Amami language

Amami
しまゆむた (島口) Shimayumuta
Spoken in	Kagoshima Prefecture and Okinawa Prefecture, Japan
Region	Amami Islands
Native speakers	10,000 Northern, 1,800 Southern  (2004)
Language family	Japonic Ryukyuan Amami
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ryn – Macrolanguage individual codes: ryn – Northern Amami ams – Southern Amami

The Amami language (奄美語; Amami: しまゆむた (島口) Shimayumuta) is spoken in the Amami Islands south of Kyūshū. The number of competent native speakers is not known, but native speakers can be found mostly among old people—as a result of Japanese language policy, the younger generations speaks mostly Japanese as their first language. Amami is a Ryukyuan language, most closely related to Okinawan. It is sometimes considered two languages. The main dialects are as follows:

• Northern Amami
  • Northern Ōshima dialect
• Southern Amami
  • Southern Ōshima dialect
  • Yoron dialect (note: recent research confirms that this dialect belongs not to Amami but to Okinawa)

Phonology

Consonants

	Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal	Place- less
Stops and affricates	p pj    b bj		t    d	tʃ tʃj		k kj kw    ɡ ɡj ɡw	ʔ ʔj ʔw	Q
Flaps				ɺ̠ ɺ̠j
Fricatives		θ	s sj    z zj		çj	x xj	h hj hw
Nasals	m mj ʔm		n nj ʔn ʔnj					N
Approximants					j	w̜

Vowels

There are seven distinct vowels in Amami, in addition to a phonemic distinction between long and short vowels.

	Short			Long
	Front	Central	Back	Front	Central	Back
High	i	ɨ	u	iː	ɨː	uː
Mid	e	ɘ	o	eː	ɘː	oː
Low		a			aː

External links

• Northern and Southern Amami-Oshima on Ethnologue