Shimajiman

Shimajiman
Faneian
レッオファッナ le‘o fa‘na
Pronunciation	[ˈle̝ʔo ɸaʔna̞] [ˈɾe̝ʔɔ ɸaʔna̞]
Created by	Jukethatbox
Date	2024
Native to	Japan
Native speakers	6,000 (2024)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Polynesian Shimajima Shimajiman
Standard form	Standard Faneian
Dialects	Northern Shimajima Southern Shimajima
Writing systems	Katakana Latin
Official status
Recognised minority language in	Japan
Regulated by	Faneian Linguistic Academy

Shimajiman(le‘o fa‘na, Shimajiman: [ˈle̝ʔɔ ɸaʔna̞] or [ˈɾe̝ʔɔ ɸaʔna̞]), also called Faneian, is a Polynesian language spoken in the Shimajima Archipelago of Japan.

It differs from other Polynesian languages by being heavily influenced by the Japonic languages, and in particular Japanese, though some words have been borrowed from Okinawan.

It is the only Polynesian language to officially use the Japanese Katakana script, though there is an official romanisation based on Hawaiian orthography and Romaji.

History

Early settlement

The first inhabitants of the archipelago were early Austronesian peoples who settled the southern Shimajima islands from Formosa(Taiwan) around 70,000 BP. Later, Proto-Japonic peoples began settling the northern Shimajima islands, though the two cultures did not meet for several thousand years.

Polynesian peoples began migrating to the islands around 2,000 BCE, and began gradually replacing the previously settled peoples, though the Polynesians did seem to absorb some vocabulary from the local Austronesian and Japonic languages before they fully settled the archipelago.

Island kingdom era

Following the Polynesian settlement of the archipelago, local kingdoms began to form on some of the islands, with the largest kingdom, Soka I‘kani, forming on the largest island of E‘keo. The first city was built on E‘keo, called Waki‘sī, and became the capital of Soka I‘kani as well as the Shimajima archipelago as a whole.

It was around this time that the Japanese explored the region, and they called the Soka I‘kani the shima-jima(島々), meaning "various islands". Though the word initially referred to specifically the Soka I‘kani, the term eventually began to refer to the entire archipelago.

Japanese occupation

Some of the northern Shimajima kingdoms were Tokugawa vassals during the Edo period, and thus when the Meiji era began the vassals were integrated into the new Japanese state, though many kingdoms still stayed independent in the north and the south of the archipelago.

Cultural assimilation

To support the concept of a Japanese colonial empire, one of the first acts of the Japanese Empire was to invade all the remaining Shimajima islands in 1900. As part of a general policy of cultural assimilation, speaking the native Shimajima language was banned in private and in public, though the archipelago was so large that the southern islands were barely affected by the policy. This lead to a dialectical separation in southern and northern dialects of Shimajiman during the 45 years of Japanese colonial rule, where northern Shimajima dialects used more loanwords from Japanese than the southern dialects.

This policy also lead to phonetic changes between the dialects. For example, in the northern dialects, the use of the voiced alveolar lateral approximant, [l], was gradually replaced in most areas by the voiced alveolar tap or flap, [ɾ]. This change did not occur in southern dialects, leading to slight phonetic difference.

End of the occupation

With the end of the war in 1945 and the subsequent American occupation, the Shimajima islands were occupied by the Americans and a plebiscite was held on independence, joining Japan or joining the nearby country of Micronesia.

During the period of time before the plebiscite, political violence broke out as the pro-Japanese Prosperity Party began to bomb various opposition party buildings. Because of this terrorism, previous pro-Japanese supporters switched sides to various pro-independence leftist and conservative parties, resulting in a landslide victory for pro-independence parties in the election and plebiscite.

The Americans conceded, and in the Treaty of Taipei, Shimajima was given independence as the Federation of Shima-Jima. When the treaty was ratified by all parties on 28 March 1947, Shima-Jima officially gained independence, though American forces had pulled out six days earlier on 22 March.

Independence

Though most mainline parties were united on the subject of independence and opposing Japanese imperialism, they were divided on practically everything else.

This led to political violence from all sides of the political spectrum, with the most violent period being August 1947, where 300 people died in a terrorist attack on the 13th alone. In that month, about 500 people died and another 150 were injured.

Meanwhile, the new Japanese government had begun co-operating with the dormant Prosperity Party.