Amami Ōshima language

Amami Ōshima is a language of the Amami subfamily within Northern Ryukyuan, itself a branch of the Ryukyuan languages within Japonic, spoken in the Amami Islands south of Kyushu in Japan's Kagoshima Prefecture. It divides into a Northern dialect, spoken on the northern part of Amami Ōshima island with roughly 10,000 speakers, and a Southern or Setouchi dialect spoken in the township of the same name with roughly 2,000 speakers, both further subdivided by community. Native speakers are predominantly elderly and declining in number, and the language is officially treated by the Japanese government as a dialect of Japanese rather than a distinct language, even as the Ministry of Education has begun measures aimed at protecting it as endangered.