A channel dedicated to things that are becoming rarer and rarer in a world that is becoming more homogenised and indistinct every day. Whether it's the craft of miller or endangered languages...
Thank you for your comment! Actually, a generator was installed a couple of years after I made the video. The trouble with generators is that they can't deal with the unsteady turning pace of traditional windmills. So, unless someone invents a kind of generator that works well with an unsteady turning pace, they aren't of that much use for traditional windmills. Also, it's important to realise that modernising is not what we aim to do. The reason why we preserve and keep working with windmills is 1) to preserve something interesting from the past (meaning both the mill itself, and the craft of corn-miller), and 2) to produce a good product that allows you to make delicious bread, pastries, pancakes, pasta etc. It might interest you to know that there actually exists a windmill in Schiedam that has been built as a generator, but has been made to look like a traditional windmill. The name of the mill is "De Nolet".
Hi there! I am currently writing my thesis on ryukyuan language representation in music as an example of identity preservation. Do you perhaps know of any songs in favor of independence, or anti-annexation music? Not sure if this is in your field of expertise, but I happened to read about your years of fieldwork on uchinaaguchi so I thought I might as well ask!
@@LanguageOdditorium thank you for the sources! I am putting some emphasis on hiphop as well so the first link is super interesting, I hadn't heard about that artist before! I'll also watch the documentary you sent today, thank you so much and have a great day ☺
@@wizdoodle There's almost no Ryukyuan used in hiphop as far as I know. Let me know if you find any! Btw, the gent in the video I shared is not a fluent speaker. I bet that native speakers would find his Uchinaaguchi rather awkward. But you got to appreciate the effort. At least he's trying. I hope more young artist will follow his lead...
Thank you for your comment! Smaller windmills used to exist in large numbers, but relatively few have survived the first half of the twentieth century. A lot of carpenters/contractors had their own little saw mills with a sail span of between 6 and 12 metres. Also windmills for the production of spices, mustard, and chocolate used to be relatively small. Again, very few have survived. As for smaller corn mills, they were never much of a thing in the Netherlands, but the Swedish island of Öland still has a lot of them.
Yeah my thoughts exactly... You can see it in the faces of the Beautiful Okinawan people - If you have spent a very long time traveling around Asia, you will recognise Malay & Indonesian features a lot. The language sounds quite like Vasayan language from Mindanao Island Philippines (the Malay style intonations you mentioned), mixed with a bit of Chinese and Japanese. And of course "Champloo" is Indonesian for "stir fry"; probably the most well known Okinawan food with no Japanese equivalent.
Not all Americans need a new car once a year. I do happen to own a new car, which replaced the one that started to show transmission issues at 225,000 miles. The '05 Toyota is sitting at about 175,000 miles, and the '86 Dodge truck is unknown, as the odometer quit at about 287,000 miles. All three are road-worthy and have working A/C, which is more of a requirement than a luxury when summer temps run 100F or higher. If I am going to try to compete with the neighbors, I'd rather compete for the largest 401k balance in 14 years than try to impress with my vehicles.
If you were to build one of these Dutch Windmills in America you would probably need a building permit that would take years of red tape and a 🔥 fire sprinkler system and code enforcement to Ok every thing??🤔👍
Please do not become "diverse", do not erase yourselves, even if you lose your language, never lose your people. And I am wishing and praying that you can at least keep something special of your language, hopefully all of it.
Thanks for the great information about working parts of the mill.This is the only video on youtube which shows the function of parts.I love old youtube videos straight to point , no fancy intro of 2-3 mins which is clear waste of time.I would liked to visit your windmill once in my life 🥰.
My mother is Okinawan and now in her 70’s (my American father married her while stationed there in the military). Growing up in Oki, she spoke it at home but was forbidden to speak it in school. They were forced to speak Japanese in school. She lived in a generational home (grandparents lived there too) so it was spoken a lot in the home. Funny thing is, is that the Okinawan language has changed over time. We discovered this because my mother lived in the US for a long while and then upon returning to Okinawa for a visit, she began speaking the Okinawan language (with her family members that were old enough to remember and speak the language). They all looked at her funny and mentioned that her Okinawan was strange. Apparently the language changed over time. Think of it in terms of old English versus the American-English we speak today. It’s very different. It was like she was speaking the ‘old English’ version of Okinawan if that makes sense. Thought that was a rather funny/interesting phenomenon concerning language in general.
Thank you for your interesting comment. The language has changed a lot. Of course there's more influence from Japanese in the Uchinaaguchi spoken by younger speakers, especially in the vocabulary. Another thing you can observe is that regional differences become less pronounced. For instance, the gentleman in the video speaks a kind of greatest-common-denominator Uchinaaguchi. His intonation is still very much traditional eastern Kumejima, but his verb and adjective inflections are kind of an interregional Uchinaaguchi Koine. The ladies do code-switch with Japanese a lot, but when they do speak Uchinaaguchi, it's pretty much the variety of their own village with very little outside influence. Of course there are personal differences, but having done fieldwork on Uchinaaguchi for over ten years, I think it's safe to say that it's like this: Women speak Japanese more often, but when they do speak Uchinaaguchi, their language has more pronounced regional characteristics. Men tend to speak Uchinaaguchi more often than women, but their language is more homogenised (although they'll never admit this! ;)).
It's understabdable that a language will eventually shift and change over time, but based on your story, it seems that it changed so quickly! I've read about the prohibitation to use Okinawan languages (and boy, it was really bad! That shouldn't have at all in the first place!) and maybe that's mainly what caused the languages to change so rapidly? Still, it should have been only a few decades since your mother left Okinawa. It's kinda scary if I think about it; what if the language eventually cease to exist? :( not to mention there aren't too many native speakers. I know that there are programs done to preserve the language, but it's still scary. Death of a language is a really sad thing to happen Also, thanks for sharing your story!
Modern wind turbines will not last as long as these old mills and the carbon footprint to make a modern turbine is much higher. We would be wise to revisit these wonderful mills.
『沖縄語の入門：たのしいウチナーグチ』has many shortcomings, but it is still the best text for Okinawan. There is also a more recent Uchinaaguchi textbook 'shokyuu Okinawago', but I wouldn't recommend that one. The methodology is good, but there’s a scandalous amount of mistakes in the Okinawan used in the book. It was written by a non-Okinawan Japanese person who doesn't speak Okinawan fluently. We're making learning materials ourselves based on the 'task-based learning' and 'comprehensible input' at the moment, so keep your eyes peeled for that.
Also I can recommend this course: manabiya.sakura-zaka.com/?event=event-28045 Your level of Japanese needs to be at least JLPT２級, preferably 1級 though.
Such an unique language. At first i thought heard of Korean, then japanese and sometimes sound like mandarin. Are this language being teach in japanese education?
Only sporadically, and not in a structured way. Speakers under 50 years old are extremely rare. My partner and I run an Okinawan course for Okinawans in their twenties and thirties in an attempt to fill the gap.
@@hubertvelasquez1358 Thank you for your comment. All I can say is that here aren't enough opportunities to learn it on Okinawa, let alone abroad... I'd advise you to try and get ahold of a copy of 『沖縄語の入門』
@@hubertvelasquez1358 as I understand it there was a very large amount of Okinawans that moved to São Paulo in Brazil, and that it has the largest community of Okinawans outside Okinawa. And that the language have survived better in their community than on the islands due to being further away from Japan, and not having the same periods of restrictions on the language (like being forbidden to speak Okinawan in school) I believe it’s even common for younger Okinawans to travel to São Paulo to help learn Okinawan. So either going to São Paulo or looking into Brazilian resources for learning Okinawan is somewhere I would look. But I don’t speak Okinawan, or live in Okinawa. This is just based on the little I’ve read about the language.
what a marvelous piece of machinery,the mill itself could be used as a prototype to build new one,s in the uk,& other parts of the world, its a case of, if it works then why change & people would buy flour etc from it because of this reason & tradition
