| Also Known As: Yonaguni language
Description:
Yonaguni (与那国語) (Dunan ドゥナン) is a language spoken by around 1800 people on the island of Yonaguni, in Ryukyu Islands, just east of Taiwan. It is a Ryukyuan language, most closely related to Yaeyama. ISO 639-3 code is yoi.
The Yonaguni language, as well as Miyako, Yaeyama, and other Southern Ryukyuan languages, /b/ is cognate with Classical Japanese /w/ and Modern Japanese /ɰ/ (or zero in some dialects). Yonaguni also has /d/ where Japanese and other Ryukyuan languages have /j/.
Thus, for example, Yonaguni /dami(-n)/ ('to hurt, to ache') is cognate with the archaic or dialectal Japanese verb /jame(-ru)/ ('to hurt, to ache') rather than with Japanese /itam(-u)/ (same meaning). Yonaguni /d/ is probably a recent development from an earlier */j/, however, judging from the fact that even the */j/ in loanwords of Sinitic origin is pronounced as /d/ by speakers of the Yonaguni language.
Yonaguni language also exhibits intervocalic voicing of plosives...... full article at Wikipedia |
