Ryukyuan

The chapter starts with an overview of the history of dialect classification in Japan. A puzzling aspect of the distribution pattern of the Japanese dialects is the fact that many features, which cannot all be explained as retentions or simplifications, recur in geographically distant areas. These similarities have been commonly but unsatisfyingly regarded as the result of parallel independent developments. Phonological (including tonal), morphological, and lexical features are selected to illustrate the splits that result in the different branches of Japonic. Based on shared innovations, the new classification at the end of the chapter proposes a Izumo-Tōhoku branch, as well as a Kyūshū-Ryūkyū branch.

This chapter draws from a long-term school ethnography conducted in a community of Indigenous Ryukyuan languages: Yaeyaman. Along with other Ryukyuan languages, Yaeyaman has been endangered and minoritized due to the suppression/assimilation policies following the dominant monolingual ideology in Japan. The aim of this research is to investigate existing theories of translanguage in sociolinguistic situation in Miyara village on Ishigaki Island and to attempt to examine prevailing ideologies in school.
I employ school methodology as a main research methodology and highlight the practices of teachers and new speakers of the Yaeyaman language. Following García & Wei (2014), I examine Yaeyaman language teachers` translanguaging pedagogy and translanguaging practices of new speakers of the Yaeyaman language. By using ethnographic data of Yaeyaman knowledge holders, I show that school based on dominant monolingual values sits uncomfortably on the island where teachers experience multilingual reality of the Ryukyus. Through educational policy completely based on dominant values, community members and school teachers are made to believe that our language is not sophisticated. Hence, we are “educated” not to speak our own language.
Although new speakers and teachers of the Yaeyaman language experience translanguaging in multilingual Ryukyus, due to the lack of educational policies based on multilingual, multicultural values, they have difficulties in expressing their indigenous identities comfortably. Following the previous research, I argue that by accepting translanguaging repertories in school and in a community with an endangered language, the incompatibility in language attitudes and beliefs between traditional speakers and new speakers of an endangered language can be overcome. I further argue that by accepting translanguaging in the community, the teachers of the Yaeyaman language could overcome their lack of confidence as Indigenous language teachers, resulting from valuing dominant structures of knowledge and power overtime. As a conclusion, I present how monolingual and monocultural education policy in Japan, so far, is a major cause of the problem of language endangerment. By comparing the policies for Indigenous languages in Nordic countries with those of Japan, I argue that policies based on multilingual reality of the island can become part of a possible solution to language endangerment in the Ryukyus.

Николай Невский: жизнь и наследие: сборник статей / сост. и отв. ред. Е. С. Бакшеев и В. В. Щепкин; Ин-т восточных рукописей РАН, Российский ин-т культурологии. — СПб. : Филологический факультет СПбГУ, 2013. — 292 с., ил.
ISBN 978-5-8465-1255-9
В сборник вошли статьи отечественных и зарубежных ученых, основанные на докладах, представленных в рамках «Невских чтений» — международного симпозиума в честь 120-летия со дня рождения выдающегося российского востоковеда Николая Александровича Невского (1892–1937). Проблематика статей определена разносторонним характером исследований, которым посвятил себя ученый: мифология, синто, айноведение, язык и культура Рюкю, тангутоведение и др.

The practices of Miko, Ainu and Ryūkyūan traditions of Japan have changed dramatically over time. While the Miko tradition is to some degree aligned with the mainstream dominant culture, the Ainu and Ryūkyūan cultures tend to be under-represented and viewed as ‘other’ within Japanese society. Institutionally, Japan recognizes the Ainu as Indigenous people through a resolution passed in 2007. Tokyo-based Kyodo News published an article claiming that there had been discussion in August of 2017 of passing a law with a similar acknowledgment, however, no such measure has officially been announced. The Ryūkyūan people in Okinawa are often viewed as a sub-group in Japan, and therefore they are rarely framed as an Indigenous minority. There have, however, been movements such as that of activist Shinako Oyakawa who has petitioned the UN forum for the recognition of the rights of Ryūkyūan people as indigenous (Magee, 2018).

The chapter addresses, after a brief historiographic overview of Ryukyuan historical linguistics, those topics on phonology (vowels, consonants, accent/tone), grammar (verbs, adjectives, case, kakari-musubi) and lexicon (pronouns, demonstratives) for which the contribution of Ryukyuan is, or has been claimed to be, important for the reconstruction of proto-Japanese-Ryukyuan (pJR), the common ancestor of Japanese and Ryukyuan.

This is a final version of the manuscript submitted for publication (Shimoji, Michinori, ed., An Introduction to the Japonic Languages: Grammatical Sketches of Japanese Dialects and Ryukyuan Languages. Brill). This chapter is one of the nine grammatical sketches included in the volume (Aomori, Izumo, Yanagawa, Tokunoshima Amami, Iheya Okinawan, Kin Okinawan, Aragusuku Miyako and Shiraho Yaeyama).

In this article, I deal with the historical development of the Japanese language by applying a multi-disciplinary approach that uses data from a variety of fields. My research indicates that the home-land of the Japonic language family may have been in the lower Yangtze River Valley, from where its speakers moved to the Korean Peninsula and eventually to Japan during the Yayoi period. This spread is associated with the dispersal of wet rice agriculture from the area south of the Yangtze River via the northeastern Asian mainland, where it was in contact with cultures cultivating millet. Old Japanese mythology and genealogical data suggests that the earliest known ethnic group that spoke Japonic may have been the Hayato people of southern Kyūshū.

This thesis investigates similarities in the diachronic sound changes found in Eastern Old Japanese dialects and in Ryukyuan languages and tests a hypothesis of language contact. I examine three sound changes attested in the Eastern Old Japanese corpus of Kupchik (2011). These three are denasalization of prenasalized obstruents, the fortition of the labial glide [w] and prenasalized / simple voiced fricative [(n)z], and the irregular raising of Eastern Old Japanese mid vowels. Extralinguistic and linguistic evidence is presented in support of a hypothesis for language contact between 8th century Ryukyuan speakers and Eastern Old Japanese speakers. At present, many assumptions bog down any potential evidence of contact. However, cases where reconstructed Ryukyuan could have donated a form into EOJ do exist. With future research into early Ryukyuan development and the lexicons, phonologies, and syntactic patterns of Ryukyuan languages, more can be said about this hypothesis. Alongside testing a hypothesis of language contact, this thesis can also be viewed as an analysis of Eastern Old Japanese spelling variation of the three changes mentioned above.

中川・加治工・宮良 (2021) 第126回人文科学とコンピュータ研究会発表会予稿集.

本発表では消滅の危機にある日本の言語の辞書を構築・公開したプロセスを報告する。1つ目は八重山諸島の鳩間島で加治工（第2著者）が約60年にわたって収集・記録した南琉球八重山鳩間方言の辞典、2つ目は沖縄本島で話されている沖縄語で宮良（第3著者）が母語話者に確認を取りつつ完成させた沖縄語の用例を集めた辞典である。Microsoft Wordで作成された非構造化テキストを中川（第1著者）がPythonスクリプトと手作業で構造化したテキストデータベース（CCライセンス）、それをLaTeX形式、HTML形式に変換したPDF版、ウェブ版を公開した。またこの変換スクリプトも公開予定である。オープンサイエンスを志向し、コミュニティに研究成果を還元するためにすべてをオンラインで公開したが、言語調査の協力者であり理解者であり支持者でもある高齢者には特にアクセスが難しいことが多いため、書籍も印刷・製本し配布した。
本発表ではこの事の利点と限界点も論じる。

Autoethnograpy of language learning published in Japanese. Why is it difficult to learn my heritage language(s)? In this chapter, I focused on "移動-mobility" and "ことば-language" and discussed my trajectory of becoming an "Indigenous" scholar.

In existing reconstructions, Proto-Japanese (PJ) was thought to possess only one kind of consonant clusters, nasal–obstruent combinations (*NC), which developed into prenasalized consonants in all varieties including the well-attested Western Old Japanese (WOJ). However, a careful observation of problematic correspondences among different Japanese–Ryukyuan varieties suggests otherwise: it is actually able to show there were clusters consisting of a nasal and an approximant, two nasals, or even three consonants (*C₁NC₂) in Proto-Japanese. In this article, we present cases where such clusters should be reconstructed, along with the phonological processes closely related to the history of such clusters.

This book chapter presents a broad summary of activities oriented towards the preservation and revitalisation of Ryukyuan languages conducted up until the early 2000s and into the 21st century. These endeavours are evaluated in terms of their success in achieving their aims, and the islanders' attitudes towards language revitalisation are examined in order to ascertain whether or not there was a general sense of the value of Ryukyuan languages at the time.

APA citation: Anderson, Mark (2014). Revitalisation attempts and language attitudes in the Ryukyus. In Mark Anderson and Patrick Heinrich (Eds.), Language Crisis in the Ryukyus (pp. 1-30). Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

This chapter explores the history and the present situation of educational policies in Japan, focusing on the case of schooling in the Ryūkyūs . I investigate the situation of indigenous education in the Ryūkyūs, comparing it with the case of the Ainu, the only nationally recognised indigenous group of Japan. I investigate (1) how the educational policies of Japan have dealt with education for its indigenous population historically and today, and (2) how indigenous groups pursue their indigenous identities in the current Japanese educational system? First, I discuss the lack of foundation for a multilingual and multicultural education system that would recognise the rights of indigenous peoples in Japan. Secondly, I demonstrate the reality of Japan as a multicultural, multilingual, and multi-ethnic society. Japan is often considered a culturally, linguistically, and ethnically homogeneous nation, partly because policy has rarely acknowledged the presence of indigenous peoples within the Japanese state. Educational policies reproducing the dominant ideology of a monolingual, monocultural, and monoethnic nation have played an important role in shaping the discourse of the largely invisible indigenous peoples in Japan. I conclude that educational policies in Japan need to provide choices and tolerance for indigenous peoples, for the sake of the indigenous peoples to have a real choice to be indigenous in Japan.

本発表の目的は，北琉球沖縄語今帰仁謝名方言における「私たち」の2 形式（wattaa とagamii）の使い分けを記述することである。今帰仁村を含む沖縄本島北部の諸方言には，「私たち」にワッター系とアガ系の2 系列あることが知られており，ワッター系は除外，アガ系は包括という除括性
（clusivity）の区別として分析されてきた(内間1979, 1994)。しかし，謝名方言におけるwattaa（ワッター系）とagamii（アガ系）の対立はこの定説では説明できないことが明らかとなった。本発表では，wattaa とagamii の対立が，除括性と異なる観点である人称対立性，すなわち「聞き手側（あなたたち）ないし他者側（彼ら）と対立しているか否か」により適切に記述できることを示す。wattaa は人称対立性があり，（あなたに対する）「私たち」（＝除外に対応）と（彼らに対する）「私たち」（=包括に対応）の意味で使われる。一方，agamii は人称対立性のない「私たち」であり，会話参与者（私とあなた（たち））のみを単に指すことから結果的に包括に対応する。

The origin and early dispersal of speakers of Transeurasian languages—that is, Japanese, Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic—is among the most disputed issues of Eurasian population history1–3. A key problem is the relationship between linguistic dispersals, agricultural expansions and population movements4,5. Here we address this question by ‘triangulating’ genetics, archaeology and linguistics in a unified perspective. We report wide-ranging datasets from these disciplines, including a comprehensive Transeurasian agropastoral and basic vocabulary; an archaeological database of 255 Neolithic–Bronze Age sites from Northeast Asia; and a collection of ancient genomes from Korea, the Ryukyu islands and early cereal farmers in Japan, complementing previously published genomes from East Asia. Challenging the traditional ‘pastoralist hypothesis’6–8, we show that the common ancestry and primary dispersals of Transeurasian languages can be traced back to the first farmers moving across No...

Contemporary impressions of Taiwan’s relations with Southeast Asia tend to focus on flows of labor, capital, tourism, and marriage. Countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand carry the impression that they are the origins of cheap, sometimes easily exploitable, migrant labor for employers in Taiwan. Many people in Taiwan also see the former two countries as sources of brides for lower-income men. These same countries, along with Cambodia and, to a lesser degree, Malaysia, are locations where Taiwanese capital is invested in factories for low-cost labor, proximity to Taiwan and China, and the relative absence of political contentiousness for being Taiwanese. With the advent of cheap air travel, Taiwan and Southeast Asia also offer the middle class in these areas options for quick holiday getaways. These interactions and the condescension toward Southeast Asia that sometimes accompany them belie the rich history of interactions that Taiwan and Southeast Asia share.

http://www.nbr.org/research/activity.aspx?id=831

This paper examines the legal implications for Okinawan migrants of Article 3 of the San Francisco Peace Treaty (hereafter SFPT), signed between Japan and most of the Allied Powers in 1951. Particularly, it analyses the case of post-war Okinawan migrants in Bolivia, showing how the legal conditions in the Ryukyu Islands were extended to the Andean country. The Japanese defeat in the Asia-Pacific War (August 1945) was followed by the occupation of the country by the United States. The peace treaty, signed six years later, originated during the early years of the Cold War and was fraught with geopolitical implications. The SFPT allowed the U.S. military to retain control of Okinawan prefecture without formally severing it from Japan. In other words, the treaty-makers allocated de jure sovereignty over Okinawa to Japan while the U.S. enjoyed de facto sovereignty. This distinction gave rise to a legal conundrum concerning the future of the islands and the legal situation of the Okinawan people onshore and abroad. Building on Japanese and English primary sources I examine the reaction of American and Japanese jurists to Article 3 and the approach of both governments toward offshore Okinawan migrants.

La tesi fornisce una nuova prospettiva nei confronti della produzione di Yamanokuchi Baku (1903 - 1963), specialmente quella poetica, analizzando in chiave contemporanea una selezione di poesie (13) a poco più di cinquant’anni dalla sua morte, cercando di abbandonare etichette precostituite e comprendendo i limiti della metodologia utilizzata. Attraverso la sua poetica, Baku mira a una responsabilizzazione collettiva che si rivolge a tutti, giapponesi, ryukyuani e il resto del mondo, affinché si possa parlare seriamente di una rinascita non solo ryukyuana ma, in generale, umana. Infatti, i fattori che hanno favorito gli eventi capaci di ridisegnare il concetto di identità nelle Ryūkyū sono gli stessi che, in realtà vicine o lontane, animano il dibattito tra le minoranze.
Il terzo e ultimo capitolo rappresenta il contributo propriamente letterario di questo lavoro. Dopo una breve premessa e le dovute avvertenze, i paragrafi si
risolvono in una suddivisione tematica che racchiudono una selezione di poesie, al cui testo originale in lingua giapponese si aggiungono la traduzione in lingua
italiana e una dettagliata analisi del testo. Parallelamente alla descrizione delle modalità di analisi e traduzione delle poesie, alcune annotazioni sono state dedicate ai limiti posti in essere dalla traduzione e dalla volontà di comprendere
adeguatamente il contesto storico-letterario delle poesie.
La tesi intende fornire uno sguardo critico verso la questione ryukyuana all’inizio del secolo scorso e, per farlo, intende indagare le poesie di Baku e i modelli da essa proposti, modelli che, ora come allora, continuano a essere i
protagonisti sia dentro che fuori all’arcipelago delle Ryūkyū.