Sunpaku

The **Sunpaku** language [すんぱく妻, also known as Hongen / Sunpaku: すんぱく] is a language spoken primarily on the three Honnan islands located in the far north of Kanton. It is an endangered language, with only an estimated 50,000 native speakers remaining. Though Sunpaku encompasses a large number of local dialects, spread across its islands, the Nasamazu variant is generally recognised as being the de facto standard. Moreover, as the capital of Nasamazu was built around the royal castle, the language used by the royal court became the regional and literary standard, and thus flourished in songs and poems written from the 12th century to the 1600s.

Today, most Honnan natives speak a Honban dialect (*honban-jōgen*), although a number of people still speak the Sunpaku language natively, mostly the elderly. The standardized and centralized education system, the media, business and social contact with mainlanders and previous attempts from Kanton to suppress the native languages, have resulted in Sunpaku declining dramatically and undergoing significant language shift into Kantonese. The speech is still kept alive in folk music, tourist shows and in theaters featuring a type of drama called *zōkata nogii*, an often humourous style which depicts local customs and manners irreverently. Sunpaku also survives in the names of numerous settlements across Honnan.

## History

Sunpaku is a language derived from Proto-Kantonese and is therefore related to Kantonese. The split between Old Kantonese and the Sunpaku language is estimated to have occurred as early as the 2nd century AD. Radicals and characters were first introduced by Kantonese missionaries in the 13th century. However, hiragana was the preferred writing system, and so the majority of Sunpaku manuscripts and documents are written without any characters.

Sunpaku suffered from efforts of suppression by the Kantonese government, starting from the mid-1800s, during which time children were punished for speaking the language at school, and adults were forbidden from using it in the workplace. Natives were told that their speech was merely a dialect of Kantonese, and that by continuing to speak Sunpaku, they were behaving ignorantly. Kantonese was taught to newer generations, and for fear of being targeted and discriminated against, many Sunpaku speakers abandoned their native tongue. By 1945, most people living in the Honnan archipelaego spoke Kantonese and around half were bilingual.

The Sunpaku language was historically written using hiragana. The hiragana syllabary is believed to have first been introduced from mainland Kanton some time during the reign of King Urō in the early 13th century. The Otoboku-na-Mīri, a sixteenth-century compilation of songs and poetry, was written solely in hiragana. However, characters were gradually adopted due to the growing influence of mainland Kanton and to the linguistic affinity between Sunpaku and Kantonese. However, it was limited to affairs of high importance and documents sent to the mainland. The oldest use of Kantonese characters can be found on a stone tablet in the Shita-na-Iya Museum, dating back to 1506.

After the invasion of Honnan by the Daimi clan of Daimi Province in 1710, Sunpaku ceased to be used in official affairs. It was replaced by standard Kantonese writing and a classical script known as *jūnen*. Despite this change, Sunpaku continued to prosper in local literature up until the nineteenth century. However, by the mid-1800s the Kantonese government was looking to promote national unity and create a fully homogenous society in Kanton. Standardised education in Kantonese was enforced in Honnan, which was based on the [capital] dialect. Students were discouraged and chastised for speaking or writing in the local ‘dialect’, notably through the use of ‘dialect cards’. As a result, Sunpaku gradually ceased to be written entirely until the 1960s, when efforts to revive the language first appeared.