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"All things begin with
one"
The above statement
was Shimabuku Tatsuo's reply when Kaneshi Eiko, one
of Tatsuo's senior students, asked him why he was naming
his new style of karate Isshin-ryu
The Languages of
Japan and the Ryukyus
The native language of the Ryukyu island chain is
also termed its Min Go, or "people's language or
words." Thus, we have the term, "Ryukyu Mingo".
Japanese is the language now used on Okinawa, but
prior to 1879, Chinese was used for international
transactions and for various court and official
records. At the time, the Ryukyu Islands were
known by their Chinese name Liu-Kiu (Loochoo).
After the Japanese officially annexed the islands,
their language automatically replaced the Chinese
language for use by the government. The name
Liu-Kiu now became Ryukyu, although it was still
written with the same Chinese characters.
The reason for this was the Japanese language does
not have "L" sounds.
Though he Ryukyuan
language (Uchinaguchi) is considered Japanese hogen
(dialect) originating from Mainland Japan 1500 to
2000 years ago, it would be safe to say that they
are now as different from each other as Spanish
is from Italian. The difference is attributed
to Okinawa's corruption of the Japanese language
due to the inconvenience in communicating between
the two cultures. Another reason is that both
Japan and Okinawa, at one time, followed the Southern
Chinese pronunciation of the Chinese characters,
but Japan later used the northern pronunciation.
While the Ryukyuan
language is a major dialect of Japan, there are
four subdialects. Amami, Miyako, Yaeyama,
and Okinawa all have their own dialects and within
those dialects are numerous others which may vary
from village to village. Today, the Naha dialect
is the one most used. Local dialects are still
spoken at home, but many new generations of Okinawans
are not capable of speaking them. Because
of the increased use of Japanese in schools and
government (as well as movies, television, and radio)
the Ryukyuan dialects became more mixed with Japanese.
