AHC:Other Japonic Languages recognized in Japan

Is it possible for the Japonic languages aside from Central Japanese to be actively recognized as languages in Japan since the dialects West of Kansai and East of Kanto are as different to standard/central japanese as Asturian and Portuguese is different from Spanish and also a majority these languages are said to use F instead of H for words like Hideyoshi, which is pronounced as Fideyoshi instead before the Central Japanese dialects influence became widespread like during the time when the Portuguese and Spanish missionaries arrived, for some reason Tohoku-ben is very healthy and there is one person who is trying to make an orthography for that dialect/language and that is Harutsugu Yamaura, the other Japonic languages like Kyushu-Ben and Kagoshima-Ben are facing a slow erosion similar to what is happening to Galician in Spain and worse extinction like Hachijo and Okinawan.
 
The issue (if you can call it that) is that Japan have been, at least on paper, unified for ages and practially everyone (not on Hokkaido, which were first colonized in the 19th century) paid at least lip service to the Emperor in Kyoto... and rather than using Asturian and Portugese, i'd probably use High/Low German and their denominations, since thats probably a more apt comparison
 

elkarlo

Banned
Oh wow hachijo Ben. I went there and read about it. Very obscure.

At work. Will give you a reply later. as the dialects of Japan are fascinating. Do you speak Japanese by any chance? I speak a bit of the Osaka ben and standard. My wife is from miyagi and I can barely understand her parents. It is dramatically different
 
Oh wow hachijo Ben. I went there and read about it. Very obscure.

At work. Will give you a reply later. as the dialects of Japan are fascinating. Do you speak Japanese by any chance? I speak a bit of the Osaka ben and standard. My wife is from miyagi and I can barely understand her parents. It is dramatically different
Yeah, since Tohoku-ben was quite closer to Central Japanese and there are more similarities between Central Japanese and Tohoku but it is not totally inteligible but there are phonetic divergences between Tohoku and Central Japanese such as Vowel and Consonant Inventory as well as Grammar.

No but there was also a debate before about that since I read alot about Japanese linguistics before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ryukyuan_languages
 
Last edited:

elkarlo

Banned
Oh wow hachijo Ben. I went there and read about it. Very obscure.

At work. Will give you a reply later. as the dialects of Japan are fascinating. Do you speak Japanese by any chance? I speak a bit of the Osaka ben and standard. My wife is from miyagi and I can barely understand her parents. It is dramatically different
 
Oh wow hachijo Ben. I went there and read about it. Very obscure.

At work. Will give you a reply later. as the dialects of Japan are fascinating. Do you speak Japanese by any chance? I speak a bit of the Osaka ben and standard. My wife is from miyagi and I can barely understand her parents. It is dramatically different

I don't speak japanese but I read linguistic journals about for a while the other major Japanese Dialect groups aside from the Central Japanese or Standard Japanese which includes Kansai-ben and Kanto-ben excluding dialects like Tohoku ben, Kyushu ben and Umpaku ben, some people said that the Japonic Dialect continuum is like Scandanavian continuum or German-Dutch continuum.
 
Last edited:

elkarlo

Banned
I don't speak japanese but I read linguistic journals about for a while the other major Japanese Dialect groups aside from the Central Japanese or Standard Japanese which includes Kansai-ben and Kanto-ben excluding dialects like Kyushu ben and Umpaku ben, some people said that the Japonic Dialect continuum is like Scandanavian continuum or German-Dutch continuum.
I think what would be needed for other dialects to survive is another large city in Japan. Outside of Tokyo and Kyoto/Osaka/Kobe there aren't any cities large enough to sustain a distinct dialect via local media and culture.

Honestly, the words and even the pronunciations are co vastly different that they are almost separate languages. I would agree with Dutch German, easily.
 
Their are other Japonic languages recognized in Japan IOTL, the Ryukyuan languages.
 
Last edited:
I think what would be needed for other dialects to survive is another large city in Japan. Outside of Tokyo and Kyoto/Osaka/Kobe there aren't any cities large enough to sustain a distinct dialect via local media and culture.

Honestly, the words and even the pronunciations are co vastly different that they are almost separate languages. I would agree with Dutch German, easily.
What about Nagasaki, isn't it one of the Christian Cities in Japan perhaps we could have it become more prosperous by it having more tourism and missionary work it could make its dialect one of the prosperous dialects in Japan, and along Nagasaki there is Naha in Okinawa and Ezo...

perhaps I'll do something like that in my TL
 
Last edited:
Isn't it quickly dying out though? I bet it's hard to find anyone under 50 wbonspeaks it

No one's sure how many speakers their are, but the combined number is probably in the 100,000-300,000 area and declining.

That said, in Okinawa a Mixed/syncretic language developed from mixing Japanese and the Okinawan language along with a good deal of American English loanwords has become the primary language of the younger generations.
 
I am also interested in another scenario regarding Japanese and that is if the Central Japanese dialects not just have /p/ shift to [h] like they already did in the Middle Ages but later /pj/ becomes like certain Tohoku and Kanto-ben and /kj/ becomes [tS] like in Okinawan.
 
Last edited:

elkarlo

Banned
What about Nagasaki, isn't it one of the Christian Cities in Japan perhaps we could have it become more prosperous by it having more tourism and missionary work it could make its dialect one of the prosperous dialects in Japan, and along Nagasaki there is Naha in Okinawa and Ezo...

perhaps I'll do something like that in my TL

If trade via Nagasaki continues longer than IOTL then you may be able to keep it a cultural city.

That and after WWII the sea of japan side cities declined compared to the Pacific side due to lack of an empire and increased US trade
 
No one's sure how many speakers their are, but the combined number is probably in the 100,000-300,000 area and declining.

That said, in Okinawa a Mixed/syncretic language developed from mixing Japanese and the Okinawan language along with a good deal of American English loanwords has become the primary language of the younger generations.

Yes, it is declining at a more increased rate compared to the other dialects which are suffering linguistic erosion since the Unification of Japan...
 
Yes, it is declining at a more increased rate compared to the other dialects which are suffering linguistic erosion since the Unification of Japan...

It's interesting to think about regional languages under nationalism. Occitan in France essentially died, but Catalan in Spain is alive and well. Scots exists but is unrecognized as a true dialect, while regional variants of Chinese are considered many things by many people.

I never knew that there were large regional differences in what we consider "Japanese." Thanks for introducing me to this topic! :)

Cheers,
Ganesha
 
but Catalan in Spain is alive and well.

That's basically because it was only ever actively suppressed during the Francoist years, and had for the prior several centuries been guaranteed as a 'Historic Liberty' and in the Post-Franco era was Constitutionally protected (as with all other traditional minority languages) and had a portion of Spain actively supporting it the entire time.
 
Top