The Ryukyuan languages are spoken in the Ryukyu Islands and in Japan's Kagoshima Prefecture, 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 6 different groups^[1]. “Okinawa” redirects here. ... The Amami Islands amami shotō) are part of the Ryukyu Archipelago. ... Kagoshima Prefecture ) is located on Kyūshū island, Japan. ... A language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common proto-language. ... The Japonic languages or Japanese-Ryukyuan languages constitute a language family that is agreed to have descended from a common ancestral language known as Proto-Japonic or Proto-Japanese-Ryukyuan. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. ... ISO 639-3 is an international standard for language codes. ... Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ... Location of Ryukyu Islands The Ryukyu Islands, in Japanese called the Nansei Islands ) are a chain of Japanese islands in the western Pacific Ocean at the eastern limit of the East China Sea. ... Kagoshima Prefecture ) is located on Kyūshū island, Japan. ... The Japonic languages or Japanese-Ryukyuan languages constitute a language family that is agreed to have descended from a common ancestral language known as Proto-Japonic or Proto-Japanese-Ryukyuan. ... A language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common proto-language. ...

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, 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 Yamatuguchi "Okinawan Japanese"), which is often misunderstood as the Okinawan language proper, ウチナーグチ (Uchināguchi "Okinawan language"). Similarly, everyday language in Amami Island is not the Amami language proper, but the Amami-accented mainland Japanese called トン普通語 (Ton Futsūgo "Potato Standard"). [1] Ryukyuan people (Japanese: 琉球民族, Chinese: 琉球族) are the indigenous people of the Ryukyu Islands of Japan between the islands of KyÅ«shÅ« and Taiwan. ... Okinawa Island heads up the Ryukyu islands chain, a part of Japan. ... Okinawan (Okinawan: Ê”ucināguci) is a Ryukyuan language spoken in Japan on the southern island of Okinawa, as well as the surrounding islands of Kerama, Kume-jima, Tonaki, Aguni, and a number of smaller islands located to the east of the main island of Okinawa. ... Amami Oshima, Kagoshima Prefecture Amami ÅŒshima is one of the RyÅ«kyÅ« Islands (also known as Nansei Islands). ... Amami is a language spoken by around 130000 people in the Amami islands south of Kyushu. ...

Nowadays, there are a little over 1 million native speakers of "traditional" Ryukyuan languages, but many of them are elderly (a significant percentage are even centenarians^{[citation needed]}). 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 still is used in traditional cultural activities, such as folk music, or folk dance. There is a radio news program in the language as well. [2] A centenarian is a person who has attained the age of 100 years or more. ... Many styles of traditional music are included in the music of Japan. ...

Types of Ryukyuan

• 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 3 vowels, while Amami has 14, including longer vowels. Below is a table showing simple phrases in each languages. Amami is a language spoken by around 130000 people in the Amami islands south of Kyushu. ... The Amami Islands amami shotō) are part of the Ryukyu Archipelago. ... Naze (名瀬市; -shi) is a city located in Kagoshima, Japan. ... Miyako is a language spoken by around 55783 people in the Miyako archipelagic area (including Miyako Island), south of Okinawa Island. ... Hirara (平良市; -shi) is a city located in Okinawa, Japan on the island of Miyako. ... Okinawan (Okinawan: Ê”ucināguci) is a Ryukyuan language spoken in Japan on the southern island of Okinawa, as well as the surrounding islands of Kerama, Kume-jima, Tonaki, Aguni, and a number of smaller islands located to the east of the main island of Okinawa. ... Shuri is a city in Okinawa also known as Shui or Syuri. ... Naha (那覇市; -shi) is the capital city of 沖縄県 Okinawa Prefecture (Okinawan Uchinā) in Japan. ... The Kunigami language is a colloquial variant of the Okinawan language that is spoken largely in the Kunigami district of Okinawa Prefecture in Japan. ... Kunigami (国頭村; -son) is a village located in Kunigami district, Okinawa, Japan. ... Yaeyama is a language spoken by around 44650 people in the Yaeyama islands south of the Miyako area of the Ryukyus. ... Ishigaki Island from space, August 1991 Ishigaki (石垣島 -jima Yaeyama: Shikaitu Okinawan: Ishigachi) is an island west of Okinawa Hontō and the second-largest island of the Yaeyama Island group. ... Yonaguni is a language spoken by around 1800 people on the island of Yonaguni, in Japan, just east of Taiwan. ... Yonaguni (与那国町; -chou) is a town located in Yaeyama district, Okinawa, Japan. ...

In many cases, 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, although they are losing ground, are slipping 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 Japanese influence on Ryukyuan languages can be said to only stretch back 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.^{[citation needed]} This was a political usage of the term dialect, but now, only Ryukyuan, which is genetically related to Japanese, still is called a dialect. Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... Ceremonies during the annexation of Hawaii. ... Brief History of the Ryukyus Before 1945 Large parts of this history come from George Feifers history of the Battle of Okinawa (references). ... // Invention of the Jacquard loom in 1801. ... The ensign of Imperial Japanese Navy was a prominent symbol of Imperial Japan. ...

After the Ryukyuan kingdom lost its independence, the languages, which were 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 really 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 16th 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. The French Revolution (1789–1815) was a period of political and social upheaval in the political history of France and Europe as a whole, during which the French governmental structure, previously an absolute monarchy with feudal privileges for the aristocracy and Catholic clergy, underwent radical change to forms based on... Occitan (IPA AmE: ), known also as Lenga dòc or Langue doc (native name: occitan [1], lenga dòc [2]; native nickname: la lenga nòstra [3] i. ... Provençal (Provençau) is one of several dialects of Occitan spoken by a minority of people in southern France and other areas of France and Italy. ... Catalan IPA: (català IPA: or []) is a Romance language, the national language of Andorra, and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Valencia , and in the city of LAlguer in the Italian island of Sardinia. ... Breton (Brezhoneg) is a Celtic language spoken by some of the inhabitants of Brittany (Breizh) in France. ... Tohoku region, Japan The Tōhoku region (東北地方; Tōhoku-chihō) is a geographical area of Japan. ...

Although being 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. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... This article is about the history of the Ryukyu Island chain southwast of the main islands of Japan. ...

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. The term multiculturalism is used to describe the recognition of cultural and ethnic diversity within the demographics of a particular social space. ... “Okinawa” redirects here. ...

The status of languages or dialects

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

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

• Some says Ryukyuan are 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 says Ryukyuan are dialects, since their linguistic relationships to Japanese are clear. Others think the relationships merely show the fact Ryukyuan are the independent languages within Japonic language group.

Language or dialect is often associated with its nation or ethnicity. For instance, if the speakers of language A don't have an independent nation-state, A is often considered as a dialect. However, again, this criterion often disagrees with the actual convention. The Japonic languages or Japanese-Ryukyuan languages constitute a language family that is agreed to have descended from a common ancestral language known as Proto-Japonic or Proto-Japanese-Ryukyuan. ... The term nation-state, while often used interchangeably with the terms unitary state and independent state, refers properly to the parallel occurence of a state and a nation. ...

• 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 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.

Ryukyuan people (Japanese: 琉球民族, Chinese: 琉球族) are the indigenous people of the Ryukyu Islands of Japan between the islands of Kyūshū and Taiwan. ... Ryukyu Independence Party flag The Ryukyu independence movement (琉球独立運動) can refer to a number of different movements, in Okinawa Prefecture, in the rest of Japan, and abroad, emerging at different times and with different goals, in relation to the history of the Ryūkyū Islands. ...

Examples in other languages

• Chinese vernaculars are often unintelligible to each other, but generally treated as dialects. A similar situation occurs on 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 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 as a dialect.
• Irish Gaeilge and Scottish Gàidhlig are in some ways intelligible to each other, however both are considered separate languages under the same branch.

Spoken Chinese Spoken Chinese comprises many regional variants. ... The Arabic language is classified as a Semitic language. ... Serbian (; ) is one of the standard versions of the Shtokavian dialect, used primarily in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, and by Serbs in the Serbian diaspora. ... Hindi ( , Devanagari: or , IAST: , IPA: ), an Indo-European language spoken all over India in varying degrees and extensively in northern and central India, is one of the two central official languages of India, the other being English. ... Urdu ( , , trans. ... Swiss German (Schweizerdeutsch, Schwyzerdütsch, Schwiizertüütsch, Schwizertitsch) is any of the Alemannic dialects spoken in Switzerland. ... This article is about the modern Goidelic language. ... // Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig) is a member of the Goidelic branch of Celtic languages. ...

Writing system

The letter from Kanamaru (1471)

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. Image File history File links Metadata No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links Metadata No higher resolution available. ... This article describes the modern Okinawan writing system. ... Tamaudun - Wikipedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... Brief History of the Ryukyus Before 1945 Large parts of this history come from George Feifers history of the Battle of Okinawa (references). ... Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana Manyōgana Uses Furigana Okurigana Rōmaji   ) are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (平仮名), katakana (片仮名), and the Arabic numerals. ... Hiragana ) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana and kanji; the Latin alphabet is also used in some cases. ... Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of very old forms of Chinese , making it very different from any modern spoken form of Chinese. ... Example of Kaeriten Kanbun (漢文, literally Han writing) is Chinese written for a Japanese audience. ... Katakana ) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet. ...

Common people did not learn kanji. Omorosōshi (おもろそうし) (1531-1623), 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). [3] [4] Under Japanese influence, all of those numerals became obsolete. The Omoro Sōshi (おもろそうし) is a compilation of ancient poems and songs from Okinawa and the Amami Islands, collected into 22 volumes and written primarily in hiragana with some simple kanji. ... Chinese numerals are characters for writing numbers in Chinese. ... For the breed of horse, see Yonaguni (horse). ...

Nowadays, perceived as "dialects", Ryukyuan languages are not written frequently. When they are, Japanese letters are used with 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. This article describes the modern writing system and its history. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

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. The characters for Kanji, lit. ... Map of Irimote Island and the other Yaeyama Islands Iriomote from space, August 1991 Iriomote (西表島 Iriomote-jima) is the largest of the Yaeyama Islands and the second largest in Okinawa Prefecture after Okinawa Island itself. ...

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.
• 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)

References

1. ^ 言語学大辞典セレクション：日本列島の言語 (Selection from the Encyclopædia of Linguistics: The Languages of the Japanese Archipelago). "琉球列島の言語" (The Languages of the Ryukyu Islands). 三省堂 1997