Kunigami language

The Kunigami language is a colloquial variant of the Okinawan language that is spoken largely in the Kunigami district of Okinawa Prefecture in Japan. Like other variants of Okinawan, Kunigami is part of the Ryukyuan languages family. ISO 639-3 code is [http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=xug xug] .

Phonology

The Kunigami language presents some unique phonological characteristics that set it apart from other Japonic languages. One of the most notable characteristics of Kunigami phonology is the existence of a full series of "tensed" or "glottalized" consonants, including stops, nasals, and glides. Kunigami is also notable for the presence of an /h/ phoneme separate from /p/, which is believed to be the historical source of /h/ in modern dialects of the Japanese language. Thus, for example, the Nakijin dialect of Kunigami has /IPA|haʔkai/ (a light, a lamp, lamplight; a shōji, a translucent paper screen, a translucent paper sliding door), which is cognate with Japanese /IPA|akari/ (light, bright light, a ray of light, a beam of light; a light, a lamp, lamplight); the Kunigami form is distinguished from its Japanese cognate by the initial /h/, glottalized /IPA|ʔk/, and elision of Proto-Japonic */r/ before */i/. The Kunigami language also makes distinctions in certain word pairs, such as Nakijin dialect /IPA|ʔkumuu/ (cloud) and /IPA|hubu/ (spider), which both appear as /IPA|kumo/ in Japanese (boldface text indicates morae pronounced with a high tone).

Vocabulary

The Kunigami language has some words of unclear etymology, such as Nakijin dialect "sincun" (/IPA|ʃintʃun/), which is an intransitive verb meaning "to sink." This word has often been compared with the Old Japanese and Classical Japanese verb しづく "siduku", which appears in ancient poetry with the sense of "to be sunk at the bottom of a body of water, to rest on the bottom; to be seen through water." However, if Nakijin "sincun" is ultimately cognate with Old Japanese "siduku", the two forms must have descended from different Proto-Japonic dialectal variants, because the phonological correspondence between the Nakijin form and the Old Japanese form is irregular.

Morphology

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 "tuusa panaariIPA|ʔtun", which is equivalent to Standard Japanese "tooku hanarete iru" ("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 ("-ness" forms) from adjectival stems.

External links

* [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=xug Ethnologue report for Kunigami]