Ryukyuan languages

Traffic safety slogan signs in Kin, Okinawa, written in Okinawan and Japanese.

The Ryukyuan languages are spoken in the Ryukyu Islands, and make up a subfamily of the Japonic language family. Some disagree as to how these languages should be divided. However, there is a consensus among Ryukyuanists that there are six different groups.

The Ryukyuan languages and Japanese diverged "not long before the first written evidences of Japanese appeared, that is to say, at some point before the 7th century".

Current situation

Most linguists, at least those outside Japan, consider Ryukyuan languages as different languages from Japanese, while they are generally perceived as "dialects" by mainland Japanese and Ryukyuans themselves. In Okinawa, standard Japanese is almost always used in formal situations. In informal situations, the de facto everyday language among Okinawans under their 60s is the Okinawa-accented mainland Japanese called ウチナーヤマトゥグチ (Uchinā Yamatoguchi "Okinawan Japanese"), which is often misunderstood as the Okinawan language proper, ウチナーグチ (Uchināguchi "Okinawan language"). Similarly, the everyday language on Amami island is not the Amami language proper, but the Amami-accented mainland Japanese, called トン普通語 (Ton Futsūgo "Potato Standard").

Nowadays, there are a little over a million native speakers of "traditional" Ryukyuan languages, but many of them are elderly (a significant percentage are even centenarians). There are still some children learning Ryukyuan languages natively, but this is rare on mainland Okinawa and usually only happens when children live with grandparents. Native speakers of Okinawan under 20 are rare. The language is still used in traditional cultural activities, such as folk music, or folk dance. There is a radio news program in the language as well.

Types

• Amami Spoken: islands of the Amami district; Standard: Naze; Speakers: 130,000
• Miyako (Miyako: myaaku hutsi) Spoken: islands of the Miyako district; Standard: Hirara; Speakers: 55,783
• Okinawan (Okinawan: uchinaaguchi) Spoken: southern and central districts of the Okinawan mainland and the surrounding minor islands; Standard: traditionally Shuri, modern Naha; Speakers: 900,000
• Kunigami Spoken: the Yanbaru district of the Okinawan mainland as well as the surrounding minor islands; Standard: Kunigami; Speakers: ???
• Yaeyama (Yaeyama: yaima munii) Spoken: islands of the Yaeyama district; Standard: Ishigaki; Speakers: 44,650
• Yonaguni Spoken: Yonaguni island in the Yaeyama district; Standard: Yonaguni; Speakers: 1,800

Each Ryukyuan language is generally unintelligible to others in the same family. There is a wide diversity between them. For example, Yonaguni has only three vowels, while Amami has 14, including longer vowels. Below is a table showing simple phrases in each language.

	Thank you	Welcome
Japanese	Arigatō	Yōkoso
Amami	Arigatesama ryōta	Imōrī
Kunigami	Mihediro	Ugamiyabura
Okinawan	Nifēdēbiru	Mensōrē
Miyako	Tandigātandi	Nmyāchi
Yaeyama	Mīfaiyū	Ōritōri
Yonaguni	Fugarasa	Wari

Many speakers of the Amami, Miyako, Yaeyama, or Yonaguni languages will also know Okinawan. Many Yonaguni speakers also know Yaeyama. Since Amami, Miyako, Yaeyama, and Yonaguni are less urbanised than the Okinawan mainland, their languages are not declining as quickly as that of Okinawa proper, and children continue to be brought up in these languages. The proportion of adults to children in speakers of Okinawan is much more uneven than with the other languages: it is quickly losing ground as a native language, while the other Ryukyuan languages are losing ground only gradually.

Ryukuyan official documents were historically written in classical Chinese. For someone educated in modern Chinese, reading these documents, or the text on Ryukyuan tombstones, is not particularly difficult. The modern Japanese influence on Ryukyuan languages can be said to stretch back only about 130 years, to the annexation of Ryukyu into Japan as Okinawa Prefecture and the introduction there of Japanese national public education.

Modern history

Since the beginning of World War II, most mainland Japanese have regarded the Ryukyuan languages as a dialect or group of dialects of Japanese. Experts, however, tend to regard them as separate languages. Before the annexation of the Ryukyuan Kingdom to Japan in the late 1800s, nobody would have questioned the status of Ryukyuan languages as independent from Japanese. However, during World War II, in an effort to build consciousness in people as subjects of the Japanese Empire, not only Ryukyuan, but also Korean, Palauan, and various other languages were referred to as "dialects" of Japanese. This was a political usage of the term dialect, but only Ryukyuan, which is genetically related to Japanese, is still called a dialect.

After the Ryukyuan kingdom lost its independence, the languages, degraded as the "dialects", were severely suppressed in school education. This was different from the other parts of the empire, such as Korea or Taiwan, where the local languages were still briefly taught until the cultural assimilation policy was enforced later. In Okinawa, when a student spoke in Ryukyuan, he had to wear a dialect card (方言札), a necklace with a card stating he spoke a dialect (thus is a bad student). This punishment was taken from 19th century France, where the regional languages such as Occitan (Provençal), Catalan, or Breton were suppressed in favor of French. The same system was also used in other parts of Japan, such as the Tōhoku region.

Although an inhumane linguicide, the dialect card system was often supported by Okinawan parents, who hoped their children would be able to work in mainland Japan. The system lasted as late as the 1960s during the US administration.

Nowadays, in favor of multiculturalism, preserving Ryukyuan languages has become the policy of Okinawan Prefectural government. However, the situation is not very optimistic, since the vast majority of Okinawan children are now monolingual in Japanese.

Political language status

In Japan (including Okinawa), there is a disagreement concerning whether Ryukyuan is a group of independent languages or merely dialects of mainland Japanese. Linguistically, one can not draw a clear line between "language" and "dialect". Rather, the difference has been determined conventionally, regarding social and historical elements such as speakers' ethnicity, political status, or religion. In the case of Ryukyuan, the surrounding situation is fairly complicated.

One linguistic basis to determine whether a speech is a dialect or an independent language is its intelligibility to another. When language A is unintelligible to monoglot speakers of language B, A is considered a different language from B. However, this criterion often disagrees with the actual conventions used.

• Some say Ryukyuan is a group of independent languages, since they are unintelligible to Japanese speakers, and have a lot of linguistic features not found in Japanese. Others think that doesn't necessarily indicate they are different languages, since some dialects in mainland Japan, generally undisputed as "dialects", are also unintelligible to other Japanese speakers.
• Some say Ryukyuan is a group of dialects, since their linguistic relationships to Japanese are clear. Others think the relationships merely show that Ryukyuan is a group of independent languages within the Japonic language group.

Language or dialect is often associated with nation or ethnicity. For instance, if the speakers of language A lack an independent nation-state, A is often considered as a dialect. However, again, this criterion often disagrees with the actual convention.

• The name "Ryukyuan languages" may be used to state Ryukyuan as a different ethnicity from Japanese, or in promotion of the Ryukyu independence.
• The name "Okinawan dialects" may be used to state that Okinawa residents are Japanese, or in promotion of Okinawa as an integral part of Japan.
• Some say such a discussion is irrelevant, since ethnicities and languages don't always correspond one to one.

Putative analogies in other languages

• Chinese vernaculars are often unintelligible to speakers of others, but generally treated as dialects. A similar situation occurs among Arabic vernaculars as well.
• Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian are highly intelligible to each other, but treated as different languages. The same is true of Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian.
• Hindi and Urdu are generally intelligible, often used by same nationals (Indians), but treated as different languages, mainly due to their religious differences and writing systems.
• Speakers of Swiss German, which is largely unintelligible to speakers of Standard German, do have their independent nation, and they always use their idiom in informal situations, and sometimes even in formal situations. Still, Swiss German is considered a dialect.
• Irish and Scottish Gaelic are in some ways intelligible to speakers of the other; however, they are considered separate languages.

Writing system

A letter from King Shōen to Shimazu oyakata (1471); an example of written Ryukyuan.

See also: Okinawan writing system

Older Ryukyuan texts are often found on stone inscriptions. Tamaudun-no-Hinomon (玉陵の碑文 "Inscription of Tamaudun tomb") (1501), for example. In Ryukyuan Kingdom, official texts were written in kanji and hiragana, derived from Japan. However, this makes the sharp contrast from Japan at the time, where classical Chinese writing was mostly used for official texts, only using hiragana for informal ones. Classical Chinese writing was sometimes used in Ryukyu as well, read in kundoku (Ryukyuan) or in Chinese. In Ryukyu, katakana was hardly used.

Common people did not learn kanji. Omorosōshi (1531-1623), a famous Ryukyuan song collection, was mainly written in hiragana. Other than hiragana, they also used Suzhou numerals (sūchūma すうちうま in Okinawan), derived from China. In Yonaguni island in particular, there was a different writing system called kaidādī (カイダー字 or カイダーディー). Under Japanese influence, all of those numerals became obsolete.

Nowadays, perceived as "dialects", Ryukyuan languages are not often written. When they are, Japanese letters are used in an ad hoc manner. There are no standard orthographies for the modern languages/dialects. Sounds not distinguished in Japanese letters, such as glottal stops, are not properly written.

Sometimes local kun'yomi are given to kanji, such as agari (あがり "east") for 東, iri (いり "west") for 西, thus 西表 is Iriomote.

Further reading

• Ashworth, D. E. (1975). A generative study of the inflectional morphophonemics of the Shuri dialect of Ryukyuan. Thesis (Ph. D.)--Cornell University, 1973.
• Heinrich, Patrick (2004): Language Planning and Language Ideology in the Ryūkyū Islands, in: Language Policy 3.2, (2004): 153-179.
• Serafim, L. A. (1985). Shodon: the prehistory of a Northern Ryukyuan dialect of Japanese. [S.l: s.n.
• Shimabukuro, Moriyo. 2007. The accentual history of the Japanese and Ryukyuan languages: a reconstruction. Languages of Asia series, v. 2. Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental. ISBN 9781901903638
• Uemura, Yukio, and Wayne P. Lawrence. 2003. The Ryukyuan language. Endangered Languages of the Pacific Rim (Series), A4-018. Osaka, Japan: ELPR.

External links

• Ethnologue report for the Ryukyuan language family
• Additional information (in Japanese)