The Miyakoan language (宮古口/ミャークフツ Myākufutsu/Myākufutsї [mjaːkufutss̩] or 島口/スマフツ Sumafutsu/Sїmafutsї, Japanese: 宮古語, romanized: Miyako-go) is a diverse dialect cluster spoken in the Miyako Islands, located southwest of Okinawa.

The number of competent native speakers is not known; as a consequence of Japanese language policy which refers to the language as the Miyako dialect (宮古方言, Miyako hōgen), reflected in the education system, people below the age of 60[timeframe?]

[citation needed] An illustrative lexeme is the name of the plant Alocasia (evidently an Austronesian loan: Tagalog /biːɡaʔ/).

This varies as Central Miyako (Hirara, Ōgami) /biʋkasːa/, Ikema /bɯbɯːɡamː/, Irabu (Nagahama) /bɭ̆bɭːɡasːa/, Tarama /bivːuɭ̆ɡasːa/.

Tarama distinguishes three types of accent on the phonological word (stem plus clitics), e.g. /juda꞊mai neen/, /jadu꞊maiꜜ neen/, /maduꜜ꞊mai neen/, There are five vowels in Ōgami.

The blade of the tongue in /ɨ/ is close to the alveolar ridge, and this feature has been inaccurately described as "apical" (it is actually laminal).

There are maybe a dozen words with optionally voiced initial consonants, such as babe ~ pape (a sp.

Final /ʋ/ contrasts with the high back vowels: /paʋ/ 'snake', /pau/ 'stick', /paɯ/ 'fly' are accusative [pɑvvu, pɑuju, pɑɯu] with the clitic -u.

These can be typologically unusual: Geminate plosives do not occur, apart from a single morpheme, the quotative particle tta.

With tongue twisters, speakers do not insert schwas or other voiced sounds to aid in pronunciation: The minimal word is either VV, VC, or CC (consisting of a single geminate), as in aa 'millet', ui 'over', is 'rock', ff 'comb'.