The small group of , natively called , are, depending on classification, either the most divergent form of Japanese, or comprise a branch of Japonic languages (alongside mainland Japanese, Northern Ryukyuan, and Southern Ryukyuan). Hachijà  is currently spoken on two of the Izu Islands south of Tokyo (Hachijà Â-jima and the smaller Aogashima) as well as on the Daità  Islands of Okinawa Prefecture, which were settled from Hachijà Â-jima in the Meiji era. It was also previously spoken on the island of Hachijà Â-kojima, which is now abandoned. Based on the criterion of mutual intelligibility, Hachijà  may be considered a distinct Japonic language, rather than a dialect of Japanese.
Hachijà  is a descendant of Eastern Old Japanese, retaining several unique grammatical and phonetic features recorded in dialect poems from Eastern Japan ("Azuma") in the 8th-century Man'yà Âshà « and the Fudoki of Hitachi Province.
Hachijà  also has lexical similarities with the dialects of Kyushu and even the Ryukyuan languages; it is not clear if these indicate that the southern Izu islands were settled from that region, if they are loans brought by sailors traveling among the southern islands, or if they might be independent retentions from Old Japanese.
Hachijà  is a moribund language with a small and dwindling population of primarily elderly speakers. Since at least 2009, the town of Hachijà  has supported efforts to educate its younger generations about the language through primary school classes, karuta games, and Hachijà Â-language theater productions. Nevertheless, native speakers are estimated to number in the "low hundreds," and younger generations are not learning or using the language at home.
The Izu Islands dialects of Hachijà  are classified into eight groups according to the various historical villages within Hachijà  Subprefecture. On Hachijà Â-jima, these are à Âkagà Â, Mitsune, Nakanogà Â, Kashitate, and Sueyoshi; on Hachijà Â-kojima, these were Utsuki and Toriuchi; and the village of Aogashima is its own group. The dialects of à Âkagà  and Mitsune are very similar, as are those of Nakanogà  and Kashitate, while the Aogashima and Sueyoshi dialects are distinct from these two groups. The Utsuki and Toriuchi dialects have not been subcategorized within Hachijà Â, though the Toriuchi dialect has been noted to be very similar to the à Âkagà  dialect in phonology. The dialect(s) of the Daità  Islands also remain uncategorized.
The Hachijà  language and its dialects are classified by John Kupchik and the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (NINJAL), respectively, within the Japonic family as follows:
The dialects of Aogashima and Utsuki are quite distinct from the other varieties (and each other). The Aogashima dialect exhibits slight grammatical differences from other varieties, as well as noticeable lexical differences. The Utsuki dialect, on the other hand, is lexically similar to the Toriuchi dialect and those of Hachijà Â-jima, but has undergone several unique sound shifts such as the elimination of the phonemes and ; the loss of the latter is referred to as being sitagirecjaQcja "cut-tongued" by those of other villages, or citagije in Utsuki.
The dialects of Hachijà Â-jima are, like its villages, often referred as being or . The villages of à Âkagà  and Mitsune in the northwest are Downhill, while the villages of Nakanogà Â, Kashitate, and Sueyoshi in the south are UphillâÂÂthough the Sueyoshi dialect is not particularly close to those of the other "Uphill" villages. Therefore, the Sueyoshi dialect is often excluded from the term "Uphill dialects."
As the number of remaining speakers of Hachijà  as a whole is unknown, the numbers of remaining speakers of each dialect are also unknown. Since the abandonment of Hachijà Â-kojima in 1969, some speakers of the Utsuki and Toriuchi dialects have moved to Hachijà Â-jima and continue to speak the Hachijà  language, though their speech seems to have converged with that of the Downhill dialects. As late as 2009, the Toriuchi dialect had at least one remaining speaker, while the Utsuki dialect had at least five.
Like Standard Japanese, Hachijà  syllables are (C)(j)V(C), that is, with an optional syllable onset C, optional medial glide , a mandatory syllable nucleus V, and an optional coda or . The coda can only be present word-medially, and syllable nuclei can be short or long vowels.
The medial glide represents palatalization of the consonant it follows, which also involves a change in place or manner of articulation for certain consonants. Like in Japanese, these changes can also be analyzed phonemically using separate sets of palatalized and non-palatalized consonants. However, from a morphological and cross-dialectal perspective, it is more straightforward to treat palatalized consonants as sequences of consonants and , as is done in this article, following the phonemic analysis made by Kaneda (2001). Furthermore, when a vowel begins with the close front vowel , the preceding consonant (if any) becomes palatalized just as if a medial were present.
Hachijà  contrasts three syllable weights depending on their rimes:
Unlike light and heavy syllables, superheavy syllables are strongly avoided in Hachijà Â, and they are forbidden outright in most verbal inflections. Where they would occur, they are generally resolved by deletion of the coda or by shortening of the long vowel. Where the latter occurs, it can be written with a tie or as a short vowel, e.g., â¨kogoáoNâ© or â¨kogoNâ© "in this way"; the former practice will be followed here. Though these shortened vowels are pronounced the same length as short vowels, they still follow the dialectal correspondences for long vowels (listed below).
Finally, there are a small number of words that contain N as a syllable nucleus instead of a vowel, such as NNmakja "tasty" (stem NNma-, cognate to Japanese uma-i).
There are five short vowels found in all varieties of Hachijà Â:
Many of Hachijà ÂâÂÂs long vowels are properly diphthongs, though the majority of them vary in quality based on region, being long monophthongs in some dialects and diphthongs in others. Therefore, in this article, the term "long vowel" will be used to include diphthongs as well. There are relatively straightforward correspondences between the dialectsü long vowels:
The long vowels aÃÂ, uÃÂ, and oÃÂ are comparatively rare, arising mainly from contractions.
Lastly, there are a very small number of discourse markers that contain nasal vowels, such as oé "Oh my!" and hõõ "Oh?" or "Oho!"
Hachijà  contains roughly the same consonants as Standard Japanese, with most consonants able to be followed by all vowels as well as by the medial glide .
In addition to the variations described above, Hachijà  also exhibits a handful of other conditioned sound alternations:
When followed by the high vowels or (short or long), the plosive consonants t and d become affricates, merging into c and z respectively, which is also reflected in orthography (as shown here). This change happens in addition to the palatalization of coronal consonants described below.
When followed by the vowel (short or long), or when combined with the medial glide , the coronal nasal n as well as all coronal obstruentsâÂÂnamely, t, d, c, z, sâÂÂchange from an alveolar place of articulation to a palatal one. This change happens in addition to the affrication of t and d mentioned previously. Thus, t-j and c-j become cj , d-j and z-j become zj , s-j becomes sj , and n-j becomes nj .
The consonant j is already palatal in articulation, reducing any would-be sequences of to simply .
Lastly, the coronal affricates c and z have a tendency to be sporadically palatalized to cj and zj; compare Utsuki mizoma and Kashitate mizjoma "sewer, drainage," cognate to Japanese 溠mizo "ditch."
Hachijà  generally disallows vocalic segments in hiatus except for in the long vowels listed above. Where such a hiatus would appear (from compounding, affixation, consonant elision, etc.), coalescence generally occurs instead. For combinations of two vowels, the following chart gives a general overview:
Noteworthy irregularities or exceptions include:
And although these rules are usually followed etymologically as well, there are some exceptions:
Coalescence can be blocked by leveling and reversed or altered by influence from other dialects or mainland Japanese.
As an exception to the vowel coalescence rules given above, there are special situations where the vowel can diphthongize with another short vowel a, o, or u without coalescing with it, forming the long vowels aÃÂ, oÃÂ, or uÃÂ instead of the expected ee, ei, or ii. Many notable examples of this occur when the light syllable re is contracted to , such as in waÃÂra "we" (from warera) and nomaraÃÂdou "despite drinking" (from nomararedou). The frequency of such contracted forms depends on the dialect and individual.
Non-coalescing vowels are comparatively common in the Utsuki dialect, as , , and often occur in place of other dialectsü ri, ru, and re due to the loss of the phoneme word-medially. As a result, former ari and aru have merged into the reflexes and of Common Hachijà  ei and ou. Compare the following vocabulary:
The majority of consonants undergo no special changes when geminated, merely becoming longer, e.g.: t â Qt . However, there are a few main exceptions. These first exceptions usually arise by the prefixing of -final suffixes onto words:
Lastly, in the Uphill dialects (and occasionally for other dialect speakers as well), a sound shift has occurred wherein /N/ has become /Q/ when followed by a voiced obstruent:
Like all Japonic languages, Hachijà  exhibits , wherein word-initial voiceless obstruents alternate with voiced ones in some compounds. The alternation is straightforward in Hachijà Â:
All other consonants are unaffected by rendaku.
Hachijà  is head-final, left-branching, and topic-prominent; often omits nouns that can be understood from context; and has default subjectâÂÂobjectâÂÂverb word order. Nouns do not exhibit grammatical gender, nor do they usually indicate grammatical number.
Hachijà  preserves several grammatical features from Old JapaneseâÂÂparticularly Eastern Old Japanese (EOJ)âÂÂthat are not reflected in Modern Standard Japanese, for example:
Hachijà  has also had developments and innovations not found in Modern Standard Japanese:
Hachijà  contains a large number of vocabulary words whose phonetic shapes are not predictable from their Japanese cognates. These differences often reflect forms Hachijà  inherited from Eastern Old Japanese (rather than from mainland JapaneseâÂÂs ancestor of Western-Central Old Japanese) or irregular sound changes in one or both languages.
Hachijà  also preserves vocabulary that has become obsolete in most Japanese dialects, such as:
There are some words which do occur in standard Japanese, but with different meanings:
Lastly, Hachijà  also has unique vocabulary words whose relationship to Japonic are unclear or unknown: