The Amami language or languages (, , ), also known as Amami à Âshima or simply à Âshima ('Big Island'), is a Ryukyuan language spoken in the Amami Islands south of Kyà «shà «. The southern variety of the Setouchi township may be a distinct language more closely related to Okinawan than it is to northern à Âshima.
As Amami does not have recognition within Japan as a language, it is officially known as the .
The number of native speakers is uncertain, but they are predominantly elderly. It is estimated that there are approximately 10,000 speakers of the Northern dialect and approximately 2,000 speakers of the Southern (Setouchi) dialect. The Japanese government, via the Ministry of Education, is implementing measures to protect these endangered languages.
Linguists mostly agree on the validity of the AmamiâÂÂOkinawan languages as a family. The subdivisions of AmamiâÂÂOkinawan, however, remain a matter of scholarly debate, with two major hypotheses:
The two-subdivision hypothesis is convenient for discussing the modern languages since the posited linguistic boundary corresponds to the centuries-old administrative boundary that today separates Kagoshima and Okinawa Prefectures. In addition, several isoglosses do group Northern and Southern Amami together. In Amami, word-medial is changed to or even dropped when it is surrounded by , or . This can rarely be observed in Okinawan. Japanese becomes in Amami and in Okinawan.
The three-subdivision hypothesis is more phylogenetically-oriented. A marked isogloss is the vowel systems. Japanese language corresponds to in Northern Amami à Âshima while it was merged into in Southern Amami à Âshima through Okinawan.
The vowel system-based classification is not without complication. The northern three communities of Kikai Island share the seven-vowel system with Amami à Âshima and Tokunoshima to the south, while the rest of Kikai falls in with Okinoerabu and Yoron even further south. Based on other evidence, however, Karimata (2000) and Lawrence (2011) tentatively group Kikai dialects together.
Amami à Âshima can be divided into Northern Amami à Âshima and Southern Amami à Âshima despite conflicting patterns of isoglosses. The distribution of Southern Amami à Âshima roughly corresponds to Setouchi Town, including offshore islands. The rest of the main island speaks Northern Amami à Âshima.
Shibata et al. (1984) takes a lexicostatistic approach to subgrouping Northern Amami à Âshima dialects:
In addition, Sani, a small community on a peninsula at the northern tip of the island, is known to have distinct phonology.
Based on phonetic and lexical evidence, Shibata et al. (1984) subdivide Southern Amami à Âshima into
reflecting the administrative divisions during the Edo period. While Uke Island belonged to the Nishi Magiri district, its dialect is closer to that of Higashi Magiri.
Southern Amami à Âshima contrasts with Northern Amami à Âshima in its final unreleased consonants. For example, "shrimp" is in à Âshama (Southern) and in Tatsugà  (Northern); "blade" is in à Âshama and in Tatsugà Â.
According to Osada Suma (1902âÂÂ1998), the dialect of Yamatohama, Yamato Village of Amami à Âshima had for 'language', for 'island language' (i.e. Amami à Âshima) and for the language of mainland Japan (i.e. Japanese). Another term, shimaguchi , is absent from Osada's dictionary. According to Kurai Norio (b. 1923), a local historian from Amami à Âshima, shimaguchi contrasted with Yamatoguchi, while shimayumuta was associated with accentual and intonational differences among various shima (villages). Ebara Yoshimori (1905âÂÂ1988), a folklorist from Naze, Amami à Âshima, conjectured that shimaguchi was of relatively recent origin, possibly made through analogy with Yamatoguchi. He thought that the dialect of one's home community was better referred to as .
Historically, vowel-initial words acquired an epenthetic glottal stop. When *wo and *we later became and without an initial glottal stop, the glottal stop elsewhere became phonemic. When still later initial vowels were elided, an initial glottal stop merged with the following consonant, establishing a series of "glottalized" consonants. While the nasals are truly glottalized, the "glottalized" stops are merely tenuis , contrasting with the default aspirated stops .
In the southern Shodon dialect, the consonants occur at the end of a word or syllable, as in 'neck', 'cherry blossom' and 'well'. Other dialects are similar. Final consonants are usually the result of eliding high front vowels. Elision is partly conditioned by pitch accent. In Shodon dialect, for example, the noun with accent classes 2.1 and 2.2 are realized as (water, 2.1) and (stone, 2.2) while 2.3-5 nouns retain final vowels, e.g. (ear, 2.3), (needle, 2.4) and (spring, 2.5).
There are seven distinct vowel qualities in Amami à Âshima, in addition to a phonemic distinction between long and short vowels and in some dialects oral and nasal vowels.
and are generally transcribed "ï" and "ë" in the literature.
derives from *e and merges with after alveolar consonants. mostly derives from a merger of *ae and *ai, and so is usually long. In several northern dialects, the nasal vowels developed from the loss of a word-medial :
Kasarisani dialect has 11 oral and nasal vowels, while Sani dialect adds long vowels for a total of 18, the largest inventory of any Ryukyuan languages.