Japanese Dialects - History

History

Regional variants of Japanese have been confirmed since the Old Japanese era. Man'yōshū, the oldest existing collection of Japanese poetry includes poems written in dialects of the capital (Nara) and eastern Japan (see also Old Japanese#Dialects), but other dialects were not recorded. The recorded features of eastern dialects were rarely inherited by modern dialects except for a few language islands such as Hachijo Island. In the Early Middle Japanese era, there were only vague records such as "rural dialects are crude". However, since the Late Middle Japanese era, features of regional dialects had been recorded in some books, for example Arte da Lingoa de Iapam, and the recorded features were fairly similar to modern dialects. The variety of Japanese dialects developed markedly during the Edo period because many feudal lords restricted the movement of people to and from other fiefs. Some isoglosses agree with old borders of han especially in Tohoku and Kyushu. From the Nara period to the Edo period, the dialect of Kinai (now central Kansai) had been the de facto standard Japanese, and the dialect of Edo (now Tokyo) took over in the late Edo period.

With modernization in the late 19th century, the government and the intellectuals promoted establishment and spread of the standard language. The regional languages and dialects were slighted and suppressed, and so locals had a sense of inferiority about their "bad" and "shameful" languages. The language of instruction was standard Japanese, and some teachers administered punishments for using non-standard languages particularly in Okinawa and Tohoku regions (See also Ryukyuan languages#Modern history). From the 1940s to the 1960s, the period of Shōwa nationalism and the post-war economic miracle, the push for the standardization of regional languages/dialects reached its peak.

Now standard Japanese spread throughout the nation and traditional regional languages/dialects are declining because of education, popularization of television, expansion of traffic, urban concentration and etc. However, regional languages/dialects have not been completely replaced with standard Japanese. The spread of standard Japanese means the regional languages/dialects are now valued as "nostalgic", "heart-warming" and "precious local identity" and many locals gradually overcame their sense of inferiority regarding their languages/dialects. The contact between regional languages/dialects and standard Japanese invents new regional speech among young people.