The Ryukyuan people are a Japonic-speaking East Asian ethnic group indigenous to the Ryukyu Islands, which stretch between the islands of Kyushu and Taiwan. Administratively, the majority live in either Okinawa Prefecture or Kagoshima Prefecture within Japan. They speak one of the Ryukyuan languages, considered to be one of the two branches of the Japonic language family, the other being Japanese and its dialects.
The dialects of the Japanese language fall into two primary clades, Eastern and Western, with the dialects of Kyushu and Hachijō Island often distinguished as additional branches, the latter perhaps the most divergent of all. The Ryukyuan languages of Okinawa Prefecture and the southern islands of Kagoshima Prefecture form a separate branch of the Japonic family, and are not Japanese dialects, although they are sometimes referred to as such.
Japonic or Japanese–Ryukyuan, sometimes also Japanic, is a language family comprising Japanese, spoken in the main islands of Japan, and the Ryukyuan languages, spoken in the Ryukyu Islands. The family is universally accepted by linguists, and significant progress has been made in reconstructing the proto-language, Proto-Japonic. The reconstruction implies a split between all dialects of Japanese and all Ryukyuan varieties, probably before the 7th century. The Hachijō language, spoken on the Izu Islands, is also included, but its position within the family is unclear.
The Ryukyuan languages, also Lewchewan or Luchuan, 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.
The Peninsular Japonic languages are now-extinct Japonic languages reflected in ancient placenames and glosses from central and southern parts of the Korean Peninsula. Most linguists believe that Japonic arrived in the Japanese archipelago from the Korean peninsula during the first millennium BCE. The placename evidence suggests that Japonic languages were still spoken in parts of the peninsula for several centuries before being replaced by the spread of Korean.
The Yaeyama language is a Southern Ryukyuan language spoken in the Yaeyama Islands, the southernmost inhabited island group in Japan, with a combined population of about 53,000. The Yaeyama Islands are situated in the Southern Ryukyu Islands, southwest of the Miyako Islands and to the east of Taiwan. Yaeyama (Yaimamunii) is most closely related to Miyako. The number of competent native speakers is not known; as a consequence of Japanese language policy which refers to the language as the Yaeyama dialect, reflected in the education system, people below the age of 60 tend to not use the language except in songs and rituals, and the younger generation exclusively uses Japanese as their first language. As compared to the Japanese kokugo, or Japanese national language, other Ryukyuan languages such as Okinawan and Amami have also been referred to as dialects of Japanese. Yaeyama is noted as having a comparatively lower "language vitality" among neighboring Ryukyuan languages.
The Yonaguni language is a Southern Ryukyuan language spoken by around 400 people on the island of Yonaguni, in the Ryukyu Islands, the westernmost of the chain lying just east of Taiwan. It is most closely related to Yaeyama. Due to the Japanese policy on languages, the language is not recognized by the government, which instead calls it the Yonaguni dialect. As classified by UNESCO, the Yonaguni language is one of the most endangered languages in all of Japan, after the Ainu language.
Old Japanese is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language, recorded in documents from the Nara period. It became Early Middle Japanese in the succeeding Heian period, but the precise delimitation of the stages is controversial. Old Japanese was an early member of the Japonic language family. No genetic links to other language families have been proven.
The Amami Islands is an archipelago in the Satsunan Islands, which is part of the Ryukyu Islands, and is southwest of Kyushu. Administratively, the group belongs to Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. The Geospatial Information Authority of Japan and the Japan Coast Guard agreed on February 15, 2010, to use the name of Amami-guntō (奄美群島) for the Amami Islands. Prior to that, Amami-shotō (奄美諸島) was also used. The name of Amami is probably cognate with Amamikyu (阿摩美久), the goddess of creation in the Ryukyuan creation myth.
The classification of the Japonic languages and their external relations is unclear. Linguists traditionally consider the Japonic languages to belong to an independent family; indeed, until the classification of Ryukyuan and eventually Hachijō as separate languages within a Japonic family rather than as dialects of Japanese, Japanese was considered a language isolate.
The most widely spoken language in Japan is Japanese, which is separated into several dialects with Tokyo dialect considered Standard Japanese.
The Ryukyu Islands, also known as the Nansei Islands or the Ryukyu Arc, are a chain of Japanese islands that stretch southwest from Kyushu to Taiwan: the Ryukyu Islands are divided into the Satsunan Islands and Okinawa Prefecture. The larger ones are mostly volcanic islands and the smaller mostly coral. The largest is Okinawa Island.
Proto-Japonic, Proto-Japanese, or Proto-Japanese–Ryukyuan is the reconstructed language ancestral to the Japonic language family. It has been reconstructed by using a combination of internal reconstruction from Old Japanese and by applying the comparative method to Old Japanese and the Ryukyuan languages. The major reconstructions of the 20th century were produced by Samuel Elmo Martin and Shirō Hattori.
The small group of Hachijō dialects, natively called Shima Kotoba, depending on classification, either are the most divergent form of Japanese, or comprise a branch of Japonic. Hachijō is currently spoken on two of the Izu Islands south of Tokyo as well as on the Daitō Islands of Okinawa Prefecture, which were settled from Hachijō-jima in the Meiji period. It was also previously spoken on the island of Hachijō-kojima, which is now abandoned. Based on the criterion of mutual intelligibility, Hachijō may be considered a distinct Japonic language, rather than a dialect of Japanese.
The Kantō dialects are a group of Japanese dialects spoken in the Kantō region. The Kantō dialects include the Tokyo dialect which is the basis of modern standard Japanese. Along with the Tōhoku dialect, Kantō dialects have been characterized by the use of a suffix -be or -ppe; Kantō speakers were called Kantō bei by Kansai speakers in the Edo period. Eastern Kantō dialects share more features with the Tōhoku dialect. After the Pacific War, the southern Kantō regions such as Kanagawa, Saitama, and Chiba prefectures developed as satellite cities of Tokyo, and today traditional dialects in these areas have been almost entirely replaced by standard Japanese.
The Northern Ryukyuan languages are a group of languages spoken in the Amami Islands, Kagoshima Prefecture and the Okinawa Islands, Okinawa Prefecture of southwestern Japan. It is one of two primary branches of the Ryukyuan languages, which are then part of the Japonic languages. The subdivisions of Northern Ryukyuan are a matter of scholarly debate.
Proto-Ryukyuan is the reconstructed ancestor of the Ryukyuan languages, probably associated with the Gusuku culture in the early second millennium AD.
The Ainu languages, sometimes known as Ainuic, are a small language family, often regarded as a language isolate, historically spoken by the Ainu people of northern Japan and neighboring islands, as well as mainland, including previously southern part of Kamchatka Peninsula.
Eastern Old Japanese is a group of heterogenous varieties of Old Japanese, historically spoken in the east of Japan, in the area traditionally called Togoku or Azuma.
The Gusuku Period is an era in the history of the Ryukyu Islands, an island chain now part of Japan. The period corresponds to the spread of agriculture and Japonic culture from Japan alongside increased social organization, eventually leading to endemic warfare and the construction of the namesake gusuku fortresses. Following the Shellmidden Period, the Gusuku is generally described as beginning in the 11th century after a dramatic social and economic shift over the previous centuries. The Shellmidden-Gusuku transition has been linked to Japonic-speaking migrants and influence from a Japanese trade outpost on the island of Kikai, leading to the emergence of the Proto-Ryukyuan language, the common ancestor of the modern Ryukyuan languages.
