Nantai

Nantai
男体語 nàn-tái-gò
Pronunciation	[ˈnã̞.dáiˌgo̞]
Created by	Jukethatbox
Date	2024
Setting	Alt-history Earth
Native to	Tochigi Prefecture, Japan
Native speakers	~566 (2023)
Language family	Japonic Nantai
Early form	Proto-Japonic
Standard form	Standard Nantai
Dialects	Western Tochigi Nikkō-Nantai Shirane-Nantai Eastern Tochigi(†)
Writing systems	Japanese Latin
Official status
Recognised minority language in	Japan
Regulated by	Nantai Association

Nantai(男体語; Nantai: [ˈnã̞.dáiˌgo̞]) is a Japonic language spoken natively in what is now the Tochigi Prefecture in Japan. It is a critically endangered language, with only 566 remaining native speakers.

Due to its phonetic similarity to Japanese, the language was officially considered a dialect of Japanese and was suppressed as "improper speech" until 1988, though linguists had been considering Nantai a separate language from as early as 1901 due to a lack of mutual intelligibility with Japanese.

Nantai has also influenced the Tochigi dialect of Japanese, mainly through the lack of distinction between /i/ and /e/ sounds, which is the defining feature of Tochigi-ben, as well as the voicing of consonants between two vowels.

Phonology

Orthography

Nantai uses the three writing systems of Japanese: Kanji, Katakana and Hiragana. All three scripts have the same purpose as in Japanese, with Hiragana for grammar, Kanji for vocabulary and Katakana for foreign loanwords.

Consonants

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Alveolo- palatal	Velar	Palatal	Glottal
Plosive	p b	t d		k g		ʔ
Fricative	ɸ	s z	ɕ ʑ			h
Nasal	m	n		(ŋ)	(ɲ)
Approximant	w
Lateral		l

/ɲ/ and /ŋ/ are allophones of /n/, for before /e/ or /i/ and before /k/ or /g/ respectively.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close/close-mid	i~e		ɯ
Close-mid/Open-mid			o~ɔ
Open	a

Nasalisation

When an alveolar nasal consonant(/n/) is after a vowel, the vowel is nasalised and the consonant is no longer pronounced, e.g. /a/ + /n/ → /an/ → /ã/.

Nasalised vowels are still considered vowels, so the VCV rule still applies, e.g. /ṼtṼ/ would still become /ṼdṼ/, with /Ṽ/ representing any nasalised vowel.