Introduction to Hachijō, by Matt

Originally written for “Linguistic and Cultural Minorities Month” as celebrated on

the Discord server ‘Cave of Linguists’ in June 2022.

Geographical Situation
Hachijō is an endangered Japonic language native to the southern Izu Islands south
of Tōkyō, namely Hachijō-jima , Hachijō-kojima and Aogashima; it is also spoken by
some people on the islands of Kita-Daitō and Minami-Daitō, which were first settled
by a mix of pioneers from Hachijō-jima and from the Ryūkyūs in 1900-1904.

Here is a more zoomed-in map of the various islands (all to equal scale):
On Hachijō-jima, Hachijō-kojima, these are former villages (mura) which are now the
historical districts of Hachijō Town (Hachijō machi), and Aogashima is its own village
(Aogashima-mura); these are all administratively part of Hachijō Subprefecture
(Hachijō-shichō) within Tōkyō Metropolis.

Both of the Daitō Islands are villages (Kita-Daitō-son and Minami-Daitō-son) within the
Shimajiri District of Okinawa Prefecture.
Ancient History, and the Azuma Dialects
By my description of Hachijō as an “endangered Japonic language,” one might
expect that it would be a Ryūkyūan language, but this is actually not the case—it is
what one might call a “Japanesic language,” meaning that it is descended from Old
Japanese (OJ), from Proto-Japanese (PJ). Proto-Japanese is likewise descended from
the same common ancestor as Proto-Ryūkyūan (PR), this ancestor being called
Proto-Japonic (PJR).
The current consensus for the history of Japonic is that it was originally brought to
the Japanese archipelago during the late Yayoi Migrations by settlers from around
the Yellow Sea area. Southern/southwestern Korea is considered particularly likely
as their place of origin due to the presence of Japonic-looking elements in old place
names; Alexander Vovin has proposed that the Yayoi were an offshoot of the
Mumun Pottery culture.
The Yayoi first settled around the western tip of Honshū and the northern part of
Kyūshū, and it is estimated that Proto-Japonic started to diverge into Japanesic and
Ryūkyūan sometime around 300 BC – 200 AD. The Proto-Ryūkyūans stayed in
Kyūshū for almost another millennium, only migrating to the Ryūkyūs themselves
around the 10th-12th centuries AD. In contrast, the Japanesic speakers spread
eastward further and further, eventually consolidating into several “kingdoms” that
finally coalesced (variously by peace and by force) into the Yamato Kingdom, which
had established dominance over most of the Japanese mainland by the mid-6th
century AD.
Although much of Japanese history this period is focused on capital region (around
Nara) and regions west of it, Hachijō’s history instead begins in the east, in Azuma no
Kuni “the Eastern Provinces” (or just Azuma “the East”)—which corresponds to
modern Kantō, southeast Tōhoku, and eastern Chūbu, but excluding the prefectures
which border the Sea of Japan. These lands were first occupied by Yayoi people en
masse at the very end of the Yayoi Period, with major settlements definitively
established during the Kofun Period (300-538 AD), around the time that the various
OJ dialects are likely to have started diverging from Proto-Japanesic.

Also, by the 700s AD (likely quite a bit earlier), the various regions that spoke what
we call “Old Japanese” had differentiated into several distinct dialect groups.
Although the majority scholarship simply groups the dialects of Azuma all in one big
“Eastern Old Japanese” cluster, this is merely a geographical grouping and not a
useful linguistic one. The linguistic groups are:
 • Central Old Japanese (COJ), spoken in Kansai and western Chūbu:
o incl. Western Old Japanese (WOJ), the dialect of Nara & Kyōto.
o incl. the dialect of Shinano in western Azuma.
• Topo-Suruga Old Japanese (TSOJ), spoken in what is now Shizuoka:
o incl. the dialects of Tōtōmi (Töpo-tu-Apumî) and Suruga.
o possibly incl. at least some of the dialects of Izu.
• [True] Eastern Old Japanese (EOJ), spoken mostly in what is now Kantō and
southeastern Tōhoku.
o includes the dialects of Tōtōmi, Sagamu, Musashi, Kazusa, Shimōsa,
Kōzuke, Shimotsuke, Hitachi, and Mutsu.
o possibly incl. at least some of the dialects of Awa, Kai, and Izu.

Western Old Japanese constitutes upwards of 95% of the entire Old Japanese corpus,
and when people say “Old Japanese,” they’re almost always talking about WOJ.

(The location of Proto-Ryūkyūan on this map is approximate; it is not known for

certain where in Kyūshū they originally dwelt. It is also not known how far west the
Central Old Japanese dialects were spoken outside of the Kansai region.)

Because the Azuma provinces were settled so late (relatively), they were still
considered “borderlands” even up through the end of the Nara Period (792 AD), and
many border guards and overseers (sakimori) were sent to secure them. It is in great
part thanks to these sakimori that we have records of the various Azuma dialects: For
the ancient poetry compilation Man’yōshū, the compilers collected hundreds of
poems from all over Azuma—from sakimori and local scribes & officials—and these
poems were recorded in phonetic form (man’yōgana) in Books XIV and XX of the
compilation.
Many of these poems are partly or completely in Western Old Japanese, which is
believed to have been the result of meddling by scribes or by the Azuma speaker to
make the language match closer to the WOJ standard of the time, but approximately
250 of the poems faithfully represent a variety of TSOJ and EOJ features that are not
found in Western Old Japanese.

While COJ and WOJ constitute the direct ancestor of mainland Japanese, our
featured language of Hachijō is descended instead from True Eastern Old Japanese
(EOJ). By my personal estimation, Hachijō most closely resembles the EOJ dialects of
Kazusa, Kōzuke, and Shimotsuke Provinces.
Interestingly, the dialect of Izu Province (which Hachijō-jima and the other
provinces were a part of) is only recorded in one poem from the compilation Kokin
Wakashū (905-920 AD), and its main non-WOJ-looking feature is that it has kekere for
“heart” instead of the WOJ & EOJ form kökörö. This change of ö ⇒ e is one of the
telltale signs of a TSOJ dialect, and it is not an EOJ feature at all. One possible
interpretation of this conundrum is that although Hachijō-jima was part of Izu
Province, its people were not originally from the TSOJ-speaking Izu province.
However, there is simply too little data to make any assertions about what kind of
dialect(s) was spoken in Izu.

During the Heian Period (9th-12th centuries AD), while the Yamato Kingdom (Japan)
solidified its control over the mainland, Central Old Japanese evolved into Early
Middle Japanese (EMJ), and EMJ gradually displaced all other Japonic varieties from
the mainland:
• Around the 10th-12th centuries, the Proto-Ryūkyūans migrated to the
Ryūkyūan Islands, where their languages then differentiated.
• The word kekere is the last trace of any TSOJ-like feature in history, and that
lineage is believed to be fully extinct.
• The EOJ lineage ultimately survived only in tiny isolated pockets in the
mainland* and on some of the Izu Islands, including Hachijō-jima.

*
Such as in Akiyama Hamlet (秋山郷) on the border between Nagano and Niigata prefectures.
 (EOJ did leave a small amount of substrate features in the modern Kantō and
Tōhoku dialects, but those dialects are not descended from EOJ.)

Rediscovery of the Eastern OJ Connection

The fact that Hachijō descends from EOJ went unnoticed until 1878, when Ernest
Satow* and Frederick Dickins—a British diplomat and a surgeon, respectively—
happened to dock at Hachijō-jima due to Satow’s bad seasickness, and the pair
decided to go ashore. They ended up staying on the island from March 5th – 16th and
traveled around the island studying its wildlife and interacting with the locals.
Satow was well-read on the Japanese classics, including the Man’yōshū, and he noted
the similarities between Hachijō and EOJ in his official report to the Asiatic Society
of Japan, which I will share a transcript of below (boldface text is my own emphasis):

There is considerable difference between the language spoken in Hachijô and that of
the nearest part of the Japanese mainland, and it is not too much to say that a new-
comer, whether Japanese or foreigner, would at first be entirely at a loss to
understand what the people around him were saying. It presents some of the
peculiarities of the ancient dialect of the eastern provinces, while it resembles in
many points the modern Kiyôto† dialect. […]

The adjectives for the most part take ke as the termination of the attributive form,
an evident corruption of the literary ki; thus yoke ko, a pretty girl, bôke fune, a big
ship. Mr. Aston‡ has pointed out to us that this termination ke of adjectives occurs in
some poems in the Man’yôshû, collected in the eastern provinces of Japan ten
centuries ago, for example, kanashike occurs several times for kanashiki, yasuke for
yasuki, nayamashike for nayamashiki.

However, this observation went unnoticed in Japan, and decades later in the early
20th century (pre-WWII), this EOJ connection was independently rediscovered by

*
A German name, not a transliteration of Japanese 佐藤 Satō.
†
Kiyôto = Kyōto. These “resemblances” to the Kyōto dialect mentioned here are likely in reference
to the honorific and humble forms of speaking, which are indeed borrowed from Early Middle
Japanese forms from both Tokyo and Kyoto.
‡
William George Aston, an Anglo-Irish diplomat and expert on Old & Classical Japanese.
Japanese linguists. By the postwar period, further analysis more or less fully
established Hachijō’s recognition as a descendant of EOJ.

Intelligibility
As astutely pointed out by Dickins and Satow, the Hachijō language has little to no
mutual intelligibility with mainland Japanese at first exposure—but as noted by later
linguists, it is not terribly difficult to become accustomed to it over time. Therefore,
there is actually some grounds to call Hachijō a “dialect of Japanese”—at least, far
more grounds than calling a Ryūkyūan language a “dialect of Japanese.”
Still, since the dividing line between “language” and “dialect” is arbitrary anyway, I
will not delve any further into the argument. Instead, I will simply state here that I
will continue to refer to Hachijō as a language—if for no other reason that Hachijō
itself has several sub-varieties within it, and it’s much more concise to speak of
“dialects of a language” than of “sub-dialects of a dialect.”

As for the intelligibility between the various Hachijō dialects, there appears to be no
communication impediment whatsoever between persons of differing dialects.
From what little the historical record tells, even the divergent Utsuki dialect (now
extinct) was fully intelligible with dialects of Hachijō-jima.

Status of Hachijō
As for the vitality of Hachijō in modern times, it is quite poorly-maintained, with
perhaps only a couple hundred native speakers, all elderly. Although the
popularization of radio and television have caused the rapid decline of the language
in past decades, the decline had already begun long before that during the Meiji
Period. David Iannucci (2019) paraphrases Hoshina (1900) as having expressed:
“[T]he latter part of the 19th [century] in Hachijō-jima was marked by a furious
imitation on the part of the islanders of anything and everything of mainland
Japanese culture, language included, simultaneously and analogously to the way
that mainland Japanese were furiously imitating anything and everything of
European and American culture.”
Concurring with this sentiment are Dickins and Satow (1878), who reported
widespread adoption of Japanese-isms by men of the island:
Many of the men have visited the capital* or have picked up from stray visitors some
of the characteristics of polished speech, which they do not fail to display whenever
an opportunity presents itself, but the women are free from such affectation, and
speak a language which, at first, sounds utterly unintelligible to a stranger.

The number of words which differ entirely from the corresponding expression in
the standard Japanese is very great, the terminations of the verbs are likewise
peculiar […] Some archaic words have been retained which have entirely dropped
out of use in the ordinary [Japanese] colloquial, and primitive forms have been
preserved which are invaluable helps to the etymology of words hitherto
inexplicable […]

Unlike in the Ryūkyūs, where there were systematic practices of language

suppression, Hachijō has never been subjected to any sort of organized persecution,
and the language shift toward Standard Japanese has been almost entirely
voluntary.
Ever since Hachijō was recognized as an endangered language by UNESCO in 2009,
the island of Hachijō-jima has made modest efforts to provide cultural activities in
Hachijō, but by and large, the children of Hachijō-jima are not using the language at
home, not learning the language outside of elementary school, and therefore of
course not receiving their educational instruction through the language.
The future of the language is bleak, to say the least, and to quote David Iannucci
(2019), even if Hachijō is maintained in some form, it seems doomed to become little
more than a “cultural museum piece.”

Phonology
Here, I will describe Hachijō phonology as one dialect-independent whole;
therefore, what I call “phonemes” might be more properly called diaphonemes, since
many of them correspond to different sounds depending on the dialect.

(The romanization scheme presented here is based on a combination of Kunrei-Shiki

romanization and the ad-hoc Hachijō romanization used by Kaneda Akihiro for the
Mitsune Dialect of Hachijō. I have designed it so as to be easy to type without relying
on diacritics or non-QWERTY keyboard characters.)

*
Presumably refers to Edo/Tōkyō, the de facto capital.
Hachijō has practically the same consonant system as standard Japanese, the only
major difference being the clear distinction between /t/ and /t͡s/:

Bilabial Coronal Velar (Coda)

Nasal m /m/ n /n/ n’ /N/
Stop or voiced p /p/ t /t/ c /t͡s/ k /k/
/Q/*
Affricate voiceless b /b/ d /d/ z /d͡z/ g /ɡ/
Fricative h /h/ s /s/
Approximant w /w/ y /j/
Tap r /ɾ/

Some notes on the consonants:

• /N/ is the same sound as Japanese ん.
• /Q/ is the same sound as Japanese っ (small tsu).
• Hachijō has geminate voiced obstruents bb dd zz gg /Qb, Qd, Qd͡z, Qɡ/.
• The combination /Q/+/s/ almost always becomes cc /Qt͡s/ automatically.
• /ɡ/ is always a stop, never a nasal [ŋ].
• /ɾ/ doesn’t occur word-initially

*
Represented by doubling of the consonant letter, e.g. tt /Qt/.
Hachijō’s vowels are considerably more different from Japanese’s than its
consonants. Hachijō has 12 basic vowels—5 short, 7 long:

Front, Central, Back,

unrounded unrounded semi-rounded
High i /i/ ii /iː/ u /u/ uu /uː/
ei /eɪ ̯/ ou /oʊ̯/
Mid e /e/ o /o/
ee /ɛː/ oo /ɔː/
Low a /a/ aa /aː/

The long vowels /eɪ ̯/ and /oʊ̯/ should not be considered vowel sequences, but
rather their own separate “long vowels,” much like in English. In contrast, there are
three true diphthongs or vowel sequences: ai ui oi /ai, ui, oi/.

Lastly, there are quite a few consonant+vowel combinations that occur in Hachijō
that do not appear natively in Standard Japanese:

• /Cje, Cjeɪ ̯, Cjɛː/ for almost all consonants /C/

• /w/ can occur before most vowels, though /wi/ often becomes [i]
• /wjaː/ and /wjo/ both exist, though the [w] often drops out

Vowel Coalescence
The short vowels /a i u e o/ tend to avoid being adjacent to each other unchanged—
instead, they like to coalesce into something new:

/+(w)i/ /+(w)e/ /+(w)o/ /+(w)u/ /+(w)a/

/i+/ ii ye yo yu
ya
/e+/ ei
ei
/o+/ ou oo
/u+/ ii ii ~ ei uu uu
/a+/ ee oo* ou ~ oo oo

*
Except in certain verb classes, where */awo/ can coalesce into /oʊ̯/, for example:
cukouwa “he uses” — /t͡sukaw-o-wa/ ⇒ /t͡sukoʊ̯wa/
(This table does not cover contractions such as -arowa ⇒ -ara, nor does it cover the
coalescence of three vowels, such as *-awewa ⇒ -eeya.) Vowel coalescence is very
important for adding the accusative particle =o and the allative particle =i to nouns:

Base Word End With =o With =i

yama “field” /a/ yamoo yamee
cuki “moon” /i/ cukyo cukii
mizu “water” /u/ mizuu mizii
kore “this” /e/ korei korei
koko “here” /o/ kokou kokei
hon “book” /N/ hon’-yo hon’-ii
Toukyou “Tokyo” (long vowel) Toukyou-yo Toukyou-ii

However, the topic particle =wa almost never undergoes coalescence except with
specific pronouns and preceding particles, e.g. ware-wa > wara/warya.

Coalescence is also significant for many aspects of verb conjugation—particularly

for conjugating verbs whose stems end in /w/.
Borrowing from Japanese
When words are loaned from Japanese, long vowels and diphthongs get adapted to
Hachijō phonology. The Japanese diphthongs ai ui oi can, but do not always, undergo
coalescence when borrowed; free variation between coalesced and non-coalesced
forms is common.

Jpn. ai ii ui ei oi ou/oo uu
Hach. /ai ~ ɛː/ /iː/ /ui ~ eɪ ̯/ /eɪ ̯/ /oi ~ eɪ ̯/ /oʊ̯/ /uː/

Since Hachijō generally forbids /r/ at the beginning of words, it adapts it as /d/:
• Japanese 来年 rainen “next year” Hachijō deenen “next year:
• Japanese ランプ ranpu “lamp”* Hachijō danpu “lamp”

If the /r/ was palatalized in Japanese, it instead becomes Hachijō /d͡z/:

• Japanese 漁師 ryōshi “fisherman” Hachijō zyousi “fisherman”

However, the more strongly Japanese-influenced someone’s speech is, the more
Japanese features (such as word-initial /r/) will be retained. Japanese influence can
also cause native words to “de-coalesce,” for example, in place names:
• Hachijō Yeene Jp-Influenced Yaene/Yaine 八重根
• Hachijō Boroozoo Jp-Influenced Borawazawa 洞和沢
• Hachijō Seisi† Jp-Influenced Sueyosi/Suyeyosi 末吉
• Hachijō Oogasima Jp-Influenced Aogasima 青ヶ島

*
Borrowed from English.
†
Some very early records also have Hachijō Seiyosi.
Dialects of Hachijō
Hachijō can be divided into approximately 9 different dialects:

A question mark “(?)” indicates uncertain placement.

The Northern group’s Mitsune, Ōkagō, and Toriuchi dialects are all very similar; the
Daitō Islands dialect appears to be the next most similar, although it also has many
novel influences from Okinawan. Furthermore, although the Utsuki dialect was
most likely a Northern dialect with close affinity to Toriuchi, it was phonologically
very divergent—the most so among all Hachijō dialects—, making its placement iffy.
Still, Hachijō’s dialects also stretch the applicability of a tree model of a genetic
descent, as Hachijō-jima itself was, for centuries, organized like a horseshoe:
starting from one end of the “horseshoe” there was Ōkagō, then going clockwise
there was Mitsune, Sueyoshi, Nakanogō, then Kashitate; traveling between Ōkagō
and Kashitate required going all the way around the island.
In this way, Ōkagō and the other Northern dialects can be considered one end of a
continuum, with Kashitate at the other extreme end. Aogashima and Utsuki, on the
other hand, appear to have fully diverged from the continuum as a result of their
isolation.

You may have noticed that the “Phonology” section, the vowel phonemes provided
in the chart are highlighted in yellow or blue. Those highlighted in yellow are
generally quite consistent in pronunciation between all dialects:

Diaphoneme: a /a/ i /i/ u /u/ e /e/ o /o/

[ä] [ʲi] [ɯ ~ ɯᵝ] [e̞] [o̞]
aa /a/ ii /i/ uu /u/
[äː] [ʲiː] [ɯː ~ ɯᵝː]
ai /ai/ ui /ui/ oi /oi/
[äi] [ɯi ~ ɯᵝi] [o̞i]

In contrast, those in blue are quite variable across dialects:

Diaphoneme: ei /eɪ ̯/ ee /ɛː/ oo /ɔː/ ou /oʊ̯/

Mitsune [e̞ɪ ̯] [e̞ː ~ e̞ɪ ̯] [o̞ː ~ o̞ʊ]̯ [o̞ʊ]̯
Ōkagō [e̞ː] [e̞ː] [o̞ː] [o̞ː]
Toriuchi [e̞ː] [e̞ː] [o̞ː] [o̞ː]
Daitō [e̞ː] [e̞ː] [o̞ː] [o̞ː]
Kashitate [ʲɪː ~ eː] [ɪ ̆ɐˑ ~ ʲäː] [ŏɐˑ] [ʊː ~ oː]
Nakanogō [ʲɪː ~ eː] [ɪ ̆ɐˑ ~ ʲäː] [ŏɐˑ] [ʊː ~ oː]
Sueyoshi [ʲiː] [e̞ː] [äː] [o̞ː]
Utsuki [ɐi] [e̞ː] [o̞ː] [ɐu]
Aogashima [e̞ː ~ e̞ɪ ̯] [e̞ː] [o̞ː] [ɒʊ̯]

Here you can see the principal phonetic variation between the various dialects, as
well as one way in which the Mitsune-Ōkagō-Toriuchi-Daitō dialects form one
group, the Kashitate-Nakanogō dialects form another, and the other 3 dialects are
“doing their own thing,” so to speak. Feel free to pick any dialect you like for your
personal pronunciation—except Utsuki, because there’s a lot more weirdness going
on in that dialect that this chart doesn’t cover.
When a vowel in the chart above has [ʲ] in it, this is meant to represent that it causes
palatalization of the preceding consonant. For example, the clitic -teiya /teɪ ̯ja/ “it’s
said that X” is pronounced [t͡ɕiːja]* in the Sueyoshi dialect. If there is no consonant
to palatalized, the [ʲ] is promoted to a full [j], like in eemowa “he walks” /ɛːmowa/,
usually pronounced [jaːmowa]† in the Kashitate and Nakanogō dialects.

Sound Changes from Proto-Japonic to Old Japanese

The modern consensus is that the consonant system of Proto-Japonic is extremely
simple, with only 9 consonants:
Labials: *m *p *w
Coronals: *n *t *s *r *y
Velars: *k
In contrast, there is a much more varied vowel system, with 6 basic vowels and 8
diphthongs for a total of 14 vowels:
Basic: *a *i *u *e *o *ə
V+i: *ai ̯ *ui ̯ *oi ̯ *əi ̯
i+V: *i ̯a *i ̯ə
V+u: *au̯
u+V: *u̯a
There is also a constraint known as Arisaka’s Law (after Hideyo Arisaka) which
requires that *ə cannot be in the same morpheme as any of *a, *u, or *o.
Words follow these rules for phonemic shape:

• All words must have a vowel (any of the 14 vowels).

• Words cannot start with *r.
• Words cannot end in consonants.
• Two vowels are not allowed to touch; they must have a consonant separating
them.

*
As though it were **-ciiya.
†
As though it were **yaamowa.
 • Two consonants are not allowed to touch, except for the 8 combinations
possible from {*n, *m} + {*p, *t, *k, *s}.
However, because we are usually unable to distinguish whether a nasal+consonant
cluster had *m or *n, we write *N to cover either case.
Lastly, while it is not mentioned in any publications that I am aware of, I
hypothesize that there is a 6th rule:

• Words cannot start with diphthongs, except for *ai ̯.

(Make of my hypothesis what you will.)
As a consequence of these rules, we can (and do) reconstruct words like:

• *kaNsai ̯ “wind” 風
• *aNpura “oil, fat” 油
• *sakai ̯ “alcohol” 酒
• *pitə “one, a person” 人、一
• *təki “time” 時
• *osaNki “rabbit, hare” 兎
• *tukoi ̯ “moon, month” 月
• *pi “sun, day” 日
• *poi ̯ “fire” 火
• *sirau̯ “white” 白
• *ku̯a “child” 子
• *na “not” 無
• *uNpapi “to snatch, to steal” (infinitive form) 奪い
• *kaki “to scratch” (infinitive form) 書き
• *woi “to sit” (infinitive form) 居
• *yəmi “to count” (infinitive form) 読み
• *ətəi “to fall” (infinitive form) 落ち
• *əyəNki “to swim” (infinitive form) 泳ぎ
• *in-i “to depart” (infinitive form) 去に
• *-sa “-ness, -ity” ～さ
• *-pa “(topic marker)” ～は
• *-Nka “(nominative/genitive marker)” ～が
• *pi ̯a “edge, border, side” ～へ、辺
An unspoken rule in Japonic studies is that Proto-Japanese is reconstructed with the
exact same phonemes as Proto-Japonic; This is generally necessary in order to
explain all of the vowel correspondences between the different Old Japanese
dialects: Western, (True-)Eastern, and Topo-Suruga OJ. The main difference between
Proto-Japonic and Proto-Japanese, then, is that if a word or word-form is not
attested in Ryūkyūan, it can only be reconstructed for Proto-Japanese, not Japonic.
Anyway, firstly, the change from Proto-Japonic consonants to Old Japanese
consonants is very easy: The clusters *Np, *Nt, *Nk, *Ns become treated as singular
units that are written as b d g z, although they are pronounced [mb, nd, ŋɡ, nz] and
still act like nasal+obstruent for the sake of compounding.
…And that’s it. No other consonantal changes required! The vowels, on the other
hand, are a major headache, and their descendant forms are highly dependent on
what dialect of Old Japanese you’re looking at. Here are the three groups (WOJ, EOJ,
and TSOJ), as well as Proto-Ryūkyūan descendants for good measure:
Proto-Japonic Western OJ Eastern OJ Topo-Sur. OJ Proto-Ryuk.
*a a a a *a
*u u u u *u
*ai ̯ e2 e
e
*i ̯a, *i ̯ə e1 i
*e
*e i1 (~ e1)
i~e e
*əi ̯
i2
*oi ̯, *ui ̯ u~i
i *i
*i i1 i
*o u (~ o1) u ~ o1 u
*au̯, *u̯a o1 o1 a~u *o
*ə o2 o2 E

(Try as I might, there seems to be no way to make the above table look nicely
organized for all daughter languages, so instead I did my best for all but TSOJ.)
At least in WOJ, places where e1 or o1 would become word-initial, they become ye or
wo, respectively, leaving a i1 u e2 o2 as the only word-initial vowels.
In WOJ and EOJ, you can see that most vowels have subscripts: these are distinct
WOJ vowels that merged in later Middle Japanese. Their exact phonetic details are a
matter of slight debate, but based on the kanji used to write those vowels in Old
Japanese, we can make some broad statements:
Vowel Placement Rounded? Palatalized?
a low No No
i1 high, front No Yes
i2 high or near-high No No
u high, back Yes No
e1 mid, front No Maybe
e2 not low or back No No
o1 back, not low Yes No
o2 mid, central No No

From these details, the approximate values of the vowels a, u, i1, e1, o1, and o2 are easy
to make educate guesses at:

• a is approximately /ä/
• i1 is approximately /i ~ ji/
• u is approximately /u/
• e1 is approximately /e ~ je/
• o1 is approximately /o ~ wo/
• o2 is approximately /ə/
A currently popular proposal for the other vowels i2 and e2 is by Marc Miyake, who
uses Middle Chinese, Sino-Korean, and Sino-Vietnamese readings of kanji to propose
that e2 is a diphthong /əi ̯/, while i2 is a high central unrounded vowel /ɨ/. Other
proposals are that i2 is labialzed /wi/ and/or that e2 is a mid-low, non-palatal /ɛ/.
Furthermore, the Old Japanese period catches the language in the middle of a large
vowel reshuffling, as certain V1-V2 pairs are not distinct in certain situations.
Specifically:

• i1/i2 and e1/e2 pairs are not distinguished after t, d, s, z, n, r, y, w.

• o1/o2 are not distinguished after p, b, m, w.
The very earliest texts like the Kojiki actually do distinguish mo1 and mo2, but no
later texts seem to do so with great reliability. Ultimately, these mergers were
completed after all consonants, leaving Middle Japanese with a i u e o. The last of
these distinctions to disappear was ko1/ko2 (and probably go1/go2 with it) which was
maintained up until the early-to-mid 800s AD.
(Furthermore, anytime where yi or wu would be present, these reduce to i and u
sometime during Old Japanese.)
And while our main focus isn’t on WOJ, but on EOJ, all OJ orthography is based on
WOJ’s (the language of the capital), meaning that EOJ sounds are all seen through
the “lens” of WOJ orthography. Taking this into account, a laboriously thorough
analysis has been done by John Kupchik (2011), whose conclusions are:

• EOJ uses e1 and e2 interchangeably in roughly equal amounts, showing that it

did not make a distinction between them.
• EOJ uses i1 and i2 interchangeably, again making no distinction, but it almost
always prefers writing i1 over i2.
• EOJ usually keeps o1 and o2 distinct, but “spelling mistakes” switching the two
are not unheard of, showing that they were in the process of merging.
• In some EOJ dialects, the change of /ti/ → [ʨi] had already occurred, whereas
in the west, this shift it did not occur until the Heian Period. However, these
EOJ dialects had not changed /tu/ → [ʦu] yet.
• EOJ was already in the process of losing the nasality of b d g z, whereas most
Japanese dialects did not complete this change until the 1700s-1800s.
• When two vowels come into contact in WOJ, they undergo fusion into a new
vowel, like wo “small” + i1nu “dog” → wenu “puppy.” When this occurs in EOJ,
one of the vowels is deleted—usually the first of the two vowels:
to2po-tu-apa-umi “dilute-sea that is distant” = “faraway lake” → to2potapumi.
For what it’s worth, these are Kupchik’s conclusions regarding Topo-Suruga OJ:

• TSOJ does not use i2 at all, only i1 = /i/.

• TSOJ does not distinguish e1, e2, and o2, having merged them all into an
unpalatalized /e/.
• TSOJ almost never uses o1. Where WOJ has o1, TSOJ generally has u or a.
• TSOJ has vowel deletion like EOJ, but instead usually deletes the second vowel.
Sound Changes from EOJ to Hachijō
A very approximate list of sound changes soul
1. o1, o2 → o
2. o → wo word-initially
3. e → ye word-initially
4. Onbin sound changes:
pi, ti, ki, ri → /Q/ rarely
bi, di, gi, mi, ni → /N/ rarely
ki, si → /i/ rarely
5. m→w very rarely
6. p→w except pp or word-initially
(wu → u automatically)
7. wi, we → i, e except word-initially or in verb stems
8. ye → e except word-initially
9. p→h except pp
10. t, d → c, z before i, u, or y
11. sirV, cirV, zirV → syV, cyV, zyV
12. iyV, iwV → yV
13. irV → yV word-initially
14. uu, ii → uː, iː
15. au → ou
16. ai, ae, aye → ɛː
17. awa → awo
18. awo → ɔː
19. ee, ei → eɪ ̯
oi, oe, eo → eɪ ̯
ui, ue, eu → eɪ ̯
20. oo, ou → oʊ̯
21. wa → ya after /iː/, /ɛː/, or /eɪ ̯/
22. wo, ye → o, e word-initially; ongoing
These sound changes stretch from approximately the 8th century AD (#1) to modern
times. These are only guidelines, as grammatical leveling and analogical formation
have also caused major changes that cannot be dealt with in a nice little list like the
above.
Peculiarities of Eastern Old Japanese
Being an OJ dialect, EOJ was largely the same in grammar as Western Old Japanese,
for which I recommend Alexander Vovin’s A Descriptive and Comparative Grammar of
Western Old Japanese. Below, I will discuss a variety of elements that are peculiar or
noteworthy for Eastern Old Japanese:
Case Particles:
The locative particle -na “at,” which is not found in WOJ but is found in Ryūkyūan.
The directive particle -gari “toward (a person)”, which is found in WOJ, but may be
related to some unique Hachijō form.
Particles
Instead of using WOJ so2/zo2 as focus-marking particles, some EOJ dialects use to2/do2.
Such forms are wholly unattested in WOJ, but are widely used in Ryūkyūan: Proto-
Ryūkyūan *do, reflected in nearly all Ryūkyūan languages as du—making this a case
where WOJ is innovative.
EOJ also has a particle gape that is used like ya or ka to mark a question that
expresses verbal irony, for example:

• Umaya n[i]-aru napa tatu* ko1ma no2 o2kuru gape?

“Would a foal that has broken the ropes in its stable remain there?”
(implied answer: “Of course not!”)
Noun Suffixes
EOJ uses -na and -ro2 for diminutives, in contrast to WOJ -ra.
Pronouns
For first-person, EOJ has wa/ware, a/are, and wanu. Unlike in WOJ, there is no
singular-plural distinction between ware and are; they are used interchangeably,
sometimes even in the same sentence. Exact cognates of wanu are not found in WOJ,
but is found in Ryūkyūan: Proto-Ryūkyūan *wanu.
For second-person, EOJ has na/nare. This is found in WOJ, but disappeared in Middle
Japanese, surviving only in the literary and archaic pronoun nanji “thou.” †

*
The use of tat-u rather than *tat-o1 here must be the result of WOJ influence/rewriting.
†
From na-muti “you-lord” → nandi → nanji.
For “what”, EOJ has ani instead of nani. This is reflected in all derived words, as well,
like ado2 “whatever” and aze “why.” This loss of the initial /n/ is apparently an EOJ
innovation, since TSOJ has nani, and Ryūkyūan has *nau.
Adjectives
Instead of the WOJ attributive suffix -ki1, which is the ancestor of Modern Japanese
ending -i, EOJ has -ke. The -aku nominalized form derived from this is also EOJ -kaku;
contrast WOJ -ke1ku.
The evidential (izenkei) form in EOJ is -ka; contrast WOJ -ke1re/-ke1.
Lastly, the irrealis conditional form is -k-aba “if it’s, if it were,” identical or merged
with the provisional (realis) conditional form -ka-ba “because it’s.” In WOJ, these are
usually distinguished as -ke1ba and -ke1reba, respectively.
Lastly, EOJ also shows what is believed to be the very first attestation of the -ge
“feeling like, seeming like” derivation on adjectives: ko1pusi-ge “feeling like love,”
“with a feeling of longing.”
Verb Suffixes
Where Western Old Japanese has attributive forms in -u/-uru:

• tati “standing” → tatu “who stands, which stands”

• i1de “going out” → i1duru “who goes out”
…EOJ is attested with the attributive forms -o1/-o1ro1:

• tati “standing” → tato1 “who stands, which stands”

• ide “going out” → ido1ro1 “who goes out”
However, some other EOJ dialect (the ancestor of Hachijō) must have had *-uro1
instead of -o1ro1, since that’s the form that Hachijō has inherited. Similarly, the
attested EOJ evidential (izenkei) form is -e/-o1re, while Hachijō has inherited -ure.
On verbs suffixed with the perfect affix -n- are conjugated as “N-irregular” in WOJ,
taking the long attributive -n-uru. In contrast, in EOJ, one finds the short attributive
-n-o1 (as opposed to the longer **-n-o1ro1/**-n-uro1, showing that the “N-irregular”
conjugation was already collapsing into the quadrigrade (yodan) pattern in EOJ.
For the imperative, EOJ uses -ro2 as a suffix on vowel verbs instead of -yo2. It has been
argued that because Modern Eastern Japanese has -ro also, it might be a substrate
feature from EOJ; However, -ro is also found in Kyūshū dialects as well, so it might
instead be that -yo2 is an innovation in WOJ—but not in all COJ dialects—, and that
Modern Eastern Japanese simply retains an unchanged -ro from COJ.
EOJ has the “tentative” forms -am- and -unam-, in contrast to WOJ -am- and -uram-.
The EOJ form is probably the innovative one, with nasalization /r/ > /n/.
EOJ has the negative suffixes -an- and -azu, like WOJ, but also has the interesting
combination -an-ap-, which expresses something that is continuously or repetitively
negative. This is interesting because in WOJ, the ordering is reversed: -ap-an-.
To express stative (perfective or continuous) verbs, EOJ uses the suffix -ar-, which is
directly parallel to WOJ -e1r- (and TSOJ -ir-). This comes from a compound form
*-i1 + ar- which must postdate the change of Proto-Japanese *ia to EOJ e.
Similarly, the retrospective/experiential suffix is not *-ke1r- as in WOJ, but
rather -kar-, again reflecting the same kind of different compound-vowel reduction.
EOJ does not use the past tense in the form *-ki1 at all, or at least it is never attested,
although a tentative form -kem- (WOJ -ke1m-) and a conditional form -kaba
(WOJ -ke1ba/-seba) are found. Instead, the attributive form -si and its evidential
(izenkei) form -sika reign supreme in EOJ.
As for the perfect affixes -n- and -te-: In WOJ, the suffix -te- is always used with an
animate subject*, while -n- is used predominantly with inanimate subjects (and
therefore predominantly with intransitive verbs) and cannot co-occur with
imperatives and causatives. In EOJ, -te- is attested with an inanimate subject:

• ko2to2 [i]ta-k[u] ar-i-t-umo

“the words have been [so] painful!”
…and -n- with an animate subject:

• are pa ko2g-i-n-u to2 imo ni tuk-i-ko2s-o2

“please tell my darling [for me] that I have rowed [out]”

Ainu Loanwords
EOJ has a number of words that are considered to have very high probability of
being from Ainu (or else from a language closely related to Ainu):

*
Contrast Classical Japanese, where this is not a strict constraint.
 EOJ Word Modern Ainu Word
atu sea atuy sea
ka top ka top
ka (focus particle) ka (focus particle)
kariba cherry tree karinpa cherry bark
mato1 girl matpo* girl, daughter
na river nay river
paka rumor, gossip pahaw rumor, gossip
pizi shore pis shore
sida when … hi-ta at the time
su again suy again
sugupa (?)passed years sukup pa passed years
to1ra together tura together

Plenty of other words are hypothesized with lesser certainty to be of Ainu origin.
One such example is in Man’yoshu XIV.3382, from Kōzuke Province:
汝者故布婆曽母
A possible interpretation of this line is:
NA PA ko1puba so2mo2

you TOPIC love.CONDITIONAL not

“whether you love me [or] not”
With ko1puba speculated to be a Kōzuke form corresponding to WOJ ko1pi2ba “if one
loves,” and so2mo2 to be a borrowing of Ainu somo “not.”

Unique Words
EOJ has plenty of these! A small collection:
• makirapasi-ke adjective
“blindingly bright” (literally “cutting repeatedly at the eyes”)
• nipasi-ke adjective “sudden”
• kube noun “fence”

*
Now found only in in Sakhalin Ainu: Rayciska dialect mahpoo, etc. Originally a compound of mat
“woman” and po “child”, whence also the Hokkaido Ainu compound mat-ne-po “girl” (literally
“woman who is a child”).
 • azu noun “precipice, cliff-edge”
• mama noun “cliff”
• iyazeru adjectival noun “noteworthy(?)” *
• kadus-† verb “to abduct”
• tayo1r-, tayur-‡ verb “to cease”

Reflexes of Proto-Japonic *e and *o

In WOJ, Proto-Japonic *e and *o almost always become i1 and u, respectively. EOJ also
has this tendency, and yet retains them for unknown reasons in a number of words
and morphemes, including:
Meaning Proto-Jp. WOJ Later Jp. EOJ
to exceed *suNkos- sugus- sugos- sugo1s-
to contain *popom- pupum- (fufum-)§ popom-
(adj. attrib.) *-ke -ki1 -i -ke
(verb attrib.) *-o -u -u -o1
to shake *ayok- — (ayuk-) ayo1k-
to fray *mayop- mayup- (mayuf-) mayo1p-
snow *yoki yuki1 yuki yoki **
dangerous *ayapo- ayapu- ayau- ayapo-
rabbit, hare *osaNki usagi1 usagi wosagi
safe *sake- saki1- — sake-

Parentheses in the “Later Jp.” column indicate Middle Japanese. On the other hand,
EOJ also sometimes raises *e and *o to i and u in places where WOJ did not, yielding
the reverse correspondence:

Meaning Proto-Jp. WOJ Later Jp. EOJ

to cross *koyai- ko1ye- koe- kuye-
fire *po-i pi2, po- hi, ho- pi, pu-
protector *mori mori (ma)mori muri

*
This is a makura-kotoba (“pillow word”), making its exact meaning fuzzy.
†
Cognate to Modern Japanese kadowakas- “to kidnap”  WOJ *kado1pakas-.
‡
Cognate to Modern Japanese tae- “to cease, to die out”  WOJ taye-.
§
Perhaps irregularly shifted into fukum- “contain,” which appears first in Early Middle Japanese.
**
Misspelled as yo2ki1, demonstrating the beginnings of the o1|o2 merger.
 Atractylodes* *(w)okiara — okera† ukera

Peculiarities of Hachijō
Case Particles
Accusative: EOJ wo has become Hachijō -o, which coalesces with a preceding short
vowel. If the preceding vowel is long, or if the word ends in /N/, it adds to the end
as -yo instead.
Allative: EOJ pe has become Hachijō -i, which also coalesces with a preceding short
vowel. If the preceding vowel is long, or if the word end in /N/, it adds to the end as
-ii instead. In the Aogashima dialect, you instead add -rii.‡
Nominative and Genitive: Hachijō uses both of the particles -no and -ga for
nominative and genitive. The rules of their usage are complex, but broadly, -ga is for
humans and -no is for inanimate objects.
Dative: After short vowels, the dative -ni can shorten to just -n.
Lative: There is a case marker -gee which marks the direction or destination of an
action; it may be a contraction of EOJ -gari → *-gai → -gee.
Orientative: There is a case marker -syan or -sima which marks the orientation of an
action.
Ablative: The particle -kara “from” can contract into -kaa.
Comparative: The particle -yori “than” can contract into -yei.
Portional: There is a case marker -gara (can contract to -gaa) that marks a noun
whose portion, function, or location is being considered. It may be related to the EOJ
directive case -gari in some way.
Other Particles & Suffixes
Focus: There is a particle -ka which marks the focus of a sentence, not to be
confused with the identical question-marking -ka. While Akihiro Kaneda believes it

*
A genus of flower in the sunflower family Asteraceae.
†
Dialectally also ukera and ukira in Modern Eastern Japanese, likely substrate vocabulary from EOJ.
‡
For reasons I won’t get into here, this is definitely an Aogashima innovation, not a retention.
may be an extreme contraction of -koso-wa, I believe it is much simpler to consider it
a retention of the EOJ focus particle -ka, borrowed from Ainu.
Broadening: There is a ‘broadening’ suffix or particle -nsee which acts like Japanese
-nado or -nanka, meaning “X and so on” or “and/or things like X.” In some dialects,
this is used as a pluralizer as well.
Animals: Practically all animals of the land and sky, be they mammals, birds,
reptiles, insects, etc., are marked with the suffix -me:
• torime “bird”
• zokume “bull”
• syanme “louse” ( *si[r]am[i]-me)
• nekome “cat”
Sea creatures, on the other hand, are usually excepted:
• yo “fish”
• ukisu “jellyfish” ( uk-i “floating” + *-su “thingy” *)
• ogo “lavender jobfish”
• hirami “limpet (Cellana toreuma)”
Still, there are exceptions—some sea animals do take -me, as in fugume
“porcupinefish,” and some land animals don’t take -me, as in nabekoziki “slug.”

Adjectives & Verbs:

The most striking aspect of Hachijō adjectives is their retention of EOJ -ke for the
attributive form: asake “shallow,” yoke “good,” nake “not,” etc. The conditional form
-kaba is also a retention from EOJ.
However, plenty of forms have been innovated, or influenced by Japanese:

• the evidential (izenkei) form is -ke, or rarely -kare.

• the old terminal form (shuushikei) is -ke, not -si.
• the provisional-conditional form is -kerya or -kereba.
• the concessive form is -kedou, or rarely -keredou.
Similarly, verbs retain the EOJ attributive in the forms -o, -ro, and -uro.

*
Not very common in Japanese, but found all over Ryūkyūan, like in Okinawan -si/-syu.
Hachijō Past: To form the past tense, both of the EOJ stative forms are used on
different verbs: all consonant-stem verbs except for /s/-stems take the past tense in
-ar-, while all other verbs use the past tense in -tar-:

• nom-ar- “drank” (stem form)

• kak-ar- “wrote” (stem form)
• yo-kar-ar- “was good” (stem form)
• dasi-tar- “sent out” (stem form)
• mi-tar- “saw” (stem form)
• ki-tar- “came” (stem form)
To form the attributive of the past, it used to be that one would simply add -o to the
end to make -aro/-taro, but in the past 150 years or so, this has contracted into -oo/
-too.
Old & New Terminal: The -u terminal form is used at the end of sentences in WOJ,
EOJ, and Classical Japanese, but Hachijō almost never uses it—instead, it has
innovated a “new terminal form” which is made by simply attaching -wa to the end
of the attributive form: nomowa “drinks,” mirowa “sees,” kurowa “comes.”
However, when attaching to the past, -o-wa contracts into -a:
• nomara “drank”
• kakara “wrote”
• yokarara “was good”
• dasitara “sent out”
• mitara “saw”
• kitara “came”
And when attaching to adjectives, -ke-wa contracts into -kya.

The copula, dara, is conjugated just like the past form: present dara, present
attributive doo, past darara, past attributive daroo.

Still, when followed by the quotative particle -to or the hearsay verb -teiya, Hachijō
does still use the old -u terminal form, but the past -(t)ar- contracts into -(t)aQ-:
• nomu-teiya “it’s said that […] drinks”
• nomat-teiya “it’s said that […] drank”
• yoke-teiya “it’s said that […] is good”
• yokarat-teiya “it’s said that […] was good”
 • miru-teiya “it’s said that […] sees”
• mitat-teiya “it’s said that […] saw”

Conditional: Hachijō retains the OJ conditional form in -aba, which can become -ba
or -raba after vowel verbs:

• nomaba “if one drinks”

• miba / miraba “if one sees”
• koba / kuraba “if one comes”
Concessive: Hachijō retains the OJ concessive suffix -do2mo2, but contracted
into -dowo → -dou.
Conjectural: Hachijō uses a descendant of the EOJ tentative -unam- as a conjectural
form: -unam-o → *-unawo → -unou, +wa to make -unouwa:

• nomunouwa “might drink”

• minouba “might see”
• kunouba “might come”
Denial/Optative: Hachijō uses a descendant of the OJ subjunctive -amasi as an
optative form (“if only […] could/would do”), which has transitioned into an ironic
denial form (“[…] would/could never do”) in modern times:
-amasi → -awasi → -awosi → -oosi:

• nomoosi “if only […] could drink”

• miisi / miroosi “if only […] could see”
• kousi / kuroosi “if only […] could come”
Intentional: Hachijō has innovated a new intentional form -oosyaate “for the purpose
of doing”

• nomoosyaate “having intended to drink”

• miisyaate / miroosyaate “having intended to look”
• kousyaate / kuroosyaate “haiving intended to come”
When combined with syowa “does,” this means “tries to do X” or “seems like it’s
about to do X.”
Futile: Hachijō has innovated a new ‘futile-hypothetical’ form -yaatei/-ryaatei “even
if one did,” to be followed by a result that would still occur regardless.
 • nomyaatei “even if one drank”
• miiryaatei “even if one saw”
• kuryaatei “even if one came”
Negative: In Hachijō, the negative is expressed by attaching to one of the negative
auxiliary verbs -nnaka or -nzyara to the infinitive (ren’yōkei) of a verb:

• nominnaka / nominzyara “doesn’t drink”

• minnaka / minzyara “doesn’t see”
• kinnaka / kinzyara “doesn’t come”
The auxiliary -nzyara is conjugated just like the past tense, so the attributive form is
-nzyoo; the past negative is -nzyarara, attributive -nzyaroo. The auxiliary -nnaka is
similar, but more irregular: attributive -nnoo, past -nnakarara or -nnarara, past
attributive -nnakaroo or -nnaroo.

The negative -nzyara is older, but has rapidly fallen out of use in the past decades in
favor of -nnaka.

(There’s plenty of other weirdness going on in Hachijō, but I’ll cut it here, since I’m already 30
pages in.)

Syntax & Semantics

Mirative Accusative: The accusative case -o/-yo is used with nouns and verbs,
expressing surprise.
Stative-Transitive Accusative: Rather than use -ga like Japanese, Hachijō uses the
accusative case -o/-yo is used to mark the objects of stative-transitive predicates like
suki-dara “to like” and hosikya “to want.”
Allative Purpose: Rather than using the dative -ni/-n to express the purpose for
which an action is done, Hachijō usually uses the allative -i/-ii.
Focus with ka and koo: When either of the focus particles -ka or -koo appears in a
sentence, the sentence’s verb must be in the evidential (izenkei) form. This continues
a practice inherited from Old Japanese, when it was used with the particle ko2so2.
Questions in Attributive: In general, verbs in question sentences do not use the
declarative ending -wa, but rather are expressed with the attributive form. This
continues a similar practice in Old Japanese where questions marked with ka or ya
used the attributive.
“not see” = Non-Experiential: Like Japanese, -te mirowa expresses “try to do X,” but
in the negative, -te minnaka or -te minzyara, it expresses “have never done X.”
Verb Reduplication: Verbs in the infinitive or converb (te-form) forms are
frequently repeated for emphasis, especially when expressing sensations or feelings.
Imperative Warning: In addition to its usual commanding meaning, the imperative
form in -e/-ro can also express an urgent warning: “Look out, you’re about to do X!”
“Volitional” Ability: Ability or possibility can be expressed by using the volitional
ending -ou followed by hou-dara (方だ) in the positive, or hou nakya (方ない) in the
negative.
Adjective Nominalization: The adjective suffixes -sa and -mi are synonyms, unlike in
Japanese, though Hachijō -mi is still limited to specific adjectives.
Animacy Distinction: Hachijō makes no aru/iru distinction like Japanese does;
Hachijō uses arowa for all subjects, and irowa retains its original meaning of “sit.”
Zero-Nominalization: Hachijō has no nominalizing particle no. Instead, almost all
slots where Japanese の would appear are simply left empty in Hachijō.

(Again, there’s a lot more to say, but I’m getting very tired of this little project right now, so
I’ll cut it here.)