| Ryukyuan | |
|---|---|
| Luchuan | |
| Ethnicity: | Ryukyuan people |
| Geographic distribution: |
Japan (Okinawa Prefecture, Amami Islands of Kagoshima Prefecture) |
| Linguistic classification: | Japonic
|
| Subdivisions: | |
The Ryukyuan languages (previously spelled Luchuan) are spoken in the Ryukyu Islands, and make up a subgroup of the Japonic, itself controversially a subgroup of Altaic. 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".[1]
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In Okinawa, standard Japanese is almost always used in formal situations. In informal situations, the de facto everyday language among Okinawans under the age of 60 is the Okinawa-accented mainland Japanese called ウチナーヤマトゥグチ (Uchinaa Yamatuguchi "Okinawan Japanese"), which is often misunderstood to be Okinawan language proper, ウチナーグチ (Uchinaaguchi "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").[2]
There are currently a little over a million native speakers of "traditional" Ryukyuan languages, but many of them are elderly. 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 Ryukyuan languages are still used in traditional cultural activities, such as folk music, folk dance and folk plays. There is also a radio news program in the Naha dialect.[3]
There is general agreement among experts in the field that Ryukyuan varieties can be divided into 6 languages, conservatively.[4]
| Language | Geographic distribution | Standard dialect | Population |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amami | Amami Islands | Naze | 130 000 |
| Miyako (Miyako: myaaku hutsi) | Miyako Islands | Hirara | 55,783 |
| Okinawan (Okinawan: uchinaa guchi) | southern and central of Okinawa Island and the surrounding minor islands | traditionally Shuri, modern Naha | 900,000 |
| Kunigami | Kunigami (Yanbaru) district of Okinawa Island and the surrounding minor islands | ??? | |
| Yaeyama (Yaeyama: yaima munii) | Yaeyama Islands | Ishigaki | 44,650 |
| Yonaguni (Yonaguni: dunan munui) | Yonaguni Island in the Yaeyama district | Yonaguni | 1,800 |
Each Ryukyuan language is generally unintelligible to others in the same family. There is a wide diversity between them. For example, Yaeyama has only three vowels, while Amami has 14, including longer vowels. Below is a table showing simple phrases in each language.
| Language | Thank you | Welcome |
|---|---|---|
| Standard Japanese | Arigatō | Yōkoso |
| Amami | Arigatesama ryoota | Imoorii |
| Kunigami | Mihediro | Ugamiyabura |
| Okinawan | Nifeedeebiru | Mensooree |
| Miyako | Tandigaatandi | Nmyaachi |
| Yaeyama | Miifaiyuu | Ooritoori |
| 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 more gradually.
Ryukuyan official documents were historically written in classical Chinese, while poetry and songs were often written in the Shuri dialect of Okinawan. 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 part of Kagoshima Prefecture and the introduction there of Japanese national public education.
The Okinawan language is only 71% lexically similar to Tokyo Japanese. Even the southernmost Japanese dialect (Kagoshima dialect) is only 72% lexically similar to the northernmost Ryukyuan language (Amami). The Kagoshima dialect of Japanese, however, is 80% lexically similar to Standard Japanese.[5]
Since the beginning of World War II, most mainland Japanese have regarded the Ryukyuan languages as a dialect or group of dialects of Japanese. 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 languages, which are genetically related to Japanese, are still called dialects.
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 a Ryukyuan language, he had to wear a dialect card (方言札), a necklace with a card stating he spoke in dialect (thus is a bad student). This punishment was taken from the 19th French language policy of Vergonha, especially by Jules Ferry, where the regional languages such as Occitan (Provençal), Catalan, or Breton were suppressed in favor of French; see also Welsh Not, for a similar system in Britain. The same system was also used in other parts of Japan, such as the Tōhoku region.
Although a form of 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.
Older Ryukyuan texts are often found on stone inscriptions. Tamaudun-no-Hinomon (玉陵の碑文 "Inscription of Tamaudun tomb") (1501), for example. Within the Ryukyuan Kingdom, official texts were written in kanji and hiragana, derived from Japan. However, this was a 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.
Commoners did not learn kanji. Omorosōshi (1531–1623), a noted Ryukyuan song collection, was mainly written in hiragana. Other than hiragana, they also used Suzhou numerals (suuchuuma すうちゅうま in Okinawan), derived from China. In Yonaguni island in particular, there was a different writing system called Kaidā logogram (カイダー字 or カイダーディー).[6] Under Japanese influence, all of those numerals became obsolete.
Nowadays, perceived as "dialects", Ryukyuan languages are not often written. When they are, Japanese characters are used in an ad hoc manner. There are no standard orthographies for the modern languages. Sounds not distinguished in the Japanese writing system, 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.