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. It seems Taiwanese' (now shriveling under Chinese influence) is closer related to the minority languages of Hainan than those of the mainland. 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.

Proto-Japonic' is 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

whereas the Modern Japanese' 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/.

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…)