The Miyakoan language is a diverse dialect cluster spoken in the Miyako Islands, located southwest of Okinawa. The combined population of the islands is about 52,000. Miyakoan is a Southern Ryukyuan language, most closely related to Yaeyama. The number of competent native speakers is not known; as a consequence of Japanese language policy which refers to the language as the Miyako dialect, reflected in the education system, people below the age of 60 tend to not use the language except in songs and rituals, and the younger generation mostly uses Japanese as their first language. Miyakoan is notable among the Japonic languages in that it allows non-nasal syllable-final consonants, something not found in most Japonic languages.
Variants
The most divergent variant is that of Tarama Island, the farthest island away. The other variants cluster as Ikema–Irabu and Central Miyako. Given the low degree of mutual intelligibility, Tarama language is sometimes considered a distinct language in its own right. An illustrative lexeme is the name of the plant Alocasia. This varies as Central Miyako , Ikema, Irabu , Tarama.
Phonology
The description here is mostly based on the Ōgami variant, the Central Miyakoan variant of the smallest of the Miyako islands, from Pellard. Central Miyakoan variants do not have pitch accent; therefore, they are of ikkei type. Tarama distinguishes accent on the phonological word, e.g.,,,
Vowels
There are five vowels.
i~ɪ
ɨ~ɯ u~ʊ
ɛ
ɑ
is truly unrounded, unlike the compressed Japanese u. It is centralized after. is rounded normally, but varies as. varies from to. Numerous vowel sequences occur, and long vowels are treated as sequences of identical vowels, keeping the inventory at five. Historical *i and *u centralized and merged to as *e and *o rose to /i/ and /u/. The blade of the tongue in is close to the alveolar ridge, and this feature has been inaccurately described as "apical". In certain environments rises beyond vowel space to syllabic after and and, in variants that have voiced stops, to after and : Ōgami vowels other than are not subject to devoicing next to unvoiced consonants the way Japanese high vowels are. Sequences of phonetic consonants have been analyzed by Pellard as being phonemically consonantal as well.
Consonants
In Ōgami there are nine consonants, without a voicing contrast.
Bilabial
Alveolar
Velar
Nasal
Plosive
Tap
Fricative
Approximant
The plosives tend to be somewhat aspirated initially and voiced medially. There are maybe a dozen words with optionally voiced initial consonants, such as babe ~ pape and gakspstu ~ kakspstu 'glutton', but Pellard suggests they may be loans. may be spirantized before : kaina 'arm', a꞊ka 'I '. is at the end of a word, and assimilates to succeeding consonants before another consonant. When final geminates, it becomes ; compare tin 'silver' with tinnu 'silver '. It tends to devoice after and., on the other hand, does not assimilate and appears finally unchanged, as in mku 'right', mta 'earth', and im 'sea'. is labiodental, not bilabial, and palatalizes to before the front vowels : pssi 'cold'. Some speakers insert an epenthetic between and in what would otherwise be a sequence thereof, as in ansi 'thus'. is clearly labiodental as well and tends to become a fricative when emphasized or when geminated, as in 'calf'. It can be syllabic, as can all sonorants in Ōgami: vv 'to sell'. Final contrasts with the high back vowels: 'snake', 'stick', 'fly' are accusative with the clitic -u. Various sequences of consonants occur, and long consonants are bimoraic, so they are analyzed as consonant sequences as well. These can be typologically unusual: Geminate plosives do not occur, apart from a single morpheme, the quotative particle tta. There are a few words with no voiced sounds at all : The contrast between a voiceless syllable and a voiced vowel between voiceless consonants can be seen in kff puskam 'I want to make ', ff꞊nkɑi 'to꞊the.comb', and paks꞊nu꞊tu 'bee꞊'. There is a contrast between ff꞊mɑi 'comb꞊' and ffu꞊mɑi 'shit꞊'. With tongue twisters, speakers do not insert schwas or other voiced sounds to aid in pronunciation: The minimal word is either VV, VC, or CC, as in aa 'millet', ui 'over', is 'rock', ff 'comb'. There are no V or CV words; however, CCV and CVV words are found, as shown above. Syllabification is difficult to analyze, especially in words such as usnkai 'cow-' and saiafn 'carpenter-'.
