Yaeyama language

Yaeyama (Yaeyama: yaimamunii) is a language spoken by around 44,650 people in the Yaeyama Islands, south of the Miyako area of the Ryukyus. It is a Ryukyuan language, most closely related to Miyako.

It can be separated into several dialect groupings, named after the islands they are found on:

• Ishigaki
• Iriomote
• Taketomi

The speech of the Yaeyaman island of Yonaguni, while closely related, is usually classified as its own separate language.

History

The Ryukyuan language split from Proto-Japonic when its speakers migrated to the Ryukyu Islands.

Some of the pronunciations that disappeared from Japanese around the 8th century, Japan's Nara period, can still be found in the Yaeyama languages. On example is the initial "p" sound, which in Japanese became an "h," while remaining a "p" in Yaeyama.

While the Yaeyama language was more "conservative" in some aspects, in the sense of preserving certain pronunciations, in other aspects it was more innovative. One example is the vowel system. Old Japanese had 5-8 vowels; this has been reduced to 5 in modern Japanese, but in Yaeyaman , the vowel reduction has progressed further, to 3 vowels. Generally, when modern Japanese has an "e," the Yaeyama cognate will have an "i" (this is seen in "puni," above); and where modern Japanese has an "o," the Yaeyama cognate will have a "u" (as seen in "patu," above).

Many of these preserved pronunciations have been lost in the language of the main island of Okinawa. One explanation for this is that it is possible to travel by sea from mainland Japan until the main island of Okinawa, while keeping one island or another in sight nearly at all times; but there is then a gap between Okinawa island and the Yaeyamas, that would have required several nights on the open sea. For this reason, there was less traffic between mainland Japan and the Yaeyama islands, allowing further linguistic divergence.

External links

• Yaeyama phrasebook at Wikitravel (Ishigaki dialect)

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