Japonic languages

Japonic or Japanese–Ryukyuan (Japanese: 日琉語族, romanized: Nichiryū gozoku) is a language family comprising Japanese, spoken in the main islands of Japan, and the Ryukyuan languages, spoken in the Ryukyu Islands. The family is universally accepted by linguists, and significant progress has been made in reconstructing the proto-language, Proto-Japonic. The reconstruction implies a split between all dialects of Japanese and all Ryukyuan varieties, probably before the 7th century. The Hachijō language, spoken on the Izu Islands, is also included, but its position within the family is unclear. Most scholars believe that Japonic was brought to the Japanese archipelago from the Korean peninsula with the Yayoi culture during the 1st millennium BC. Fragmentary evidence suggests that Japonic languages may still have been spoken in central and southern parts of the Korean peninsula (see Peninsular Japonic) in the early centuries AD. Possible genetic relationships with many other language families have been proposed, most systematically with Koreanic, but no genetic relationship has been conclusively demonstrated. Syllables in Japonic languages have the form (C)V, with optional nasal coda, geminate consonant or lengthened vowel. Most Japonic languages have voicing opposition for obstruents. As in Koreanic and Ainu, there is a single liquid consonant phoneme. A five-vowel system is most common. Most Japonic varieties have a lexical pitch accent (as do Ainu and some Korean varieties), but the structure of the accent system varies between varieties. Japonic languages, again like Ainu and Korean, are left-branching, with a basic subject–object–verb word order. Verbs which have extensive inflectional morphology, while nominals have agglutinative suffixing morphology.