By Fija Bairon, Matthias Brenzinger and Patrick Heinrich
Luchuan (Ryukyuan) languages are no longer Japanese dialects.
On 21 February 2009, the international mother language day, UNESCO launched the online version of its ‘Atlas of the world’s languages in danger’. This electronic version that will also be published as the third edition of the UNESCO Atlas in May 2009, now includes the Luchuan [Ryukyuan] languages of Japan (UNESCO 2009). ‘Luchuan’ is the Uchinaaguchi (Okinawan language) term for the Japanese ‘Ryukyu’. Likewise ‘Okinawa’ is ‘Uchinaa’ in Uchinaaguchi. Well taken, UNESCO recognizes six languages of the Luchu Islands [Ryukyu Islands] of which two are severely endangered, Yaeyama and Yonaguni, and four are classified as definitely endangered, Amami, Kunigami, Uchinaa [Okinawa] and Miyako (see UNESCO 2003 for assessing language vitality and endangerment).
Through publication of the atlas, UNESCO recognizes the linguistic diversity in present-day Japan and, by that, challenges the long-standing misconception of a monolingual Japanese nation state that has its roots in the linguistic and colonizing policies of the Meiji period. The formation of a Japanese nation state with one unifying language triggered the assimilation of regional varieties (hogen) under the newly created standard ‘national language’ (kokugo) all over the country (Carroll 2001). What is more, through these processes, distinct languages were downgraded to hogen, i.e. mere ‘dialects’ in accordance with the dominant national ideology (Fija & Heinrich 2007).
The entire group of the Luchuan languages – linguistic relatives of the otherwise isolated Japanese language – is about to disappear. These languages are being replaced by standard Japanese (hyojungo or kyotsugo) as a result of the Japanization of the Luchuan Islands, which started with the Japanese annexation of these islands in 1872 and was more purposefully carried out after the establishment of Okinawa Prefecture in 1879. In public schools, Luchuan children were educated to become Japanese and they were no longer allowed to speak their own language at schools following the ‘Ordinance of dialect regulation’ (hogen torishimari-rei) in 1907 (ODJKJ 1983, vol. III: 443-444). Spreading Standard Japanese was a key measure for transforming Luchu Islanders into Japanese nationals and for concealing the fact that Japanese was multilingual and multicultural (Heinrich 2004).
The US occupation of Uchinaa after World War II, which – at least formally – ended in 1972, marks the final stage in the fading of the Luchuan languages. In their attempts to separate Uchinaa from mainland Japan, Americans emphasized the distinctiveness of the Luchuan languages and cultures and encouraged their development. This US policy of dividing Luchuan from Japan, however, backfired and gave rise to a Luchuan Japanization movement. Today, even the remaining – mainly elderly – Luchuan language speakers generally refer to their languages as hogen, i.e. Japanese ‘dialects’, accepting in so doing the downgrading of their heritage languages for the assumed sake of national unity.
In support of the UNESCO approach, Sakiyama Osamu, professor emeritus of linguistics at the National Museum of Ethnology, stated that “a dialect should be treated as an independent language if its speakers have a distinct culture” (Kunisue 2009). However, linguistic studies also prove that these speech forms should be treated as languages in their own right (e.g. Miyara 2008), distinct both from Japanese as well as from one another. According to results employing the lexicostatistics method (Hattori 1954), the Luchuan languages share only between 59 and 68 percent cognates with Tokyo Japanese. These figures are lower than those between German and English. Scholars, as well as speakers, agree that there is no mutual intelligibility between these languages (Matsumori 1995). Thus calling them hogen (dialects of Japanese) may satisfy national demands of obedience but is problematic on linguistic and historical grounds.
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Figure 1: Who do you address in local language? (448 consultants)
This chart reveals different degrees of language vitality, with the local language being most widely used in Yonaguni and Miyako. Yonaguni stands out because the local language is widely used in the neighbourhood, due to the Gemeinschaft (community) character of an isolated island with 1.600 inhabitants. Also worthy of notice is the frequent local language use among work colleagues, which is largely due to the lack of development of the secondary and tertiary economic sector in Yonaguni. Note, however, that the local language in Yonaguni is just as rarely used towards children as elsewhere. As a matter of fact, the restraint on use of local language towards children is the most consistent result across the five speech communities of Amami, Uchinaa, Miyako, Yaeyama and Yonaguni. (The sixth Luchuan language according to the UNESCO atlas, i.e. Kunigami, was at that time unfortunately not recognized as an independent language by Heinrich). On the lower end of language vitality, we find the Yaeyama language. Since endangered languages are always spoken in multilingual communities, specific domains of local language use must be maintained to secure their continued use. The most crucial domains for local language are the family and the local neighbourhood (shima or chima in the Luchuan languages, hence the term shimakutuba, ‘community language’). On the basis of the results presented in Figure 1, we see that the prospects for language maintenance are, at present, most favourable on Miyako Island. For more detailed discussions on language shift in the Luchu islands see Heinrich and Matsuo (2009).