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THE YONEZAWA DIALECT.
BY
C. H. DALLAS, Esq.
———o———
The dialect treated in this paper is that spoken in a large irregularly shaped plain of some 250 square miles in area, lying about midway between Sendai Bay and Niigata, just on the west of that central range of mountains which stretches like a back-bone from Kôdzuké to Awomori.
The word Yonézawa formerly designated the territory of the Uyésugi family, but being the name neither of a shiu nor of a kôri should perhaps now be restricted to their castle-town, the present capital of the Okitama Ken. In common parlance, however, the name is still extended to the whole of the plain at the southern extremity of Uzen, (the new southern division of Déwa), of which a part belongs to the prefecture of Yamagata, a handsome town about 4212 ri to the north. Besides the central range already referred to, which marks the boundary between Déwa and Ôshiu, lofty mountains separate this plain from Aidzu on the south, and Echigo, and Sakata on the west, so that it is entirely hemmed in by these natural barriers, except on the north, where a narrow gorge communicates with Yamagata and the rest of Déwa.
