РюКюские языки: исчезающее наследие Японии

Indigenous languages of the Ryukyu Islands, Japan

The , also Lewchewan or Luchuan (/l//u://'//tS//u://@//n/), are the indigenous languages of the Ryukyu Islands, the southernmost part of the Japanese archipelago. Along with the Japanese language and the Hachijō language, they make up the Japonic language family. Although Japanese is spoken in the Ryukyu Islands, the Ryukyu and Japanese languages are not mutually intelligible. It is not known how many speakers of these languages remain, but language shift toward the use of Standard Japanese and dialects like Okinawan Japanese has resulted in these languages becoming endangered; UNESCO labels four of the languages "definitely endangered" and two others "severely endangered".

Phonologically, the Ryukyuan languages have some cross linguistically unusual features. Southern Ryukyuan languages have a number of syllabic consonants, including unvoiced syllabic fricatives (e. g. Ōgami Miyako 'breast'). Glottalized consonants are common (e. g. Yuwan Amami "horse"). Some Ryukyuan languages have phonemic central vowels, e. g. Yuwan Amami "tree". Ikema Miyako has a voiceless nasal phoneme Many Ryukyuan languages, like Standard Japanese and most Japanese dialects, have contrastive pitch accent. Ryukyuan languages are generally SOV, dependent marking, modifier head, nominative accusative languages, like Japanese. Adjectives are generally bound morphemes, occurring either with noun compounding or using verbalization. Many Ryukyuan languages mark both nominatives and genitives with the same marker. This marker has the unusual feature of changing form depending on an animacy hierarchy. The Ryukyuan languages have topic and focus markers, which may take different forms depending on the sentential context. Ryukyuan also preserves a special verbal inflection for clauses with focus markers—this unusual feature was also found in Old Japanese, but lost in Modern Japanese.

It is generally accepted that the Ryukyu Islands were populated by Proto Japonic speakers in the first millennium, and since then relative isolation allowed the Ryukyuan languages to diverge significantly from the varieties of Proto Japonic spoken in Mainland Japan, which would later be known as Old Japanese. However, the discoveries of the Pinza Abu Cave Man, the Minatogawa Man, and the Yamashita Cave Man as well as the Shiraho Saonetabaru Cave Ruins suggest an earlier arrival to the island by modern humans. Some researchers suggest that the Ryukyuan languages are most likely to have evolved from a "pre Proto Japonic language" from the Korean peninsula. However, Ryukyuan may have already begun to diverge from Proto Japonic before this migration, while its speakers still dwelt in the main islands of Japan. After this initial settlement, there was little contact between the main islands and the Ryukyu Islands for centuries, allowing Ryukyuan and Japanese to diverge as separate linguistic entities from each other. This situation lasted until the Kyushu based Satsuma Domain conquered the Ryukyu Islands in the 17th century. In 1846 1849 first Protestant missionary in Ryukyu Bernard Jean Bettelheim studied local languages, partially translated the Bible into them and published first grammar of Shuri Ryukyuan. The Ryukyu Kingdom retained its autonomy until 1879, when it was annexed by Japan. The Japanese government adopted a policy of forced assimilation, appointing mainland Japanese to political posts and suppressing native culture and language. Students caught speaking the Ryukyuan languages were made to wear a dialect card (方言札 hōgen fuda), a method of public humiliation. Students who regularly wore the card would receive corporal punishment. In 1940, there was a political debate amongst Japanese leaders about whether or not to continue the oppression of the Ryukyuan languages, although the argument for assimilation prevailed. In the World War II era, speaking the Ryukyuan languages was officially illegal, although in practice the older generation was still monolingual. During the Battle of Okinawa, many Okinawans were labeled as spies and executed for speaking the Okinawan language. This policy of linguicide lasted into the post war occupation of the Ryukyu Islands by the United States. As the American occupation forces generally promoted the reforming of a separate Ryukyuan culture, many Okinawan officials continued to strive for Japanification as a form of defiance. Nowadays, in favor of multiculturalism, preserving Ryukyuan languages has become the policy of Okinawa Prefectural government, as well as the government of Kagoshima Prefecture's Ōshima Subprefecture. However, the situation is not very optimistic, since the vast majority of Okinawan children are now monolingual in Japanese.

The Ryukyuan languages are spoken on the Ryukyu Islands, which comprise the southernmost part of the Japanese archipelago. There are four major island groups which make up the Ryukyu Islands: the Amami Islands, the Okinawa Islands, the Miyako Islands, and the Yaeyama Islands. The former is in the Kagoshima Prefecture, while the latter three are in the Okinawa Prefecture.

Older Ryukyuan texts are often found on stone inscriptions. Tamaudun no Hinomon (玉陵の碑文 "Inscription of Tamaudun tomb") (1501), for example. Within the Ryukyu Kingdom, official texts were written in kanji and hiragana, derived from Japan. However, this was a sharp contrast from Japan at the time, where classical Chinese writing was mostly used for official texts, only using hiragana for informal ones. Classical Chinese writing was sometimes used in Ryukyu as well, read in kundoku (Ryukyuan) or in Chinese. In Ryukyu, katakana was hardly used. Historically, official documents in Ryukyuan were primarily written in a form of classical Chinese writing known as Kanbun, while poetry and songs were often written in the Shuri dialect of Okinawan. Commoners did not learn kanji. Omoro Sōshi (1531–1623), a noted Ryukyuan song collection, was mainly written in hiragana. Other than hiragana, they also used Suzhou numerals (sūchūma すうちゅうま in Okinawan), derived from China. In Yonaguni in particular, there was a different writing system, the Kaidā glyphs (カイダー字 or カイダーディー). Under Japanese influence, all of those numerals became obsolete. Nowadays, perceived as "dialects", Ryukyuan languages are not often written. When they are, Japanese characters are used in an ad hoc manner. There are no standard orthographies for the modern languages. Sounds not distinguished in the Japanese writing system, such as glottal stops, are not properly written. Sometimes local kun'yomi are given to kanji, such as agari (あがり "east") for 東, iri (いり "west") for 西, thus 西表 is Iriomote. Okinawa Prefectural government set up the investigative commission for orthography of shimakutuba (しまくとぅば正書法検討委員会) in 2018, and the commission proposed an unified spelling rule based on katakana for languages of Kunigami, Okinawa, Miyako, Yaeyama and Yonaguni on May 30 in 2022.

Ryukyuan languages often share many phonological features with Japanese, including a voicing opposition for obstruents, CV(C) syllable structure, moraic rhythm, and pitch accent. However, many individual Ryukyuan languages diverge significantly from this pan Japonic base. For instance, Ōgami does not have phonemic voicing in obstruents, allows CCVC syllables, and has unusual syllabic consonants such as "make".

Amami has high and mid central vowels. Yonaguni only has three contrasting vowels, , and .