Pyros has been put on my “ignore” list until he can learn some manners and how to have a discussion instead of an “In your face” session.
Originally posted by arnisador
Is it not the case that the consensus of linguists is that Ryukyuan is a dialect of Japanese?
It is usually Japanese linguists that say this and not Okinawan linguists.
Japan as tried to do the old “Borg” trick of “it is useless to resist….you will assimilate” kind of thing with the Okinawans since they stepped foot on Okinawan coral.
This is called “nihonjinron” or making Japanese out of them.
Japan did this in Korea for about 45 years as well.
All schools in Korea taught in Japanese until 1945.
The Japanese started to control Okinawa, to some degree anyway, since 1609.
However, Okinawa was a tributary state of China until the beginning of the 20th century.
All during the Tokugawa reign when the mainland of Japan was supposedly cut off from external trade Okinawa continued to trade with almost any country it wishedÂ…Â…so did certain areas of southern JapanÂ….Nagasaki for example.
I have never met an Okinawan that says “I am Japanese” or introduces themselves as such.
Okinawa and Japan are like Hawaii and the USÂ…Â…..same country (now anyway) but different culture.
Their language, like all languages, is a mix of several languages and sometimes adopted words from the people they traded with or encountered. This doesn’t mean their language is similar or the same or even derived from those languages. It just means it has used some “loan words”……..and sometimes uses them in a different context than the original language.
Example:
There is a place in Okinawa that is called Itoman. Legend has it that 8 English Sailors were shipwrecked there and stayed for some time. Some of them supposedly wore “kilts” which looked like a kind of blanket to the Okinawans.
Soon the place was nicknamed after the Sailors…..eightoman….Itoman, and to this day blankets in that area are called “kit”.
ItÂ’s only a legend and may or may not be true but may give you an idea of what I am talking about.
In Japan some high school girls use the word "choberrygoo" as an adjective. It's a combination of English and Japanese.....not that you would know it to hear it spoken.
Originally posted by arnisador
I know Chinese and Japanese are closely related but is it more correct to consider it a dialect of Japanese than Chinese? The Ryukyuans of course argue that it's a separate language.
Not basing my idea on what I have read (which states Okinawan is a separate Lang.) but I would agree with the Okinawans.
Geographically they are closer to Taiwan which uses a dialect of Chinese from FukienÂ…..which is where a lot of Martial Arts people went to from Okinawa and Chinese came from to Okinawan.
Also consider that Okinawa had a trading post set up in China with various dignitaries and envoys of all sorts and dealt with them more frequently than Japanese, also consider that the Chinese had envoys of the same ranks in Okinawa, the famous 36 families.
My teacherÂ’s teacher was a descendant of one of these families as well.
There was just too much influence from China for several 100 years and not enough from Japan to think that Japan had more of an influence on Okinawa.
As I stated before, Okinawans are even genetically different.
