Alternate Names: Northern Amami-Osima, Oosima, Oshima, Osima
Dialects: Naze, Sani. Inherent intelligibility generally impossible, or very difficult, with Ryukyuan languages and Japanese ,.
Genealogy:
Demographics: 10,000 (2004).
Language Use: Adults only. The younger the generation, the more fluently they speak Japanese [jpn] (Wurm and Hattori 1981). Those under 20 mostly monolingual in Japanese (1989 T. Fukuda).
Nation of Origin: Japan