| Kunigami | |
|---|---|
| |
| Native to | Japan |
| Region | NorthernOkinawa Islands |
Native speakers | 5,000 (2004)[1] |
| Japanese | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | xug |
| Glottolog | kuni1268 |
 Kunigami | |
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Kunigami orNorthern Okinawan (山原言葉,ヤンバルクトゥーバ,Yanbaru Kutūba) is aRyukyuan language of NorthernOkinawa Island inKunigami District and city ofNago, otherwise known as theYanbaru region, historically the territory of the kingdom ofHokuzan.
TheNakijin dialect is often considered representative of Kunigami, analogous to theShuri-Naha dialect ofCentral 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.[2]
Glottolog, following Pellard (2009), classifies Kunigami with Central Okinawan as the twoOkinawan languages.Ethnologue addsOkinoerabu andYoron; these (along with all other languages of the northern Ryukyu Islands) are classified asAmami languages byGlottolog. The UNESCOAtlas of the World's Languages in Danger, following Uemura (2003), includes Okinoerabu and Yoron as varieties of Kunigami.[3]
The speakers of Kunigami have various words for "language", "dialect", and "style of speech". For example, linguistNakasone Seizen (1907–1995) stated that the dialect of his home community Yonamine, Nakijin Village had (corresponding Standard Japanese word forms in parentheses):/kʰu⸢tsʰii/ (kuchi),/hut˭uu⸢ba/ (kotoba) and/munu⸢ʔii/ (monoii). The language of one's own community was referred to as/simaagu⸢tsʰii/ or/sima(a)kʰu⸢t˭uu⸣ba/.[4] The Yonamine dialect was part of Nakijin's western dialect called/ʔirinsimaakʰut˭uba/.[5] The northern part of Okinawa was colloquially known as Yanbaru and hence its language was sometimes called/jˀan⸢ba⸣rukʰut˭uuba/.[6]
Like most Ryukyuan languages north of Central Okinawan, Kunigami has series of so-called "tensed" or "glottalized" consonants. While the nasals and glides are trulyglottalized,[citation needed] the stops aretenuis[C˭], in contrast to theaspiration of the "plain" stops[Cʰ].[7] Kunigami is also notable for the presence of an/h/ phoneme separate from the/p/ phoneme that is believed to be the historical source of/h/ in most otherJaponic languages; Kunigami/h/ instead has two different sources:Proto-Japonic/*k/ or otherwise the zero initial in certain conditioning environments. Thus, for example, theNakijin dialect of Kunigami has/hak˭áí/ (light, a lamp, ashōji),[8] which is cognate with Japanese/akárí/ (light, a lamp); the Kunigami form is distinguished from its Japanese cognate by the initial/h/, tenuis/k˭/, and elision of Proto-Japonic *r before *i. The Kunigami language also makes distinctions in certain word pairs, such as Nakijin dialect/k˭umuú/ (cloud) and/húbu/ (spider), which in Japanese are almost homophonic (/kúmo/ and/kumó/).
One notable difference in the use of certain morphological markers between Kunigami language and Standard Japanese is the use of the/-sa/ form as an adverb in Kunigami: e.g. Nakijin dialect/tʰuusápʰanaaɽít˭un/, which is equivalent to Standard Japanesetoókú hanárete irú ("It is far away"). In Standard Japanese, the/-ku/ form is used adverbially, while the/-sa/ form is used exclusively to derive abstract nouns of quality and amount ("-ness" forms) from adjectival stems.
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