Hachijō language

Uncommon card · No. 164792

The small group of Hachijō dialects (八丈方言, Hachijō hōgen), natively called Shima Kotoba (島言葉; [ɕima kotoba], "island speech"), are, depending on classification, either one of the most divergent forms of Japanese, or a separate Japonic language (alongside mainland Japanese, Northern Ryukyuan, and Southern Ryukyuan). Hachijō is currently spoken on two of the Izu Islands south of Tokyo (Hachijō-jima and the smaller Aogashima) as well as on the Daitō Islands of Okinawa Prefecture, which were settled from Hachijō-jima in the Meiji era. It was also previously spoken on the island of Hachijō-kojima, which is now abandoned. Based on the criterion of mutual intelligibility, Hachijō may be considered a distinct Japonic language, rather than a dialect of Japanese. Hachijō is considered to be a descendant of Eastern Old Japanese, retaining several unique grammatical and phonetic features recorded in dialect poems from Eastern Japan ("Azuma") in the 8th-century Man'yōshū and the Fudoki of Hitachi Province...

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