Nausinkinese

Nausinkinese is a language mainly spoken in Tosan's Nasinkini Islands.

Classification
Nausinkinese is a member of the language family, comprising its own family branch along with Tosanese, Shoyo and Taimo. Closely related to Tosanese, it is grouped with the latter in the Western Tosanic branch of the Tosanic sub-family.

Pre-History
Proto-Fusenic speakers migrated to what is now Tosan around the 1000s BCE. They spoke their own dialect of the proto-language. Due to contact with proto-Yeongju speakers, the proto-Fusenic (and later proto-Tosanic) dialects these people spoke across Tosan were altered substantially, eventually becoming so unintelligible that the Tosanic branch of the Fusenic language was born.

The proto-Fusenic settlers there were the least impacted by contact with the proto-Yeongju peoples of the area. Thus, the farther inland the proto-Tosanic settlers went, the more altered their dialects were by the now-displaced proto-Yeongju peoples they came in contact with.

Usage in the world
Nausinkinese is a recognized language of the Empire of Tosan, specifically in the Nasinkini Islands. In the modern era, Nausinkinese was marginalized by the nationalist Tosanese authorities of the time, who mandated that all education, bureaucratic and media services be done in Tosanese. In the 1970s, after a campaign where regionalists protested the marginalization of the islands' native tounge for a century, Nausinkinese was recognized as a co-official language in the Nasinkini Islands prefecture.

Traditionally Nausinkinese-speaking areas
The Nasinkini Islands are the only area where Nausinkinese is spoken to a significant degree.

Number of speakers
Around 80,000 native speakers of Nausinkinese still remain, mostly people coming from the elderly and the rural sections of the islands. Language revival efforts have been partially successful, with an additional 150,000 Nasinkinese residents being able to speak it as a second language.

Dialects
Nausinkinese mainly has three dialects, each corresponding to one of the three main islands of the archipelago. These are: Yokinese, Miutsikinese and Kounminkinese.

Writing system
Nausinkinese makes use of a combination of characters and a modified version of the Kana Tosan imported from Fusen.