Kagoshima Sino-Japanese

Satsugū (薩隅) is the Japanese dialect of Kagoshima and southern Miyazaki — historically the Shimazu domain of Satsuma and Ōsumi. Its phonology is markedly divergent from Standard Japanese on three points that strongly reshape Sino-Japanese citation forms: (1) word-final /-tsu/ and /-ku/ in single-character on-yomi reduce to a checked syllable [-t̚] / [-k̚] when the syllable is in word- or accentual-phrase-final position, so 一 itsu → it̚, 六 riku → rik̚, 北 hoku → hok̚, 木 boku → bok̚; (2) high vowels /i u/ are pervasively devoiced between voiceless consonants and word-finally, often elided entirely; (3) the accent system collapses Tōkyō-style multi-pitch to a two-pattern (A=descending HL / B=ascending LH) system whose assignment is lexical. These rules together give Satsugū its famously 'clipped' or 'truncated' sound. Citation data here follow the readings most commonly documented in NINJAL's Kagoshima dialect surveys and Kibe (1997).