kumean

Kumean is an ethnolinguistic term referring to the people of Kume Island (Kumejima) in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan, and to the language traditionally spoken there. The island lies in the Okinawa archipelago in the East China Sea. The term is used in linguistic and ethnographic contexts to denote what is locally spoken and culturally associated with Kume.

The Kume language, sometimes called Kume Ryukyuan or Kumean, is classified within the Ryukyuan branch of the Japonic language family. It is closely related to other Ryukyuan languages such as Okinawan and Yaeyama, but many researchers regard it as a distinct language rather than a simple Okinawan dialect. The degree of mutual intelligibility with neighboring Ryukyuan varieties varies.

Today, Kumean is endangered. Japanese is the dominant language on Kume Island, and younger generations increasingly use Japanese in education, media, and daily life. Estimates of fluent native speakers vary, but numbers are typically well under those of the island’s older population. The language exhibits dialectal variation across settlements on the island, with differences in phonology, vocabulary, and grammar that have been documented by linguists.

Efforts to document and revitalize Kumean include fieldwork, descriptive grammars, and lexical records. These efforts aim to preserve linguistic features and to support community language education, where feasible. As with other Ryukyuan languages, Kumean faces pressure from language shift to Japanese but remains a subject of scholarly interest for understanding the region’s linguistic history and cultural heritage.