The is a dialect of Japanese spoken in Wakayama and southern Mie prefectures. It is also called the in Wakayama.
The Kishu dialect is a member of the Kansai dialect group and is spoken in the area corresponding to the former Kii Province.
Classification Linguist Minoru Umegaki classified the Kishu dialect as a part of the Kansai dialect group of Western Japanese, more specifically the Southern Kansai dialect. It shares this subgroup with the dialects of southern Nara Prefecture and eastern Mie Prefecture. It has been noted for possessing many archaic and uncommon features present in its phonology, syntax and vocabulary that are even more pronounced than those of the central Kansai region dialects. This is believed to be due to the travel-hindering mountainous terrain of the area, as well as its historical isolation from any major routes that connected eastern and western Japan.
Sub-divisions The Kishu dialect within Wakayama Prefecture can be further divided into the Kihoku, Kichu and Kinan sub-dialects, as proposed by Eichi Murauchi in 1982. The Kichu sub-dialect and in particular the dialect around Tanabe retain Nidan verb conjugation as well as an older Keihan-style pitch accent. In contrast, the dialect of Higashimuro within the Kinan sub-dialect and areas close to Mie Prefecture possess a Tarui-style pitch accent as well as a more unique local variation. The various sub-divisions of the dialect are shown below.
Kishu dialect in Wakayama Prefecture
Kihoku Washi sub-dialect - Wakayama city, Kainan, Kaiso district (excluding Misato) Naga sub-dialect - Naga district (modern-day Kinokawa and Iwade save for a few small areas) Ito sub-dialect - Ito district; including Hashimoto but excluding Hanazono and parts of Koya and Katsuragi
Kichu Flatlands sub-dialect – Various towns and cities including: Arida, Hirokawa, Inami and Minabe Interior sub-dialect – Various towns and villages including: Shimizu, Miyama and Ryujin
Kinan Nishimuro sub-dialect Nishimuro flatlands – Including but not limited to: Tanabe, Shirahama and Kamitonda Nishimuro interior – Including but not limited to: Nakahechi, Oto and parts of Susami Higashimuro sub-dialect Higashimuro flatlands – Including but not limited to: Shingu, parts of Nachikatsuura and Taiji. Higashimuro interior – Including but not limited to: Hongu, Kitayama and Kumanogawa.
Within Mie Prefecture, the dialect can be further divided into Kitamuro and Minamimuro sub-dialects, as shown below.
Kishu dialect in Mie Prefecture
Kitamuro sub-dialect – Owase, Kihoku and Taiki.
Minamimuro sub-dialect – Kumano and Minamimuro district.
Phonology The Kishu dialect possesses phonological traits that are common in Kansai dialects. For example, monomoraic words are lengthened to two mora and long u (う) sounds are shortened. For example, omouta (思うた I thought (Western Japanese)) is said omota (思た) and akaunaru (赤うなる become red) is pronounced akonaru (あこなる).
Diphthong merging Diphthong merging occurs in certain parts of the Kishu dialect area. Predominantly in southern Wakayama Prefecture, the diphthong ai (あい) merges to a long a (あぁ) sound. E.g., mizukusai (水臭い watery) is pronounced mizukusaa (水臭ぁ). In the north-easterly parts of the dialect area, ai instead becomes a long e (えぇ). E.g., nai (ない there is not) is said nee (ねぇ). Among the coastal districts of the southern dialect area, ai is merged to a long i (い) sound, so that the soft interrogative sentence-ending particle kai (かい) is pronounced as kii (きぃ) and nai is said nii (にぃ). Across much of the dialect area, the diphthong ie (いえ) is merged to a long e sound, producing pronunciations like meeru (めぇる) instead of mieru (みえる to be able to see) and keeru (けぇる) instead of kieru (きえる to disappear). The diphthongs oi (おい) and ui (うい) do not experience merging, however. In Wakayama Prefecture, unlike in standard Japanese, the diphthong ei (えい) is not always merged to a long e sound. For example, sensei (せんせい teacher) has its final i clearly pronounced. This is shared with fairly distant dialects such some Izu Islands dialects and the Kyushu dialect group.
Consonants The consonant sounds s, r and w may be omitted in the Kishu dialect. For example, the s in okoshita (起こした I woke him/her up) would be dropped to become okoita (起こいた), the r in bakkari (ばっかり nothing but) would be lost to become bakkai (ばっかい) and the w in wata (わた cotton plant) would be omitted and said ata (あた). When occurring directly after a shi (し) sound, a t may be replaced with an s sound, a trait scattered across the Kansai region in several pockets. For example, ashita (あした tomorrow) would be said ashisa (あしさ) (aisa (あいさ) is also possible) and hanashita (話した spoke) would become hanaisa (話いさ). Sporadic geminate consonant (small tsu (っ)) insertion in certain words can also be seen. For example, fukai (ふかい deep) is pronounced fukkai (ふっかい) and hoka ni (ほかに also) is said hokka ni (ほっかに).
Inter-pronunciation of za, da and ra Speakers of the Kishu dialect in Wakayama Prefecture are noted for extensive use of the so-called za-da-ra henkan (ザダラ変換), which refers to the frequent inter-pronunciation of the mora located in the za (ざ) column, the da (だ) column the ra (ら) column. Most typically, words containing a mora from the za column will have that sound replaced with the corresponding mora in the da column, whilst words with a mora from the da column will in turn be replaced with the corresponding mora in the ra column, with the vice versa also possible but less common. The table below outlines this phenomenon, with the arrows indicating the direction of phonetic change. {| class="wikitable" |Za column|Da column|Ra column|Example|- |Za (ざ) → |← Da (だ)→ |← Ra (ら) |Karada (からだ body) → kadara (かだら) |- |Ji (じ) → |← Di (ぢ)→ |← Ri (り)
|Zu (ず) → |← Dzu (づ) → |← Ru (る)
|Ze (ぜ) → |← De (で) → |← Re (れ) |Zenzen (ぜんぜん not at all) → denden (でんでん) |- |Zo (ぞ) → |← Do (ど) → |← Ro (ろ) |Douzou (どうぞう bronze statue) → doudou (どうどう) |} Za-da-ra inter-pronouncing is common across the Kansai region but is considered most striking in the Kishu dialect. The origins of this phenomenon are thought to be that voiced s-starting mora (aka. za, ji, etc.) are phonetically close to affricatives (e.g., dza, di, etc.), which may then lose their fricative element to become plosive. E.g., za → dza → da. In turn, the plosive d-starting sounds may have their plosive element weakened to become closer to an r sound. E.g., da → ra. All in all, this produces the following interaction:
za → [morphs to affricative] → dza → [loses affricative, becomes plosive] → da → [weakened plosive] → ra
The extent to which this occurs depends on the individual speaker, and is also influenced by whether a dialect speaker is speaking casually or more formally.
Yotsugana There is some debate over whether the yotsugana (四つ仮名) are distinguished in the Kishu dialect. Some have indicated that they are fully distinguished in the southern part of Wakayama Prefecture, with the existence of both ji (じ) and di (ぢ) and zu (ず) and dzu (づ). Research from 1962 by Eiichi Murauchi, however, suggested that although this distinction once existed, it had already vanished from the dialect.
Pitch accent The pitch accent of the Kishu dialect within Wakayama Prefecture is almost unanimously Keihan in style, with traditional characteristics even older than those of Kyoto, Kobe or Osaka remaining in the Tanabe area (except for the former town of Hongu). In contrast, a stretch of land from Shingu in Wakayama as far as Kihoku in Mie Prefecture is renowned as having the most complex distribution of pitch accents in Japan. The different pitch accents found in the Kishu dialect and their areas of usage are shown below.
Keihan-style – Spoken across all of Wakayama Prefecture except for Shingu, Hongu and Kitayama. Within the Shingu area, everywhere south of Miwasaki also possesses a Keihan-style pitch accent. In certain areas including Nachikatsuura, words that usually have a rising pitch on their first mora in the Keihan-style pitch accent may lose this rise. For example, kaze ga (かぜが the wind is…) would be pronounced kaze ga (かぜが).
Tarui-style (type C) – Spoken in Hongu, with a similar version used in the central parts of Shingu.
Kumano-style – Spoken in the southern part of Owase, the coastal part of Kumano, Mihama, Kiho and Takada. According to Haruhiko Kindaichi, this pitch accent is in fact two separate accents: the Kinomoto-style and Atawa-style pitch accents. Yukihiro Yamaguchi instead classified this two as the same.
‘Keihan-esque’-style – A pitch accent with similarities to the standard Keihan-style which is further divided into three sub-accents: the Nagashima-style spoken in Kihoku, the Owase-style spoken in the northern part of Owase and the Furue-style spoken in Furue, Owase.
Nairin Tokyo-style – A pitch accent related to the Tokyo-style spoken in southern Nara Prefecture that is spoken in the mountains of Kumano and Kitayama.
Grammar
Verbs and i-adjectives Nidan conjugation of certain Ichidan verbs remains in the central parts of Wakayama Prefecture, particularly around Gobo and Tanabe, although which verbs are still considered Nidan varies depending on the area. There are also some verbs found in the Kishu dialect which do not exist in standard Japanese. For example, atakuru (あたくる) is used with the same meaning as ranbo suru (乱暴する to be violent) and orayuru (おらゆる) is an equivalent to sasaeru (支える to support).
In and around Ito district and Hashimoto, ru-ending Ichidan verbs are conjugated as if they are Godan verbs. As an example, for the negative form of verbs (usually -nai stem + n (ん) elsewhere in the dialect area), min (見ん do not see) becomes miran (見らん) and taben (食べん do not eat) becomes taberan (食べらん).
Generally, the conjunctive form of i-adjectives (-ku, -く) experience the insertion of a u (う) sound. E.g., akaku nai (赤くない) becomes akau nai (赤うない). However, when the word stem contains an a (あ) vowel sound, for example takai (たかい tall / high), the mora within which the a sound is found may morph into either a long o (おう) or long a (あぁ) sound. In the case of takai, this would make the standard Japanese takaku nai (たくない not high) become takou nai (たこうない) or takaa nai (たかぁない) as opposed to takau nai (たかうない).
Verbs of existence・Progressive and perfective aspects In the coastal parts of Wakayama Prefecture as well as the plains alongside the Kinokawa River and in Minamimuro in Mie Prefecture, the verb aru (ある there is) is used for both living and non-living things, as opposed to iru (居る there is) for living things and aru for only non-living things. For example, sensei aru kai? (先生あるかい Is the teacher there?) as opposed to sensei iru kai (先生居るかい) or koko ni sensei wa nai (ここに先生はない He/she isn’t here). In the mountainous areas of Wakayama Prefecture, oru (おる) may be used in place of iru (いる) to indicate the existence of living things, and depending on the area, oru may also be used for non-living things. In recent years, however, usage of iru has been gradually spreading from the Kihoku area.