Japonic languages

The Japonic languages are a language family believed to descend from a common language known as Proto-Japonic.

The Japonic languages are:

• Japanese languages (日本語)
  • Eastern Japanese (now represented only partially by the speech of Aogashima, Tokyo; Hachijojima, Tokyo; Minamidaito, Okinawa; Kitadaito, Okinawa; and a few other small islands)
  • Western Japanese (represented by all Mainland Japanese dialects)
    • Eastern Western Japanese dialects, including most dialects east of the Kanto region
    • Western Western Japanese dialects, including most dialects west of the Kansai region.

• Ryukyuan languages (琉球語)
  • Amami (奄美語)
    • Northern dialect
      • Tanegashima dialect
      • Yakushima dialect
      • Northern Oshima dialect
    • Southern Amami dialect
      • Southern Oshima dialect
      • Yoron dialect
  • Okinawan (沖縄語)
    • Kunigami dialect (or Northern Okinawan)
    • Ie dialect
    • South-Central dialect (or Standard Okinawan)
      • Mainland dialect
      • Shimajiri dialect (the linguistic affiliations of the Shimajiri dialects are uncertain, but are often included in the Southern dialect because the Shimajiri region is often considered to be part of that region)
  • Miyako (宮古語)
    • Miyako dialect
    • Irabu dialect
  • Yaeyama (八重山語)
    • Ishigaki dialect
    • Iriomote dialect
    • Taketomi dialect
  • Yonaguni (与那国語)

Origins

There is no universally-accepted concrete proof of the relationship between Japonic languages and other languages, but there are a variety of theories each backed up with a varying degree of scientific evidence.

• Japonic languages are a member of the Altaic language family. Other languages in this group include Mongolian, Tungusic, Turkish, and (according to most proponents) Korean. Evidence for this theory lies in the fact that like Turkish and Korean, Japanese is an agglutinative language.
• Japonic languages are a creole language. Phonological similarities and geographical proximity to Austronesian languages have led to the theory that Japanese may be a kind of creole, with an Altaic substratum and an Austronesian superstratum, or vice versa.
• Japonic languages are related to the extinct language of ancient Goguryeo in Korea. Some go further to include both Japonic and Goguryeo in a larger hypothetical language family called the Buyeo languages that would also include scarcely-attested extinct languages associated with ancient Buyeo and Baekje.
• Japonic languages are related to modern Korean based primarily on near-identical grammar, but there is scarce lexical similarity between the two; supporters of the Buyeo languages theory generally do not include modern Korean as part of that family.
• Japonic languages are related to the Dravidian languages of South India. Evidence for this theory is that the Japonic and Dravidian languages are agglutinative languages and also have similar phonetics, vocabularies, and retroflex consonants.

As far as lexical studies have shown, the modern living non-Japonic language with the closest lexical similarity to any of the Japonic languages is Uyghur, a Turkic language.

In the wake of these theories, some argue that the similarity between all these languages is merely a sprachbund, and that the attested similarities between some or all of these languages are simply the result of their cultures being close geographic neighbors on the Asian mainland over the course of millennia.

External links

• Ethnologue report for the Japanese language family