Japanese'

Unlike its RL namesake, this language has rather clear relativs in SW coastal China, Taiwan and Hainan (historically also Korea). Language shift is likely to have taken place in Japan itself. Despite its "fringe position", Japanese' is the most thriving language of the family.

We can distinguish three main subgroups of the family: Insular, Continental and Northern. There is some historical evidence of more than one group on the mainland and it is likely this is where the family originated, but all the surviving Continental Japonic' languages clearly belong in a common branch. It seems this leaves Taiwanese' (now shriveling under Chinese influence) closest related to the minority languages of Hainan.

The Standard Modern Japanese' phoneme inventory is

p	f	t	ɬ	s	ʂ	k	h
b	v	d	l	ɾ		ɡ	ʁ
m		n			j	w

• /ʂ/ has an allophone [ʐ] before /b v d ɡ/.
• /ɬ l/ and /f v/ are in similar complementary distribution in clusters.

Vowels /i e a o u/ plus length, /ə/, /ai au/.

Phonotax: (C)V(C), medial clusters are mostly of the type FO or SO. NO is conspicuously missing. In inherited vocabulary root initium must be one of /p b m f v t d n ʂ j k ɡ/, whereas the most common codas are /m n s ʂ ɬ l/. (I'm pretty sure I had some further notes about this somewhere, but I have no zarking clue where I put them…)

Proto-Japonic' is usually reconstructed with the following consonant inventory:

*p	*pf	*t		*c	*k
*b	*bv	*d		*ɟ	*ɡ
		*s	*ɬ		*x
*m		*n	*l	*j	*ɣ	*w

In Continental Japonic' the labiodental affricates neatly merge with the plain labial stops, and the palatal stops with the alveolars. Insular Japonic' retains the distinctions but merges *ɬ → *x, *ɡ → ɣ. Due to paucity of data about the lost Korean idioms, Proto-Northern Japonic' and Proto-Japanese' are usually equated. This stage contains a fair number of changes, most prominently deaffrication of labiodentals; *c → ʂ; *ɟ → *ʐ → j (in initium and intervocally) / ʂ (in clusters); *x → h (ii&i) / ʂ (between a front vowel and a non-velar obstruent) / ∅ (most of the rest of the time); and medial flapping of *d → ɾ. Modern /ʁ/ does not directly continue *ɣ, but is rather found for both *ɣ and *ɡ in a backing environment. Backing and spirantization of *k to *χ is only found in a few dialects.