Talk:Okinawan language

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Contents 1 Vocabulary 2 Conjugation 3 Mingo 4 Okinawan writing 5 This page needs more explanation 6 Proposed Merger Tag Removal

[edit] Vocabulary

I was wondering wether or not a list of Uchinaaguchi words should be put up.

[edit] Conjugation

I have created a conjugation table at /Conjugation. Any ideas for how it can be simplified/presented? - 刘 (劉) 振霖 04:03, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Mingo

"Mingo" is a Japanese term. The Okinawan word for the Okinawa language is "uchinaguchi." "Uchina" is the Okinawan word for Okinawa and "guchi" is literally mouth.

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Removed mention of "mingo" because it does not appear in Jim Breen's Dictionary or in Daijirin Dictionary. It should not be used because it is most likely not a word, or it is not common enough. Tongpoo 02:08, 13 Oct 2003 (UTC)

• Mingo = min-go, ie, the language of the people. Just because you can't find it in a dictionary doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

[edit] Okinawan writing

What do we know about how Okinawan was (or is) written? Does it use Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana in the same way as modern Japanese? Does the sound system differ at all? I'm very interested. — Hippietrail 02:25, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Information about Okinawan orthography is almost impossible to find on the internet. If someone has access to a book or has expertise, please provide!

The way the name uchinaguchi is presented in hiragana but with a katakana lengthening mark, and then romanized with a really weird-looking colon-like lengthening mark, is just strange. (Both the hiragana and the romanized versions look strange, and in both cases it's because of something anomalous about the vowel-lengthener. In (standard Japanese) hiragana one expects an "a" for an -a-lengthener, thus: うちなあぐち and in IPA I think a normal colon (Ucina:guci)would look less irregular than the symbol in Ucinaːguci (which in both IE and Firefox looks to me like it has a space on each side, as well as looking handwritten). May just be my fonts, though, but since it's that way in both browsers I have my doubts. --Haruo 11:58, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but Okinawan isn't standard Japanese, is it? As for the IPA symbol, it's your fonts. It looks fine in my browser. --Node 08:17, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] This page needs more explanation

There is a chart contrasing with Japanese, but it doesn't explain the nature of the contrast. I'm assuming that this is a differnce in pronunciation. However, how does this difference in pronunciation constitute a different language? Also, the chart of examples makes no sense. 1)The column heading "Tokyo". Does this mean that the list below illustrates how the word is pronounced in Tokyo? If Shuri is a different language from Japanese, shouldn't that column head read "Japanese". 2) Many of the examples show no difference between the two columns. What does it tell me about Okinawan language that they call hot water "ju", just like they do in Tokyo.

It's just a specific list of correspondences between Tokyo pronunciation and Shuri pronunciation, intended to illustrate the earlier table of sound correspondences. (This is just being specific. The Ryukyuan languages further subdivide into Amami, Okinawa, Miyako, Yaeyama and Yonaguni - each of which has a slightly different set of correspondences with standard Japanese. For instance, in the case of vowels, Amami has /ï/ for Tokyo /e/, whereas Shuri has /i/ and on the other hand, Miyako and Yaeyama have /ï/ for Tokyo /i/ and /i/ for Tokyo /e/; and let's not start talking about the extra vowels Miyako, Kikaijima, Ishigakijima and Hateruma have, let alone some of the mainland ones with eight or nine vowels, such as Nagoya.)

Of course, this is not the only thing that justifies Okinawan being considered a different language. Most linguists posit that Okinawan split from Japanese around the first century AD - in contrast, the Romance languages probably did not split until the sixth century AD; yet the opposite is also seen with the Chinese spoken language (most modern "dialects" split during or after the Middle Chinese period, which was 7th - 11th century AD).

But ultimately, once it is proven that two languages are related, whether to call them languages or dialects becomes a moot point.

Of course, there are more than just pronunciation differences between Tokyo and Shuri, just like there are between Mandarin and Cantonese - there are lexical and grammatical differences as well. What is on this article is just the tip of the iceberg, based on what few materials I have access to. - 刘 (劉) 振霖 10:58, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)

From what i was told Ryukyuan language was written in Hiragana introduced in the 13th century from Japan. Within the Shuri court, written Chinese was used. Yonaguni is beleived to have developed a seperate written language but there is contreversy over it. Arn't Cantonese and mandarin seperate languages? I guess they can be compared to the Ryukyuan Languages/Japanese situation since the big arguement on the Ryukyuan Languages being dialects of Japanese is that the Ryukyuan languages have many words from ancient Japanese in it. Cantonese pronounciation and vocabulary is much closer to that of ancient Chinese than that of Mandarin. Would it be a good idea to put up some words and phrases in the Ryukyuan languages? --Carlos Tamanaha 08:17, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed Merger Tag Removal

This merger hasn't been discussed seriously either here or at Ryukyuan languages. I think everyone agrees that Okinawan language is a language categorized as Ryukyuan language. I am removing the merger proposal. Turly-burly 01:53, 2 February 2006 (UTC)