Kyushu Dialect

The Kyushu dialect is a group of Japanese dialects spoken across the Kyushu region of Japan, generally divided into the Hichiku dialect of the northwest, the Honichi dialect of the central and eastern areas, and the Satsugu, or Kagoshima, dialect of the south. It differs from both Eastern and Western Japanese in its verb and adjective forms, using imperatives such as miro rather than miyo and ka-adjective forms such as samuka for cold, and in distinctive particles including to, sai, tai and bai; much of the region either lacks pitch accent or uses its own distinctive accent system, and the Kagoshima dialect is distinctive enough that some linguists treat it as a fourth branch of Japanese. Parts of the Kyushu dialect region also share vocabulary with the Ryukyuan languages, pointing to older historical connections within the Japonic family.