A What if Regarding the Japanese language

Is it possible for the Kyushu ben and Old Eastern Japanese to stay to be different as in stay as a different language instead of Kyushu-ben being in a process of being slowly eaten by Modern Japanese and Old Eastern Japanese already has been merged with what is now Modern Japanese completely , I know since Okinawan is considered as a separate language and Hachijo-ben which is very similar to the Old Eastern Japanese which survives in isolation in the Hachijo islands in Japan which is considered an endangered language as well.
 

scholar

Banned
Okinawan ranges from 72-80% of similarity in grammar, speech, and writing from Japanese. So, you could consider Okinawan just a different dialect of Japanese, rather than a separate language. So if Okinawan is a dialect, then the two languages of Japan were essentially dialects as well. I don't think that their separation can be maintained if the islands were to unite. :(
 
Okinawan ranges from 72-80% of similarity in grammar, speech, and writing from Japanese. So, you could consider Okinawan just a different dialect of Japanese, rather than a separate language. So if Okinawan is a dialect, then the two languages of Japan were essentially dialects as well. I don't think that their separation can be maintained if the islands were to unite. :(

The 72-80% similarity is misleading. Similarity here means that words can be traced to the same root and grammar patterns share the same structure. For all intents and purposes, Okinawan and other Ryukyuan languages are completely unintelligible to the average Japanese speaker as well as to speakers of other Ryukyuan languages. Classifying the Ryukyuan languages as dialects would be politically motivated for the most part, just as the Chinese languages (many of which are as divergent from Mandarin as Italian is from Spanish) are called dialects by the PRC government.

As for the OP's question, I don't think it is possible given that the surviving non-Japanese Japonic languages were preserved solely through their isolation from the mainland. By Kyushu ben, which dialect are you referring to? There are quite a few variants.
 
As for the OP's question, I don't think it is possible given that the surviving non-Japanese Japonic languages were preserved solely through their isolation from the mainland. By Kyushu ben, which dialect are you referring to? There are quite a few variants.

I mean Kyushu-ben as in the Kyushu dialects in general as a group and and the Old Eastern Japanese whose purest descendant is the Hachijo-Ben, how is it possible for them to survive as distinct from Mainstream Japanese even if they are minoritized distinct languages and not absorbed by Japanese, some Kyushu dialects specially the Kagoshima Ben retains many of it's distinct characteristics of Kyushu-ben but is in the process of being absorbed by Mainstream Japanese and Old Eastern Japanese had completely merged with Mainstream Japanese how is it possible to stop it? , I remember the same process happened between Castillan, Navarro-Aragonese(which is as complete as what happened to Old Eastern Japanese) and Astur-Leonese.
 

Sumeragi

Banned
Well, from my experience, the Hichiku (Western Kyushu) dialect and the South Gyeongsang dialect have a lot in common. Let's just say that Kyushu being part of or a puppet of a Korean dynasty would probably do the trick.
 
Well, from my experience, the Hichiku (Western Kyushu) dialect and the South Gyeongsang dialect have a lot in common. Let's just say that Kyushu being part of or a puppet of a Korean dynasty would probably do the trick.

I think the Ryukyu Kingdom traded more directly with China, or I may be wrong?
 
Well, from my experience, the Hichiku (Western Kyushu) dialect and the South Gyeongsang dialect have a lot in common. Let's just say that Kyushu being part of or a puppet of a Korean dynasty would probably do the trick.

Yes,that is true, the Western Kyushu dialects are similar to the Southern Gyeongsan dialects especially Tsushima-ben....
 
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Okinawan ranges from 72-80% of similarity in grammar, speech, and writing from Japanese. So, you could consider Okinawan just a different dialect of Japanese, rather than a separate language. So if Okinawan is a dialect, then the two languages of Japan were essentially dialects as well. I don't think that their separation can be maintained if the islands were to unite. :(

A language is just another word for a dialect, when it happens to have an international border around it. As mosodake points out, the best measure is intelligibility. In practice we call Spanish and Italian different languages, despite a great deal of overlap, despite the fact that the two are closer to each other than are, say, Venetian and Sicilian.

Regarding the opening post, I think it's well within the bounds of plausibility. If one can only establish the political separation of the islands on a centuries-long basis through the modern era, I've no doubt that different strains of Japanese would survive.
 
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They're not similar at all. Really, I wish you would stop saying nonsense without the knowledge.

I remember reading some PDF or Scientific studies that compare the Kyushuan dialects to the Satsuma-ben to Okinawan and Satsuma-ben shown more similarities in the PDF and in my conversations in Wiki, Amami, Okinawan and other Ryukyuan languages are similar to Satsuma-ben(Amami is more similar to Satsuma-ben than Okinawan being similar to Satsuma-ben, sorry for the typo) compared to the Standard Japanese but in reverse Satsuma-ben is more similar to the Standard Japanese than to the Okinawan or any Ryukyuan languages.

Another thing that is unusual about some Kyushuan dialects is that they have a native F phoneme, this was told to me by some person in Wikipedia.


This is my conversation in Wikipedia about this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ryukyuan_languages#Kagoshima_Ben_and_Ryukyuan
 
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IIRC some of the dialects more peripheral to the old cultural center of Kyoto (Most notably the aforementioned Satsuma dialect) are divergent enough from the standard that speakers of standardized Japanese can barely understand them. Still, as the saying goes a language is a dialect with an army and a navy, so to have it considered a language rather than a dialect a more separate political history may be required. Kyushu being a Kingdom under Chinese or Korean suzerainty until an alt-Meiji Restoration, like the Ryukyus were, could do it.
 
Do we know actually much on languages of past Korean peninsulas? what is tied to modern korean, and possible other families or groups?

Lot of debating it seems.
 
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