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Paper short abstract

This study examines emerging Japanese ethnolects among South American, South and Southeast Asian residents in Japan. Based on interview and baseline data, it analyzes syntactic variation, which shows reduced case marking, preference for simple sentences and suggests emerging Japanese ethnolects.

Paper long abstract

The number of non-Japanese residents in Japan has recently reached approximately 4.0 million. Since the late 1980s, Japanese government policies have facilitated the migration of descendants of Japanese emigrants (Nikkei), particularly from Brazil and Peru, through labor visa programs. Alongside earlier migrant groups (e.g., Koreans and Chinese) and more recent groups (e.g., Vietnamese and Filipinos), many of these migrants have now lived in Japan for over three decades, working as permanent or contract laborers, skilled workers, or interpreters. While some continue to move between Japan and their countries of origin, others have settled permanently, purchasing homes and securing long-term employment.

This study examines ways of speaking Japanese among non-Japanese residents in Japan. Since 2023, a new project has aimed to deepen our understanding of the social contexts of language contact in these communities. Extended fieldwork in Kanto Nagoya and its surrounding regions has involved semi-structured interviews conducted in both Japanese and participants’ heritage languages, as well as recordings of family conversations in collaboration with community members. The focus is on South American, South Asian, and Southeast Asian migrants who were either born and raised in Japan without visiting their ancestral homelands or who immigrated to Japan later in life.

Drawing on 85 semi-structured interviews with 86 speakers (40 Brazilians, 33 Peruvians, 9 South Asians, and 4 Southeast Asians) conducted by December 2025, this study explores participants’ language biographies, including migration histories and reflections on growing up in Japan. The analysis focuses on syntactic variation in Japanese, using 49.5 hours of baseline sociolinguistic interview data collected in Aikawa, Kanagawa. The results indicate that (1) case markers are more frequently omitted, (2) simple sentences are preferred over compound and complex sentences, and (3) noun phrase structures tend to be shorter. Based on these combined syntactic features, the paper discusses the possibility of an emerging ethnolectal variety of Japanese.

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Paper short abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research on Kansai dialect, this paper introduces the concept of linguistic post-standardisation to account for the afterlives of standard language ideology and the growing legitimacy of non-standard speech in highly standardised societies, such as contemporary Japan.

Paper long abstract

In recent decades, regional dialects have become increasingly visible and valorised in media, popular culture, tourism, and everyday interaction in Japan. At the same time, the ideological authority of standard Japanese remains firmly entrenched in public and institutional spaces. Drawing on ongoing debates surrounding the ‘Kansai dialect’, a group of dialects often associated with imagined authenticity, this paper develops the concept of linguistic post-standardisation to address the following question: how can we account for the apparent coexistence of enduring linguistic norms and the growing legitimacy of non-standard speech?

The paper theorises linguistic post-standardisation as a sociolinguistic condition in which standard language ideologies continue to structure linguistic evaluation, while no longer monopolising linguistic value and legitimacy. Based on ethnographic research on Kansai dialect, it examines how non-standard forms are selectively revalued, authorised, and circulated across different social domains, without displacing the symbolic centrality of standard Japanese. Rather than treating Kansai dialect as an exceptional or peripheral case, the analysis approaches it as a diagnostic site for examining broader transformations in how linguistic varieties are valued. In particular, it foregrounds how linguistic value and speaker legitimacy are re-evaluated in a highly standardised society. Building on sociolinguistic and linguistic anthropological approaches to enregisterment, indexicality, and cultural value, the paper argues that linguistic post-standardisation captures a reconfiguration of linguistic authority, rather than a linear decline or erosion of standardisation. It accounts for the afterlives of standard language ideology in a linguistically homogeneous society undergoing shifts in linguistic value and legitimacy.

By theorising these dynamics from the Japanese context, this paper contributes to debates in Japan Studies on language, culture, and power, while also offering a conceptual framework that may be applicable to other contexts shaped by strong standard language ideologies.

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Paper short abstract

This paper examines the pluralization strategies of loanwords in Japanese Christian sources, focusing on the retention of native plural morphology, the recharacterization through Japanese plural suffixes, and the morphosyntactic conditions that seem to favour or prevent each pluralizing option.

Paper long abstract

This paper investigates the pluralizing strategies of loanwords inside the printed texts produced by the Society of Jesus in Japan (kirishitanban stricto sensu). More than 600 loanwords are attested in the Christian sources, many of which retained some aspects of their original morphology, including the expression of gender and number, while also undergoing morphological integration through the addition of Japanese affixes.

Pluralization is a particularly revealing domain, as no less than four competing forms are attested: the types Apostolo (singular), Apostolos (plural), Apostolo-tachi (singular + Japanese plural suffix), and Apostolos-tachi (plural + Japanese plural suffix). In addition, pluralizing prefixes may occasionally occur. These coexisting strategies raise questions about the function and the distribution of number marking in missionary sources.

Thus, after a brief overview of loanwords displaying plural morphology and/or Japanese plural markers, the paper analyses the function associated with the attested forms: particular attention is devoted to the possibility of a singular form (the type Apostolo) to be used as transnumeral, that is, capable of referring to both single and multiple entities. The study then examines the syntactic environments that appear to allow or disfavour specific pluralizing strategies. The data seem to suggest that the presence of alternative number-expressing devices, such as classifiers, tends to disfavour the recharacterization through Japanese plural suffixes, while still allowing plural marking via native morphology (the type Apostolos). Finally, the paper addresses minor but significant discrepancies in the selection of Japanese pluralizing suffix, which are otherwise highly consistent, arguing that such variation reflects the translators’ intentions.

The analysis draws on missionary grammars and on devotional literature printed both in Latin and Japanese characters, with particular attention to texts whose European source is known.

Our findings will align with contemporary scholarship supporting the view that translation was a collaborative process involving European missionaries and Japanese converts, and that certain choices in the translation and printing processes were decided by the Society of Jesus and consistently applied by its members.

Keywords: kirishitanban, Japanese plural markers, Christian loanwords, missionary linguistics