| Date | Presenter |
Title |
| Tue, Mar 08 |
Mie Hiramoto
Department of Linguistics |
Change of Tôhoku Dialect Spoken in Hawai'i: Adult Speakers' Second Dialect Acquisition in Plantation Settings
With a massive development of the sugar industry in Hawaiian Islands beginning from the mid-19th century, a large number of immigrants came to work at sugar plantations from all over the world. Japan sent plantation immigrants on a regular basis from 1885 until 1924; as a result, over 200,000 immigrants came to Hawai'i. Many Japanese migrated as dekasegi imin or temporary immigrant workers at then booming sugar plantations; however, ended up settling in Hawai¡'i as permanent residents. As a result, Japanese laborers had formed the largest ethnic group for decades in Hawai¡'i and they still affect demographic distributions today. Different dialect speakers from different geographic areas met at sugar plantations on the different islands and formed Japanese communities. The Japanese language spoken by the plantation immigrants and their descendents in Hawai'i is said to be different from today¡¦s standard variety spoken in Japan. Chûgoku dialect speakers from Hiroshima and Yamaguchi prefectures were the earliest and largest group of immigrants and Tôhoku dialect speakers from Fukushima and Niigata prefectures remained as minority during the sugar plantation period. Fukushima people started their immigration over ten years later (1898) than the earlier immigrants.
Concerning the dialectal distribution in Japan, the areas covering northern Honshû, roughly beginning from the bottom end of Fukushima and the northern half of Niigata prefectures and above (drawing an isogloss from west to east coasts of Honshû island), are generally considered to be in Tôhoku dialect region (e.g., Kanno and Iitoyo 1967/1994; Kato 1958; Tokugawa and Grootaers1951). Thus, I will refer to the Japanese immigrants originating from Niigata and Fukushima prefectures as Tôhoku dialect speakers. In this presentation, I will report findings from a study of Tôhoku dialect speakers, which examined changes in their dialect use after they moved to Hawai'i.
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