Okinawan language
The Okinawan language or Central Okinawan, is a Northern Ryukyuan language spoken primarily in the southern half of the island of Okinawa, as well as in the surrounding islands of Kerama, Kumejima, Tonaki, Aguni and a number of smaller peripheral islands. Central Okinawan distinguishes itself from the speech of Northern Okinawa, which is classified independently as the Kunigami language. Both languages are listed by UNESCO as endangered.
Though Okinawan encompasses a number of local dialects, the Shuri–Naha variant is generally recognized as the de facto standard, as it had been used as the official language of the Ryūkyū Kingdom since the reign of King Shō Shin. Moreover, as the former capital of Shuri was built around the royal palace, the language used by the royal court became the regional and literary standard, which thus flourished in songs and poems written during that era.
Today, most Okinawans speak Okinawan Japanese, although there is a small number who still speaks the Okinawan language, most often the elderly. Within Japan, Okinawan is often not seen as a language unto itself but is referred to as the Okinawan dialect or more specifically the Central and Southern Okinawan dialects. Okinawan speakers are undergoing language shift as they switch to Japanese, since language use in Okinawa today is far from stable. Okinawans are assimilating and accenting standard Japanese due to the similarity of the two languages, the standardized and centralized education system, the media, business and social contact with mainlanders and previous attempts from Japan to suppress the native languages. Okinawan is still kept alive in popular music, tourist shows and in theaters featuring a local drama called Uchinā shibai, which depict local customs and manners.
History
Pre-Ryukyu Kingdom
Okinawan is a Japonic language, derived from Proto-Japonic and is therefore related to Japanese. The split between Old Japanese and the Ryukyuan languages has been estimated to have occurred as early as the first century AD to as late as the twelfth century AD. Chinese and Japanese characters were first introduced by a Japanese missionary in 1265.Ryukyu Kingdom era
Pre-Satsuma
Hiragana was much more popular than kanji; poems were commonly written solely in hiragana or with little kanji. Okinawan became the official language under King Shō Shin.Post-Satsuma to annexation
After Ryukyu became a vassal of Satsuma Domain, kanji gained more prominence in poetry; however, official Ryukyuan documents were written in Classical Chinese.In 1609, the Ryukyu Kingdom was colonized by the Satsuma Domain in the south of Japan. However, Satsuma did not fully invade the Ryukyu in fear of colliding with China, which had a stronger trading relationship with the Ryukyu at the time.
Japanese annexation to end of World War II
When Ryukyu was annexed by Japan in 1879, the majority of people on Okinawa Island spoke Okinawan. Within ten years, the Japanese government began an assimilation policy of Japanization, where Ryukyuan languages were gradually suppressed. The education system was the heart of Japanization, where Okinawan children were taught Japanese and punished for speaking their native language, being told that their language was just a "dialect". By 1945, many Okinawans spoke Japanese, and many were bilingual. During the Battle of Okinawa, some Okinawans were killed by Japanese soldiers for speaking Okinawan.Language shift to Japanese in Ryukyu/Okinawa began in 1879 when the Japanese government annexed Ryukyu and established Okinawa Prefecture. The prefectural office mainly consisted of people from Kagoshima Prefecture where the Satsuma Domain used to be. This caused the modernization of Okinawa as well as language shift to Japanese. As a result, Japanese became the standard language for administration, education, media, and literature.
In 1902, the National Language Research Council began the linguistic unification of Japan to Standard Japanese. This caused the linguistic stigmatization of many local varieties in Japan including Okinawan. As the discrimination accelerated, Okinawans themselves started to abandon their languages and shifted to Standard Japanese.
American occupation
Under American administration, there was an attempt to revive and standardize Okinawan, but this proved difficult and was shelved in favor of Japanese. General Douglas MacArthur attempted to promote Okinawan languages and culture through education. Multiple English words were introduced.Return to Japan to present day
After Okinawa's reversion to Japanese sovereignty, Japanese continued to be the dominant language used, and the majority of the youngest generations only speak Okinawan Japanese. There have been attempts to revive Okinawan by notable people such as Byron Fija and Seijin Noborikawa, but few native Okinawans desire to learn the language.Outside of Japan
The Okinawan language is still spoken by communities of Okinawan immigrants in Brazil. The first immigrants from the island of Okinawa to Brazil landed in the Port of Santos in 1908 drawn by the hint of work and farmable land. Once in a new country and far from their homeland, they found themselves in a place where there was no prohibition of their language, allowing them to willingly speak, celebrate and preserve their speech and culture, up to the present day. Currently the Okinawan-Japanese centers and communities in the State of São Paulo are a world reference to this language helping it to stay alive.Classification
Okinawan is sometimes grouped with Kunigami as the Okinawan languages; however, not all linguists accept this grouping, some claiming that Kunigami is a dialect of Okinawan. Okinawan is also grouped with Amami as the Northern Ryukyuan languages.Dialect of the Japanese language
Since the creation of Okinawa Prefecture, Okinawan has been labeled a dialect of Japanese as part of a policy of assimilation. Later, Japanese linguists, such as Tōjō Misao, who studied the Ryukyuan languages argued that they are indeed dialects. This is due to the misconception that Japan is a homogeneous state, and classifying the Ryukyuan languages as such would discredit this belief. The present-day official stance of the Japanese government remains that Okinawan is a dialect, and it is common within the Japanese population for it to be called 沖縄方言 or 沖縄弁, which means "Okinawa dialect ". The policy of assimilation, coupled with increased interaction between Japan and Okinawa through media and economics, has led to the development of Okinawan Japanese, which is a dialect of Japanese.Dialects of the Ryukyuan language
Okinawan linguist Seizen Nakasone states that the Ryukyuan languages are in fact groupings of similar dialects. As each community has its own distinct dialect, there is no "one language". Nakasone attributes this diversity to the isolation caused by immobility, citing the story of his mother who wanted to visit the town of Nago but never made the 25 km trip before she died of old age.Its own distinct language
Outside Japan, Okinawan is considered a separate language from Japanese. This was first proposed by Basil Hall Chamberlain, who compared the relationship between Okinawan and Japanese to that of the Romance languages. UNESCO has marked it as an endangered language.Sociolinguistics
UNESCO listed six Okinawan language varieties as endangered languages in 2009. The endangerment of Okinawan is largely due to the shift to Standard Japanese. Throughout history, Okinawan languages have been treated as dialects of Standard Japanese. For instance, in the 20th century, many schools used "dialect tags" to punish the students who spoke in Okinawan. Consequently, many of the remaining speakers today are choosing not to transmit their languages to younger generation due to the stigmatization of the languages in the past.There have been several revitalization efforts made to reverse this language shift. However, Okinawan is still poorly taught in formal institutions due to the lack of support from the Okinawan Education Council: education in Okinawa is conducted exclusively in Japanese, and children do not study Okinawan as their second language at school. As a result, at least two generations of Okinawans have grown up without any proficiency in their local languages both at home and school.
Phonology
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
| Close | |||
| Close-Mid | |||
| Open |
The Okinawan language has five vowels, all of which may be long or short, though the short vowels and are quite rare, as they occur only in a few native Okinawan words with heavy syllables with the pattern or, such as mensōrē "welcome" or tonfā. The close back vowels and are truly rounded, rather than the compressed vowels of standard Japanese. A sixth vowel is sometimes posited in order to explain why sequences containing a historically raised fail to trigger palatalization as with : → tī "hand", → chī "blood". Acoustically, however, is pronounced no differently from, possibly because palatalization preceded this vowel shift.
Consonants
The Okinawan language counts some 20 distinctive segments shown in the chart below, with major allophones presented in parentheses.| Labial | Alveolar | Alveolo- palatal | Palatal | Labio- velar | Velar | Glottal | |
| Nasal | |||||||
| Plosive | |||||||
| Fricative | |||||||
| Flap | |||||||
| Approximant |
The only consonant that can occur as a syllable coda is the archiphoneme. Many analyses treat it as an additional phoneme, the moraic nasal, though it never contrasts with or.
The consonant system of the Okinawan language is fairly similar to that of standard Japanese, but it does present a few differences on the phonemic and allophonic level. Namely, Okinawan retains the labialized consonants and which were lost in Late Middle Japanese, possesses a glottal stop, features a voiceless bilabial fricative distinct from the aspirate, and has two distinctive affricates which arose from a number of different sound processes. Additionally, Okinawan lacks the major allophones and found in Japanese, having historically fronted the vowel to after the alveolars, consequently merging tsu into chi, su into shi, and both dzu and zu into ji. It also lacks as a distinctive phoneme, having merged it into.
Bilabial and glottal fricatives
The bilabial fricative has sometimes been transcribed as the cluster, since, like Japanese, allophonically labializes into before the high vowel, and does not occur before the rounded vowel. This suggests that an overlap between and exists, and so the contrast in front of other vowels can be denoted through labialization. However, this analysis fails to take account of the fact that Okinawan has not fully undergone the diachronic change → → as in Japanese, and that the suggested clusterization and labialization into is unmotivated. Consequently, the existence of must be regarded as independent of, even though the two overlap. Barring a few words that resulted from the former change, the aspirate also arose from the odd lenition of and, as well as words loaned from other dialects. Before the glide and the high vowel, it is pronounced closer to, as in Japanese.Palatalization
The plosive consonants and historically palatalized and affricated into before and occasionally following the glide and the high vowel : → chiri "fog", and → chura- "beautiful". This change preceded vowel raising, so that instances where arose from did not trigger palatalization: → kī "hair". Their voiced counterparts and underwent the same effect, becoming under such conditions: → nnaji "eel", and → nukujiri "saw"; but → kagin "seasoning".Both and may or may not also allophonically affricate before the mid vowel, though this pronunciation is increasingly rare. Similarly, the fricative consonant palatalizes into before the glide and the vowel, including when historically derives from : → shikē "world". It may also palatalize before the vowel, especially so in the context of topicalization: dushi → dusē or dushē " friend".
In general, sequences containing the palatal consonant are relatively rare and tend to exhibit depalatalization. For example, tends to merge with ; has merged into and ; and has mostly become .
Flapping and fortition
The voiced plosive and the flap tend to merge, with the first becoming a flap in word-medial position, and the second sometimes becoming a plosive in word-initial position. For example, rū "dragon" may be strengthened into dū, and hashidu "door" conversely flaps into hashiru. The two sounds do, however, still remain distinct in a number of words and verbal constructions.Glottal stop
Okinawan also features a distinctive glottal stop that historically arose from a process of glottalization of word-initial vowels. Hence, all vowels in Okinawan are predictably glottalized at the beginning of words, save for a few exceptions. High vowel loss or assimilation following this process created a contrast with glottalized approximants and nasal consonants. Compare → wa "pig" to wa "I", or → nni "rice plant" to → nni "chest".Moraic nasal
The moraic nasal has been posited in most descriptions of Okinawan phonology. Like Japanese, occupies a full mora and its precise place of articulation will vary depending on the following consonant. Before other labial consonants, it will be pronounced closer to a syllabic bilabial nasal, as in nma "horse". Before velar and labiovelar consonants, it will be pronounced as a syllabic velar nasal, as in bingata, a method of dying clothes. And before alveolar and alveolo-palatal consonants, it becomes a syllabic alveolar nasal, as in kanda "vine". Elsewhere, its exact realization remains unspecified, and it may vary depending on the first sound of the next word or morpheme. In isolation and at the end of utterances, it is realized as a velar nasal.Correspondences with Japanese
There is a sort of "formula" for Ryukyuanizing Japanese words: turning e into i, ki into chi, gi into ji, o into u, and -awa into -ā. This formula fits with the transliteration of Okinawa into Uchinā and has been noted as evidence that Okinawan is a dialect of Japanese, however it does not explain unrelated words such as arigatō and nifēdēbiru.| Japanese | Okinawan | Notes |
| also occurs | ||
| also occurs | ||
| , also occurs | ||
| , also occurs | ||
| ; formerly distinguished as also occurs | ||
| ; formerly distinguished as | ||
| and have merged | ||
| and have merged | ||
| and have merged | ||
| Moraic also occurs | ||
| Moraic also occurs | ||
| also occurs, but rarely | ||
| ~ | ||
| ~ | ||
| Moraic also occurs | ||
| Moraic also occurs | ||
| is unaffected | ||
| Tends to become medially |
Orthography
Syllabary
Technically, they are not syllables, but rather morae. Each mora in Okinawan will consist of one or two kana characters. If two, then a smaller version of kana follows the normal sized kana. In each cell of the table below, the top row is the kana, the middle row in rōmaji, and the bottom row in IPA.Grammar
Okinawan follows a subject–object–verb word order and makes large use of particles as in Japanese. Okinawan dialects retain a number of grammatical features of classical Japanese, such as a distinction between the terminal form and the attributive form, the genitive function of が ga, the nominative function of ぬ nu, as well as honorific/plain distribution of ga and nu in nominative use.One etymology given for the -un and -uru endings is the continuative form suffixed with uri : -un developed from the terminal form uri; -uru developed from the attributive form uru, i.e.:
- kachuru derives from kachi-uru;
- kachun derives from kachi-uri; and
- yumun derives from yumi + uri.
- takasan derives from taka-sa-ari;
- achisan derives from atsu-sa-ari; and
- yutasaru derives from yuta-sa-aru.
Parts of speech
Nouns (名詞)
Nouns are classified as independent, non-conjugating part of speech that can become a subject of a sentencePronouns (代名詞)
Pronouns are classified the same as nouns, except that pronouns are more broad.Adverbs (副詞)
Adverbs are classified as an independent, non-conjugating part of speech that cannot become a subject of a sentence and modifies a declinable word that comes after the adverb. There are two main categories to adverbs and several subcategories within each category, as shown in the table below.Prenominal adjectives (連体詞)
Conjunctions (接続詞)
Interjections and exclamations (感動詞)
Verbs (動詞)
Verbs are classified as an independent, conjugating part of speech that shows movements. The conclusive form ends in ん.Adjectives (形容詞)
Adjectives are classified as an independent, conjugating part of speech that shows property or state. The conclusive form ends in さん.(存在動詞)
存在動詞 are classified as an independent, conjugating part of speech that shows existence or decision of a certain thing. やん attaches to a substantive.Adjectival verbs (形容動詞)
Adjectival verbs are classified as an independent, conjugating part of speech that shows the state of existence of events. やん attaches to words that shows state.Auxiliary verbs (助動詞)
Particles (助詞)
Prefixes (接頭語)
Suffixes (接尾語)
Others
Copula
| Okinawan | Past tense | Japanese |
| A | ||
| A | ||
| A | ||
| A | ||
| A |
Question words (疑問詞)
| Okinawan | Japanese | English |
| "How much" | ||
| "When" | ||
| "Which" | ||
| "Who" | ||
| "Who" | ||
| "How" | ||
| "How much" | ||
| "How" | ||
| "What kind" | ||
| "What" | ||
| "Why" | ||
| "Where" |
Example
Sample text in Standard Okinawan (Shuri-Naha dialect)
In Kanji
人間ー誰ん生まりやぎーなー自由やい、また、胴大切に思ゆる肝とぅ胴守らんでぃる肝ー、誰やてぃんゆぬ如授かとーるむんやん。人間ー元からいー矩ぬ備わとーくとぅ、互ーに兄弟やんでぃる考ーさーに事に当たらんだれーならん。ーんまりやぎーなーやい、また、にゆるとぅらんでぃるー、やてぃんゆぬかとーるむんやん。ーからいーぬわとーくとぅ、ーにやんでぃるーさーににたらんだれーならん。