@@willcoffarchives I’m foreign, I’m at a first grade level of Japanese and even I can tell this sounds completely different than Japanese. Ppl that think Chinese, Korean and Japanese sound alike are ignorant but this right here- I can understand if a foreigner got confused lmao. I hope the language survives
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!
I feel sympathetic towards them and their fight to keep there language alive, cause my own mother tongue is in the same situation in danger of extinction (it's a Texas Low German dialect, originally from North Frisia, in the US it's mostly known as "mennonite" German dialect), it's in danger both in the US and in Europe, cause the government in Germany hasn't done much through the years to protect the cultural heritage of Germany and it's regional dialects. Other European countries naturally are in the same situation. and thousands of other dialects are in the same situation too in Europe and around the world. That's the problem with a country/government, the state produced and supported media will be in the dominant dialect (in case of Germany, standard High German). The German dialects spoken in Poland, Czech republic, France, etc, are also very endangered When there weren't centralized governments in form of countries as political entities, the European tribes, both Germanic, Slavic, Baltic and Celtic, had cultural hegemony and had their heritage
@@MybeautifulandamazingPrincess that’s a good point but the trade off is you get tribalism and are unable to protect yourself from foreign invasions of centralized powers. It’s a catch 22
I'm Korean and this is my opinion. Okinawan sounds different from mainland Japanese. It sounds like a mix of Japanese with Tagalog and Korean sounding tones with some Canto sprinkled on top.
코멘트 해줘서 고맙습니다! It may sound like that, but linguistically it is a Japonic language from a different branch than Japanese. There has been contact with Fujian throughout history, however this has had little impact on the language other than a few loanwords. Some of my colleagues have investigated whether there are traces of influence from Austronesian languages, and the results are that there are only two words in Southern Ryukyuan languages that could be linked with Austronesian. Since there seems to have been trade with Korea in sea shells, a comparison of names of sea shells may yield some interesting insights on Korean-Ryukyuan language contact. On first glance, however, there don't seem to be any correspondences. 제가 문법을 연구하는데, 한국어를 다소 해서, 한국어의 영향이 있는지 더 알아볼까 생각해요.
this is because Okinawan language is not Japanese, it's a native Ryukyuan language. Ryukyuan languages are native languages spoken by the native Ryukyuan people who live on the Ryukyu islands that have now collectively become known as Okinawa prefecture after Japan annexed the Ryukyu islands in 1872 and forced the Ryukyuan people to speak Japanese. Nowadays the Okinawan language refers to any of the old native Ryukyuan languages that are still spoken on the Ryukyuan islands.
Hokkien speaker here. It doesn't sound like Hokkien to me although I can see that the sh and ch sounds and might bear some resemblance. The lack of nasal vowels and checked consonant endings make this sound very different from Hokkien to me.
@@rayres1074 I don’t know if the commenter speaks Okinawan or not, but I’m okinawan too and I don’t know the language, just some words because it is a dying language.
LanguageOdditorium really ? never listened to Kume kutuba so far. this language is awesome. already 1 month listening to uchinaaguchi, esp. nafa dialect from youtube / sumamuni channel , uchinaa shibai, etc. really great if someone can make video conversation in shuikutuba.
It’s actually so different from standard Japanese :o I can barely understand what he’s saying... only a few words with a certain accent. It’s beautiful though, hope the language survives.
No. This like saying that European Portuguese is Slavic language because it sounds similar, even though it's a Romance language and closely related to Spanish.
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.
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.
『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.
There are courses popping up and people trying to preserve the language. A book written in Hawaiin pidgin, with translations in Japanese and Uchinaaguchi(Okinawan) was just released to try and start building interest in learning it. Name of book is called Okinawan Princess Da Legend of Hajichi Tattoos
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...
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.
Okinawan is a separate language, but sometimes there are characters that have an accent of that sort :3 (I actually think the language is called something like Ryukyuan)
The hour as a time unit was introduced after 1879 in Okinawa. This was done through Japanese. Therefore the word for 'hour' that is used is a Japanese word. Furthermore, the people in the video are all bilingual in Okinawan and Japanese and they do a lot of code-switching.
It's neither. It's a language related to Japanese in the same way English is related to Dutch. There's a bit of Chinese influence in there, but not as much as you would expect. Japanese has way more Chinese loans and calques. Korean influence is virtually non-existent, however some varieties of the Okinawan language have intonation patterns that may resemble Korean.
Thanks for the question! The lexicon has less Chinese influence than Japanese, so in that respect, yes. However, there are words that exist in both Japanese and Okinawan, but have a different meaning. It's very hard to establish which meaning is older. And also, Okinawan is more innovative in its sound system. This goes for other Ryukyuan languages as well. Japanese is more conservative in that respect. So, you might say that in terms of lexicon, Okinawan is more conservative, but in terms of sounds, Japanese is more conservative.
It’s unchinanguchi . NifeeDebiru it’s not nihongo nor Chinese’s it’s the lauguage of Uchina aka Okinawa and of the Ryukyu islands. Stop mixing it up with Japanese Chinese and Korean. It is my language. And yes it does sound a bit Japanese (nihongo) . Okinawan language is the native language of my family and my people.
