The small group of , natively called , are, depending on classification, either one of the most divergent forms of Japanese, or comprise a branch of Japonic languages (alongside mainland Japanese, Northern Ryukyuan, and Southern Ryukyuan).Thomas Pellard. The comparative study of the Japonic languages. Approaches to endangered languages in Japan and Northeast Asia: Description, documentation and revitalization, National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, Aug 2018, Tachikawa, Japan. ffhal-01856152 Hachijō is currently spoken on two of the Izu Islands south of Tokyo (Hachijō-jima and the smaller Aogashima) as well as on the Daitō Islands of Okinawa Prefecture, which were settled from Hachijō-jima in the Meiji era. It was also previously spoken on the island of Hachijō-kojima, which is now abandoned. Based on the criterion of mutual intelligibility, Hachijō may be considered a distinct Japonic language, rather than a dialect of Japanese.
Hachijō is considered to be 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'yōshū and the Fudoki of Hitachi Province.
Hachijō 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.Masayoshi Shibatani, 1990. The Languages of Japan, p. 207.
Hachijō is a moribund language with a small and dwindling population of primarily elderly speakers. Since at least 2009, the town of Hachijō has supported efforts to educate its younger generations about the language through primary school classes, karuta games, and Hachijō-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.
Classification and dialects The Izu Islands dialects of Hachijō are classified into eight groups according to the various historical villages within Hachijō Subprefecture. On Hachijō-jima, these are Ōkagō, Mitsune, Nakanogō, Kashitate, and Sueyoshi; on Hachijō-kojima, these were Utsuki and Toriuchi; and the village of Aogashima is its own group. The dialects of Ōkagō and Mitsune are very similar, as are those of Nakanogō and Kashitate, while the Aogashima and Sueyoshi dialects are distinct from these two groups. The Utsuki and Toriuchi dialects have not been subcategorized within Hachijō, though the Toriuchi dialect has been noted to be very similar to the Ōkagō dialect in phonology. The dialect(s) of the Daitō Islands also remain uncategorized.
The Hachijō 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:
Proto-Japonic Proto-Japanese Eastern Old Japanese Hachijō language Ōkagō & Mitsune dialects (Downhill dialects) Nakanogō & Kashitate dialects (Uphill dialects) Sueyoshi dialect Aogashima dialect Central Old Japanese (including Western Old Japanese) Japanese language Proto-Ryukyuan Ryukyuan languages
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 Hachijō-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 Hachijō-jima are, like its villages, often referred as being or . The villages of Ōkagō and Mitsune in the northwest are Downhill, while the villages of Nakanogō, Kashitate, and Sueyoshi in the south are Uphill—though 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 Hachijō as a whole is unknown, the numbers of remaining speakers of each dialect are also unknown. Since the abandonment of Hachijō-kojima in 1969, some speakers of the Utsuki and Toriuchi dialects have moved to Hachijō-jima and continue to speak the Hachijō 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.山田平右エ門 (Yamada Heiuemon), 2010. 消えていく島言葉～八丈語の継承と存続を願って～ (A Disappearing Island Language ~Wishing for the Inheritance and Survival of the Hachijō Language~), pp. 181–182.
Phonology Phonotactics Like Standard Japanese, Hachijō 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.
Hachijō contrasts three syllable weights depending on their rimes:
Light syllables end in a short vowel with no coda (e.g., ko). Heavy syllables have either a short vowel with a coda (e.g., koN), or a long vowel with no coda (e.g., koo). Superheavy syllables have both a long vowel and a coda (e.g., kooN).
Unlike light and heavy syllables, superheavy syllables are strongly avoided in Hachijō, 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., ⟨kogo͡oN⟩ or ⟨kogoN⟩ "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).
Vowels There are five short vowels found in all varieties of Hachijō:
+Short Vowels in Hachijō Front Central Back Close Mid Open
Many of Hachijō’s 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 dialectsʼ long vowels:
+Long Vowel Correspondences This Article ii uu aa ee ei oo ou aĭ uĭ oĭ Kashitate Nakanogō Sueyoshi Mitsune Ōkagō Toriuchi Utsuki Aogashima Minami DaitōNakai Seiichi, Daniel Long, et al. 南洋プランテーション社会における方言—南大東島のフィールドワークをもとに— (Dialect in a South Seas Plantation Society: From Fieldwork on Minami Daito-jima). 地域言語 第15号 (Regional Linguistics, issue 15), pp. 51–60. 地域言語研究会 (Regional Language Research Group), 26 Oct 2003. Toyama, Japan.
The long vowels aĭ, uĭ, and oĭ are comparatively rare, arising mainly from contractions.
Lastly, there are a very small number of discourse markers that contain nasal vowels, such as oĩ "Oh my!" and hõõ "Oh?" or "Oho!"
Consonants Hachijō 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 .
+Consonant Phonemes in Hachijō Bilabial Coronal Velar Laryngeal Nasal Plosive /Affricate Voiceless Voiced Fricative Tap Approximant Special morae , /Q/
Phonological processes
In addition to the variations described above, Hachijō also exhibits a handful of other conditioned sound alternations:
Affrication of and 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.
Palatalization of coronal consonants When followed by the vowel (short or long), or when combined with the medial glide , the coronal nasal n as well as all coronal obstruents—namely, t, d, c, z, s—change 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 溝 mizo "ditch."
Vowel coalescence Hachijō 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:
-e -i -o -u -wa a- ee ee oo oo awa, oo e- ei ei ei ei ewa, ja i- je ii jo ju iwa, ja o- ei ei ou ou owa, oo u- ii ii uu uu uwa, uu
Noteworthy irregularities or exceptions include:
a-wo → ou, seen in the inflection of Class 1.1Aʼ verbs whose stems end in ...aw-, such as utaw- "to sing" → attributive *utaw-o → utou. e-wa → a, seen on personal pronouns with the topic-marking -wa in some dialects (ware-wa → wara). o-wa → a, seen in the verbal inflection of the stative -ar- (*-arowa → -ara), copula dara (*darowa → dara), new-type negative -Nn(ak)- (*-Nnakowa → -Nnaka), etc.
And although these rules are usually followed etymologically as well, there are some exceptions:
*uwa → a, seen in words like *kuwa → ka "hoe" (related to Standard Japanese 鍬 kuwa). *ie → ei, seen in several Class 2 verbs such as *kierowa → keirowa "to disappear" (related to Old Japanese 消ゆ ki1yu, ki1ye-). *ue → ei, seen in words like *suerowa → seirowa "to set" (related to Standard Japanese 据える sueru). *ui → ei, seen in words like *uttui → uQcei "the day before yesterday" (related to Standard Japanese 一昨日 ototoi). *ei → ee, seen in a single word: *tame(s)ite → tameete "attempting" (participle form of tamesowa "to attempt," related to Japanese 試す tamesu). *owa → ou, seen in a single word: *kowasowa → kousowa "to destroy" (related to Japanese 壊す kowasu).
Coalescence can be blocked by leveling and reversed or altered by influence from other dialects or mainland Japanese.
Non-coalescence 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 aĭ, oĭ, or uĭ 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 waĭra "we" (from warera) and nomaraĭdou "despite drinking" (from nomararedou). The frequency of such contracted forms depends on the dialect and individual.