Ryukyuan Japanese
Ryukyuan Japanese are the regional varieties of the Japanese language spoken in the Ryukyu Islands.[1] They are not to be confused with the Ryukyuan languages, which are separate from Japanese and share little mutual intelligibility.[2][3]
History
During the times of the Ryukyu Kingdom, most of the population spoke one of the six Ryukyuan languages. However, after the events of the Ryūkyū Disposition, which saw the annexation of the Ryukyu Kingdom into Japan, the languages underwent a decline in favor of standard Japanese due to linguistic assimilation policies.[1][4][5][6][7]
With the rise of Japanese in the Ryukyu Islands, numerous regional varieties formed as a result of language mixing between Japanese and a Ryukyuan substrate.[1] These new substrate varieties exhibit grammatical and phonological influences from Ryukyuan, whereas their core makeup resembles that of Japanese.[8]
Usage
The main speaker base of Ryukyuan Japanese are younger Ryukyuans.[1] There also exists a basilectal-acrolectal continuum among its users.[7] Furthermore, Ryukyuan Japanese varieties are viewed as colloquial speech, whereas Standard Japanese is preferred for formal occasions.[citation needed]
Varieties
According to Mark Anderson, Ryukyuan Japanese varieties can be labeled based on different regions or island groups, though another alternative is to group all of them under a single Ryukyuan substrate entity.[1]
The most popular varieties of Ryukyuan Japanese are Okinawan Japanese and Amami Japanese, both of which are spoken in the regions they are named after.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Anderson, Mark (2019). "Studies of Ryukyu-substrate Japanese". In Patrick Heinrich; Yumiko Ohara. Routledge Handbook of Japanese Sociolinguistics. New York: Routledge. pp. 441–457. Search this book on
- ↑ Shimoji, Michinori; Pellard, Thomas. "An Introduction to Ryukyuan Languages" (PDF). Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Heinrich, Patrick (2014-08-25). "Use them or lose them: There's more at stake than language in reviving Ryukyuan tongues". The Japan Times. Retrieved 2020-10-17.
- ↑ Gillan, Matt (2016). "3". Songs from the Edge of Japan: Music-making in Yaeyama and Okinawa. Search this book on
- ↑ Iacobelli, Pedro (2017). Postwar Emigration to South America from Japan and the Ryukyu Islands. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 118. Search this book on
- ↑ Shulman, Frank Joseph (2007). "Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses in Japanese Language, Linguistics, and Literature". Japanese Language and Literature. 41 (1): 141–231. JSTOR 30198029.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Matsumoto, Kazuko; Britain, David (2020). "The contact varieties of Japan and the North-West Pacific". In Miriam Meyerhoff; Umberto Ansaldo. The Routledge Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Languages. Taylor & Francis. pp. 106–131. Search this book on
- ↑ Clarke, Hugh (2009). "Language". In Sugimoto, Yoshio. The Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 56–75. Search this book on P. 65: "[...] over the past decade or so we have seen the emergence of a new
lingua franca for the whole prefecture. Nicknamed Uchinaa Yamatuguchi (Okinawan Japanese) this new dialect incorporates features of Ryukyuan phonology, grammar and lexicon into modern Japanese, resulting in a means of communication which can be more or less understood anywhere in Japan, but clearly marks anyone speaking it as an Okinawan."
Further reading
- Matsuno, Yuko (2004). A Study of Okinawan Language Shift and Ideology (M.A. thesis). The University of Arizona.
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