Kumamoto dialect

Kumamoto dialect
Kumamoto dialect
熊本弁
Native to	Japan
Region	Kumamoto
Language family	Japonic Japanese Kyushu Kumamoto dialect; ; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	kuma1281

Kumamoto dialect (熊本弁, Kumamoto-ben) is a dialect of the Japanese language spoken in Kumamoto Prefecture. It belongs to the Hichiku group, and shares similarities with other nearby dialects in Kyushu.

Features

The I adjective in Standard Japanese becomes "か" (ka) in Kumamoto dialect:^[1]

うまい (umai, "tasty") > うまか (umaka)

よい (yoi, "good") > よか (yoka)

This feature is found in other Kyushu dialects. The negative conjugation "ない" (nai) also becomes "なか" (naka).

Unlike Standard Japanese, Kumamoto dialect is described as "accentless", meaning it has no fixed tonal pattern.^[2]

Kumamoto dialect has a different set of Ko-so-a-do words:

これ (kore, "this") > こっ (ko')

それ (sore, "that") > そっ (so')

あれ (are, "that over there") > あっ (a')

どれ (dore, "which") > どっ (do')

^ MIT Working Papers in Linguistics. Vol. 55. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 2007. p. 120.
^ Tomas Riad; Carlos Gussenhoven (2007). Tones and Tunes: Typological studies in word and sentence prosody. p. 327.

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