Another japanese regional koine of kuril japanese

This paper investigates sociolinguistic situation in a Russian island of the Kuril Islands, and points out the possibility of the establishment of a Japanese regional koine. Plant names were raised for an analysis, and this paper found out that a large degree of borrowings were made from an adjacent dialect of Hokkaido. Apart from it, it was dialects of Tohoku and other regions that came into the Kuril Japanese, which coincides with the distribution of the plant itself. Analyses also showed that a dialectal form of a different kind of plant was used in place of the original plant name in the Kuril Islands. On the contrary, general terminologies are also given to some plant names, as well. With a mixture of numerous dialectal features and diverse nature of the community, this paper claims that a regional koine of Japanese emerged in course of its 130 years history of Japanese speakers.