Amami language

Amami
しまゆむた (島口)
Shimayumuta
Spoken in  Kagoshima Prefecture and  Okinawa Prefecture, Japan
Region Amami Islands
Native speakers 10,000 Northern, 1,800 Southern  (2004)[1]
Language family
Language codes
ISO 639-3 ryn – Macrolanguage
individual codes:
ryn – Northern Amami
ams – Southern Amami
This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

The Amami language (奄美語; Amami: しまゆむた (島口) Shimayumuta) is spoken in the Amami Islands south of Kyūshū. The number of competent native speakers is not known, but native speakers can be found mostly among old people—as a result of Japanese language policy, the younger generations speaks mostly Japanese as their first language. Amami is a Ryukyuan language, most closely related to Okinawan. It is sometimes considered two languages. The main dialects are as follows:

Contents

Phonology

Consonants

Bilabial Dental Alveolar Post-
alveolar		 Palatal Velar Glottal Place-
less
Stops and
affricates		 p pj    b bj t    d tʃ tʃj k kj kw    ɡ ɡj ɡw ʔ ʔj ʔw Q
Flaps ɺ̠ ɺ̠j
Fricatives θ s sj    z zj çj x xj h hj hw
Nasals m mj ʔm n nj ʔn ʔnj N
Approximants j w̜

Vowels

There are seven distinct vowels in Amami, in addition to a phonemic distinction between long and short vowels.

   Short   Long 
 Front   Central   Back   Front   Central   Back 
 High  i ɨ u iː ɨː uː
 Mid  e ɘ o eː ɘː oː
 Low  a aː

References

  1. ^ Amami at Ethnologue

External links