Wuhu Japanese

Wuhu Japanese
Wuhu Island Japanese, Wuhuan Japanese
烏風島日本語 / 烏風嶋日本語, 烏風日本語 Uhûzima Nihongo, Uhûnihongo
Flag of the Japanese territory of Ufūjima (??-1945)
Created by	Jukethatbox
Date	2026
Native to	Japanese-occupied Wuhu Island
Era	??-1950
Language family	Japonic Japanese Wuhu Japanese

Wuhu Japanese (烏風島日本語 / 烏風嶋日本語, 烏風日本語; Uhûzima Nihongo, Uhûnihongo; Nawuhu: na'a nipóngu, na'a japánu) refers to both administrative and unique colloquial varieties of the Japanese language used during the Japanese occupation of Wuhu Island that ended in 1945.

The Japanese colonial administration and its associated settlers first brought Japanese to the island following Japan's annexation of the island in ??. Japanese was quickly established as an administrative language, with various famous landmarks, most notably the Broken Clock Tower, being built in this time, as well as various Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples that still stand today. The Japanese also established the first modern education system on the island, leading to Japanese also becoming the primary language of instruction on the island, which expanded Japanese influence on the indigenous languages spoken there.

The Japanese originally transliterated the island's name as 烏風島 Ufūjima; Wedge Island was called 介里島 Kairishima, a transliteration of Wedge Kairi. Wuhu Japanese was particularly influential on the vocabulary of the indigenous languages Nawuhu and Wedge; various commonly used words in Nawuhu especially are originally derived from Japanese, including guntai "soldier, army" from Japanese 軍隊 guntai "armed forces", bunka "culture" from 文化 and toké’e "wristwatch, watch" from 時計 tokei "clock".

Wuhu Japanese quickly waned in use following the defeat of Japan in the Second World War, as the United States occupied the island and replaced Japanese with English as the official language and language of instruction of the island. The decline in the use of Japanese was further exacerbated by a mass exodus of Japanese nationals back to Japan throughout 1945 and 1946; those who remained gradually switched to English and linguists considered the distinct variety virtually extinct by 1950.

Modern usage

Wuhu Japanese is no longer spoken on Wuhu Island, though it is still used by various extant Japanese Buddhist temples across the island. These temples typically still have signs showing their original Japanese names, and sutras are still chanted in Japanese. However, other functions are generally only done in English, and monks will often only know Japanese to the extent of a Buddhist context, and thus would be unable to communicate with monolingual Japanese people. In this way, Wuhu Japanese can be seen as taking on a role similarly to Latin among Catholic priests, where it is still a common liturgical language but generally unused outside of religious contexts.

Other historically Japanese areas may still retain signs in Japanese, though the distinction between signs that originate in the Wuhu variety of Japanese from the occupation and more recent signs in Japanese by Japanese nationals who moved to Wuhu Island after the war has become increasingly unclear. Typically however, these older Wuhu Japanese signs have various distinguishing features, such as horizontal right-to-left reading (common in Japanese before WW2), as well as the use of obsolete letters such as ゐ / ヰ wi and ゑ / ヱ we and less common kanji like 嶋 instead of 島 for shima "island". Additionally, some archaeological discoveries have unearthed signs written in the now mostly obsolete Kunrei-shiki romanisation system, a system that was official during the Japanese occupation; this would point to the idea that the use of Kunrei-shiki is another distinguishing feature of historical Wuhu Japanese compared to contemporary modern Japanese used on Wuhu Island.

Phonology

Wuhu Japanese was also known to be itself a distinct dialect of Japanese, and was thus often referred to colloquially as 烏風弁 Uhûben "Wuhu dialect".

Vowels

Kanemoto (1987) reconstructed 5 vowel phonemes:

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

/u/ is a back rounded vowel; this is quite different from the modern standard Japanese /u/, which is considerably more protruded, compressed and unrounded. This rounded /u/ probably originated in the Kansai dialects that many Japanese settlers spoke before the emergence of a distinct Wuhu dialect. Vowels were probably almost always voiced, again similarly to Kansai dialects, though /u/ may have been devoiced after voiceless consonants in word-final syllables specifically, as it had a tendency to be dropped in loanwords to Nawuhu, such as in sotok/tok from 総督 soutoku. However, Tawara (2001) contests this, and instead gives an alternative explanation of simply a tendency to drop the vowel entirely; Tawara argues that there is not enough evidence to conclude that the vowels were specifically devoiced in these positions, despite still recognising the existence of this phenomenon.

Consonants

Kanemoto generally reconstructed the Wuhu Japanese consonant inventory as virtually identical to that of the standard Japanese consonant inventory:

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Alveolo- palatal	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m	n	(ɲ)		(ŋ)
Plosive	p b	t d			k g	(ʔ)
Affricate?		(ts) (dz)	(tɕ) (dʑ)
Fricative	(ɸ) (β)	s z	(ɕ) (ʑ)			h
Liquid		r
Semivowel				j	w

However, even here there are various distinguishing features; one of the boldest claims made by Kanemoto was that the affricate allophones /tɕ dʑ/ merged entirely with the sibilant allophones /ɕ ʑ/. Sanders (1995) further claimed that /ts dz/ also merged with /s z/, though Tawara again denied this and maintained that the affricate series remained phonetically distinct from the sibilant series in Wuhu Japanese in 2001, citing Kanemoto's own assertion that he was merely speculating on the reasoning behind seemingly regular misspellings in certain excavated shop signs.

See also

• Category:Nawuhu Japanese loanwords