An Introduction to The National Language Research Institute: A Sketch of its Achievements
Third Edition(1988)/ HTML Version(1997)

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II.1.7 The Process of the Uniformization of Standard Language Use - A Survey of Three Generations in Hokkaido -

(Report 27, 1965. 301 pages)
Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan, is the area with the shortest history of development; except for the southwestern peninsula and some coastal districts, most of Hokkaido was settled by Japanese immigrants after 1868. We can thus find some families where the first immigrants are now living with the second and the third generations. The immigrants came originally from all the provinces of Japan and brought their own dialects. The present third generation, however, speaks a common Hokkaido language, evolved on the island; their language thus no longer represents the original dialects of the first immigrants. This Hokkaido dialect, while very close to the standard language, shows some similarities with that of the To~hoku district, the nearest part of the Main Island across the straits. This report describes the characteristics of the new Hokkaido dialect, its birth, and the process of its growth, tracing the changes in the language from the first to the third generations. The survey lasted three years (1958 to 1960) and was made possible by a grant from the Ministry of Education. The survey committee was under the leadership of IWABUTI Etutaro~. The surveyors were SIBATA Takesi, NOMOTO Kikuo, UEMURA Yukio, and TOKUGAWA Munemasa of the Institute worked with four dialectologists from Hokkaido, IGARASI Saburo~, ISIGAKI Hukuo, HASEGAWA Kiyonobu and SATO Makoto. The survey was composed of the following portions: 1. Case studies of nine families in four localities to determine the changes in three generations. 2. A survey of 161 informants from the third generation in three large cities. 3. A survey of the social background of approximately 10,000 people in Hurano Town, a typical small town of the inland area, and a linguistic survey of 200 people of the second and third generations there. 4. A linguistic survey of 86 informants of the second and third generations in three localities formed by collective immigration. 5. A survey of third-generation speakers in 40 towns in Hokkaido and six towns in the northern part of the To~hoku district. 6. A test of the differences in phonetic recording between the team workers. All these studies covered phonology, tones, grammar and vocabulary; the materials are reproduced for the greater part in the appendices. The results gave a fairly clear picture of the characteristics of the Hokkaido dialect, its regional differences, and its relationship to both the To~hoku dialect and the standard language. The language of the third generation was found to have lost completely the characteristics of the dialects of the first immigrants, except in some isolated settlements formed by collective immigration. The tone distinction between words also appears to be disappearing gradually in the Hokkaido dialect. The text of the report was mainly the work of NOMOTO Kikuo.

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