʰii// (kuchi), pronounced as //hut˭uu⸢ba// (kotoba) and pronounced as //munu⸢ʔii// (monoii). The language of one's own community was referred to as pronounced as //simaagu⸢tsʰii// or pronounced as //sima(a)kʰu⸢t˭uu⸣ba//.[3] The Yonamine dialect was part of Nakijin's western dialect called pronounced as //ʔirinsimaa kʰut˭uba//.[4] The northern part of Okinawa was colloquially known as Yanbaru and hence its language was sometimes called pronounced as //jˀan⸢ba⸣rukʰut˭uuba//.[5]
Like most Ryukyuan languages north of Central Okinawan, Kunigami has series of so-called "tensed" or "glottalized" consonants. While the nasals and glides are truly glottalized, the stops are tenuis pronounced as /[C˭]/, in contrast to the aspiration of the "plain" stops pronounced as /[Cʰ]/.[6] Kunigami is also notable for the presence of an pronounced as //h// phoneme separate from the pronounced as //p// phoneme that is believed to be the historical source of pronounced as //h// in most other Japonic languages; Kunigami pronounced as //h// instead has two different sources: Proto-Japonic pronounced as //*k// or otherwise the zero initial in certain conditioning environments. Thus, for example, the Nakijin dialect of Kunigami has pronounced as //hak˭áí// (light, a lamp, a shōji),[7] which is cognate with Japanese pronounced as //akárí// (light, a lamp); the Kunigami form is distinguished from its Japanese cognate by the initial pronounced as //h//, tenuis pronounced as //k˭//, and elision of Proto-Japonic *r before *i. The Kunigami language also makes distinctions in certain word pairs, such as Nakijin dialect pronounced as //k˭umuú// (cloud) and pronounced as //húbu// (spider), which in Japanese are almost homophonic (pronounced as //kúmo// and pronounced as //kumó//).
One notable difference in the use of certain morphological markers between Kunigami language and Standard Japanese is the use of the pronounced as //-sa// form as an adverb in Kunigami: e.g. Nakijin dialect pronounced as //tʰuusá pʰanaaɽít˭un//, which is equivalent to Standard Japanese toókú hanárete irú ("It is far away"). In Standard Japanese, the pronounced as //-ku// form is used adverbially, while the pronounced as //-sa// form is used exclusively to derive abstract nouns of quality and amount ("-ness" forms) from adjectival stems.