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 (1477–1526). 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 a number of people still speak 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 or more specifically the . 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 , 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 1st century AD to as late as the 12th century AD. Chinese and Japanese characters were first introduced by a Japanese missionary in 1265. Ryukyu Kingdom era. Pre-Satsuma. was a much more popular writing system than kanji; thus, Okinawan poems were commonly written solely in or with little kanji. Okinawan became the official language under King Shō Shin. The Omoro Sōshi, a compilation of ancient Ryukyuan poems, was written in an early form of Okinawan, known as Old Okinawan. 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. During this time, the language gradually evolved into Modern Okinawan. 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 10 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 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 know 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 (or the Amami languages) 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 (one people, one language, one nation), 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 or , which means "Okinawa dialect (of Japanese)". 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 influenced by the Okinawan and Kunigami languages. 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 generations 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. 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. Consonants. The Okinawan language counts some 20 distinctive segments shown in the chart below, with major allophones presented in parentheses. 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" "("topic") friend". In general, sequences containing the palatal consonant are relatively rare and tend to exhibit depalatalization. For example, tends to merge with ( "myāku" → "nāku" "Miyako"); has merged into and ( → "rū" ~ "dū" "dragon"); and has mostly become ( "shui" → "sui" "Shuri"). 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 ( → "ami" "rain"), 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, (transcribed using the small capital ) 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" (for "thank you"). Orthography. The Okinawan language was historically written using an admixture of kanji and hiragana. The hiragana syllabary is believed to have first been introduced from mainland Japan to the Ryukyu Kingdom some time during the reign of king Shunten in the early thirteenth century. It is likely that Okinawans were already in contact with "hanzi" (Chinese characters) due to extensive trade between the Ryukyu Kingdom and China, Japan and Korea. However, hiragana gained more widespread acceptance throughout  the Ryukyu Islands, and most documents and letters were exclusively transcribed using this script, in contrast to in Japan where writing solely in hiragana was considered "women's script". The "Omoro Sōshi" (), a sixteenth-century compilation of songs and poetry, and a few preserved writs of appointments dating from the same century were written solely in Hiragana. Kanji were gradually adopted due to the growing influence of mainland Japan and to the linguistic affinity between the Okinawan and Japanese languages. However, it was mainly limited to affairs of high importance and to documents sent towards the mainland. The oldest inscription  of Okinawan exemplifying its use along with Hiragana can be found on a stone stele at the Tamaudun mausoleum, dating back to 1501. After the invasion of Okinawa by the Shimazu clan of Satsuma in 1609, Okinawan ceased to be used in official affairs. It was replaced by standard Japanese writing and a form of Classical Chinese writing known as kanbun. Despite this change, Okinawan still continued to prosper in local literature up until the nineteenth century. Following the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese government abolished the domain system and formally annexed the Ryukyu Islands to Japan as the Okinawa Prefecture  in 1879. To promote national unity, the government then introduced standard education and opened Japanese-language schools based on the Tokyo dialect. Students were discouraged and chastised for speaking or even writing in the local "dialect", notably through the use of "dialect cards" (). As a result, Okinawan gradually ceased to be written entirely until the American takeover in 1945. Since then, Japanese and American scholars have variously transcribed the regional language using a number of ad hoc romanization schemes or the katakana syllabary to demarcate its foreign nature with standard Japanese. Proponents of Okinawan tend to be more traditionalist and  continue to write the language using hiragana with kanji. In any case, no standard or consensus concerning spelling issues has ever been formalized, so discrepancies between modern literary works are common. 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 (hiragana to the left, katakana to the right of the dot), the middle row in rōmaji (Hepburn romanization), 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 "ga" (lost in the Shuri dialect), the nominative function of "nu" (Japanese: "no"), 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" (Classical Japanese: "wori", "to be; to exist"): "-un" developed from the  terminal form "uri"; "-uru" developed from the attributive form "uru", i.e.: A similar etymology is given for the terminal "-san" and attributive "-saru" endings for adjectives: the stem suffixed with "sa" (nominalises adjectives, i.e. high → height, hot → heat), suffixed with "ari" (Classical Japanese: "ari", "to exist; to have"), i.e.: Parts of speech. Nouns (名詞). Nouns are classified as independent, non-conjugating part of speech that can become a subject of a sentence Pronouns (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 (用言; verbs, adverbs, adjectives) that comes after the adverb. There are two main categories to adverbs and several subcategories within each category, as shown in the table below. Verbs (動詞). Verbs are classified as an independent, conjugating part of speech that shows movements. The conclusive form ends in . Adjectives (形容詞). Adjectives are classified as an independent, conjugating part of speech that shows property or state. The conclusive form ends in . Section::::(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. 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. attaches to words that shows state. Particles (助詞). ! | Case markers (格助詞) ! Okinawan !! Japanese !! Notes/English !! Example | || || Genitive case; possessor. | Ø ("Archaic:" ) || || Accusative case. Modern Okinawan does not use a direct object particle, like casual Japanese speech. "yu" exists mainly in old literary composition. | | ・ || ・ || Dative case; indirect object, benefactor, goal of motion. 手段・方法 | ・ || || Locative case ; marks the location where an action takes place, usually pertaining to an animate subject. Derives from the participle form of the verb をぅん wun "to be, to exist". | || || "as much as"; upper limit | || || Ablative case; source, cause. 起点 ! | Adverbial Particles (副助詞) ! Okinawan !! Japanese !! Notes/English !! Example | || || | || || "around, about, approximately" | || || | || || | || 等 || ! | Binding particles (係助詞) ! Okinawan !! Japanese !! Notes/English !! Example For other nouns, the particle fuses with short vowels. a → ā, i → ē, u → ō, e  → ē, o → ō, n → nō. Pronoun 我ん (wan?) (I) becomes topicalized as 我んねー (wannē?) instead of 我んのー (wannō?) or 我んや (wan'ya?), although the latter does appear in some musical or literary works. | || || ! | Sentence-ending particles (終助詞) ! Okinawan !! Japanese !! Notes/English !! Example ! | Interjectory Particles (間投助詞) ! Okinawan !! Japanese !! Notes/English !! Example