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It is said, but I have no means of testing the accuracy of the statement, that some of the peculiarities of this dialect are to a certain extent common to the language current in the rest of Déwa and the adjoining monster province of Ôshiu; but that the nasal intonation does not there acquire that intensity which makes a Yonézawa peasant hopelessly unintelligible to a man from Tôkiô. It is possible therefore that some of the facts put forward in this paper may apply to the more widely diffused dialect of Ôshiu, but I limit my responsibility to the assertion of their existence in the dialect of Yonézawa, where I have collected them from the lips of the natives.
Taking the ordinary language of Tôkiô as the standard for comparison, the Yonézawa dialect differs from if,
- (1) In its peculiar intonation.
- (2) In the pronunciation of certain syllables.
- (3) In the meaning attached to certain words.
- (4) In the possession of certain words not known in Tôkiô.
- (5) In its phraseology and choice of expressions.
(1).—The intonation is exceedingly unmelodious, being deep, gruff, and intensely nasal, both nose and teeth being kept tightly closed. Among the lower classes this is aggravated by a peculiar lisp, from which as a rule the educated men are free. The difference of the mode of articulation is so great, that apart from the other peculiarities of the dialect, it is alone sufficient to render it a matter of no small difficulty for unaccustomed ears to understand the most ordinary sentence.
(2).—In the pronunciation of the syllables a distinction is made between イ and ヰ both of which are in Tôkiô called i, the latter only retaining this sound, the former being called é. Thus they commence the syllabary é, ro, ha, and say énu ‘a dog,’ éshi ‘a stone,’ but ido ‘a well,’ isha ‘a doctor.’
As at Tôkiô, no distinction is made between the syllables エ and 𛄡, but the initial Y sound is invariably strongly pronounced as Yéchizen, Yéchigo. The
