Amami language

Amami language
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Amami_language".

Amami is a language spoken by around 130,000 people in the Amami Islands south of Kyūshū. It is a Ryukyuan language, most closely related to Okinawan. ISO 639-3 code for Northern dialect is ryn, for Southern dialect is ams.

Phonology

Consonants in Amami:

content

	Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal	Place- less
Stops and affricates	p pj b bj		t d	tʃ tʃj		k kj kw g gj gw	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 in Amami:

Short vowels:

Closed: i ï u
Half-open: (e) ë o
Open: a

Long vowels:

Closed: iː ïː uː
Half-open: (eː) ëː oː
Open: aː

Dialects

It is usually classified into the following dialect groupings:

North
- Kikai
- Northern Oshima
- Southern Oshima (including Kakeroma, Uke and Yoro)
- Tokunoshima
South
- Erabu
- Yoron

Erabu and Yoron are often alternatively classified as dialects of the Kunigami (Northern Okinawan) language.

External links

Northern and Southern Amami-Oshima on Ethnologue

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