Our language sounds like a cross between Japanese, Korean, Thai and Chinese....I only speak Japanese, but my mom speaks Shuri and Kunigami uchinaaguchi.
This is completely fascinating. Seems as though the "obscure" languages of Japan don't get nearly as much attention as Japanese does. Hence the "obscure" description... but I feel that they don't have to be. I hope these languages won't die out in favor of the younger generations speaking only Japanese in the future. I wonder what secrets and history are hidden in these languages...
I mean, in the past these languages were deliberately stamped out to a large extent and even today they don't have a lot of place outside of informal situations, so it's not surprising that hardly anybody who isn't a native speaker bothers to learn them, or that there are fewer and fewer native speakers. You see the same trend with low-prestige minority languages all over the world.
UNESCO labels four of the languages "definitely endangered",[2][3][4][5] and two others "critically endangered".[6][7] :( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryukyuan_languages
I love that he wrote the Okinawan subtitles in traditional Okinawan, instead of the katakana or hiragana-only forms that seem to be prefered these days.
+J.A. Brown Does it make sense to use Chinese characters to write Japanese sounds? Or Korean sounds? Writing Okinawan in katakana is a Japanese perversion left over from their racist and imperialist assimilation policies.
Sturmgewher88 Sorry, I don't know the history. I just figured that from a linguistic viewpoint it would make more sense to use katakana (or hiragana), since they are at least phonetic scripts, whereas kanji are (at least in theory) ideographic.
Same here... The glottal parts sound Korean. I don't think it's that far off though, it could be that they initially migrated from China via the Korean peninsula, like the Japanese did
The islands are near to taiwan which actually austronesian people. Korea and Japan is far from the islands. Most likely it would have connections with austronesian
The top line is Okinawan. Okinawans have used forms of Chinese and then Japanese (kana) for hundreds of years. Since Japanese, (and Korean and Vietnamese not too long ago) use Chinese characters or derivatives, you could say "Okinawan uses Chinese characters but not in the same way as Chinese people" The meanings of the characters are *similar* across the languages, but sound differently and integrate with grammar differently.
It's like an offspring of the Japanese and Korean languages. Come on. Both are 50-50 in sounding similar towards its accent and words. Gotta love it. May it not be successfully extinct.
Hi! I'm a singer, and I want to sing the original Yaeyaman lyrics of "Asadoya Yunta", but I've only found the Japanese ones. I'd be very grateful if somebody provided me those lyrics. Thanks!
wow.. confusing to hear because my brain's trying extra hard to decode, but it can't be decoded using only standard Japanese. Awesome. This doesn't sound like Korean.
"chizu chukatii, shichimei sabira." If you know some Japanese, and willing to learn some new vocab or changing sounds, Okinawan presents a fun challenge.
which of the two lines at the top is Japanese? the one on top? so does it mean that Okinawan uses Japanese characters but not in the same way as Japanese?
我该说什么呢， 我什么也不想说。我能看懂文字一半以上的意思，听着却感觉和日语很像。What should I say, I should not say anything。but，I can understand the meaning of the text more than half, although it sounds like Japanese。hehe，thank you!!!
