Miyako Ryukyuan is a language spoken by 15000 people (broad approximation) in the Miyako islands (Miyako, Kurima, Irabu, Shimoji, Ikema, Ōgami, Tarama, Minna), a Japanese territory near Taiwan. It belongs to the Ryukyuan branch of the Japonic languages.
It is not mutually intelligible with Japanese nor with the other Ryukyuan languages (Amami, Okinawa, Yaeyama, Yonaguni).
Miyako Ryukyuan is still used as a mean of dayly communication by the elder generation, but the younger generations usually cannot even understand it. It is therefore an endangered language, as all the other Ryukyuan languages.
The Ryukyuan languages remain unsufficientely or unadequately described and documented. There are few in-depth descriptions of Miyako Ryukyuan, and some previous studies are quite problematic.
In my dissertation I give a general description of the Ōgami dialect, a highly endangered dialect spoken by only roughly a hundred speakers. It has a highly unusual phonology: it has a very small phoneme inventory (5 vowels, 9 consonants) with no voicing distinction and allows words made up of voiceless consonants only (ex: /kff/ “to make”, /ksks/ “moon”).
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