Tarama language

The Tarama language is a Japonic language spoken on the islands of Tarama and nearly depopulated Minna, two of the Miyako Islands of Japan. It is closely related to Miyakoan, but intelligibility is low. It is only spoken by elderly people.

Tarama
Native to	Japan
Region	Tarama, Okinawa
Native speakers	mostly over age 60?
Language family	Japonic Ryukyuan Southern Ryukyuan Miyakoan Tarama
Dialects	Tarama Island
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)
Glottolog	tara1319

Phonology

Vowels

Tarama has four main vowels, and two marginal vowels /e, o/ found in a restricted set of words.

Tarama vowels

i	ɨ	u
(e)		(o)
	a

/ɨ/ is [s̩] between voiceless consonants, otherwise [ˢɨ] after plosives, and [ɨ] elsewhere:

[ps̩tu] 'person', [kˢɨːlu] 'yellow', [mɨːɡɨ] 'right'

The sequences /*tɨ/, /*dɨ/, /*nɨ/, /*lɨ/ do not occur. They have changed to /tsɨ/, /zɨ/, /n̩/ and /l/ ([ɭ̆]).

Consonants

Tarama does have voiced stops:

Tarama consonants

	Labial	Alveolar	Velar
Nasal	m	n
Plosive	p b	t d	k ɡ
Affricate		ts
Fricative	f v	s z
Rhotic		ɭ̆/ ⟨l⟩
Approximant	w~ʋ	j

The 'l' is a retroflex lateral flap, also found in the Irabu language (Jarosz p. 43). /m n f v s z l/ occur as syllable codas, as in pail 'to grow' (Japanese haeru), psks 'to pull' (Japanese hiku).

The two nasals may be syllabic, as in mm 'potato' and nna 'rope'. 'Onsets' include geminate consonants, as in ssam 'loose' and ffa 'child'. Otherwise, the only consonant clusters are /Cj/, as in kjuu 'today', sjata 'sugar'. Sonorants can end syllables and words, as in kan 'crab', mim 'ear', and tul 'bird'. Vowel sequences include long vowels Vː and the 'diphthongs' Vi, and Vɨ. This structure has been analyzed as a syllable, but initial geminate consonants, long vowels and diphthongs are all bimoraic, and codas are moraic as well, so that e.g. ssam is three moras ([s̩sam̩]. A phonological word must be at least two moras long.

References

External links

• Miyako dialect dictionary, Okinawa Center of Language Study
• Aleksandra Jarosz, Nikolay Nevskiy's Miyakoan dictionary (PhD dissertation on Nikolai Nevsky's draft manuscript dictionary of Miyakoan)