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Language Lineage

Ryukyuan

The languages of the Ryukyu Islands, which descend from a sister of Old Japanese and not from Old Japanese itself: they keep vowel distinctions Japanese lost before its first texts.

c. 10th century CE – presentThe Ryukyu Islands, from Amami to Yonaguni
On this page
  1. Sister, Not Daughter
  2. Kingdom, Annexation, War
  3. Where its languages are spoken
  4. Turning points
  5. Contested classifications

01

Sister, Not Daughter

The Ryukyuan languages are not intelligible to Japanese speakers, and they keep distinctions, in some vowels and in the accent system, that Japanese had already merged before the 8th century. So they must come from a language that separated from the ancestor of Japanese earlier. Yet archaeology suggests that farming populations reached the islands from Kyushu only around the 10th–12th centuries, in the Gusuku period. Thomas Pellard and others resolve this by placing the split in Kyushu, with Proto-Ryukyuan speakers moving south later.

02

Kingdom, Annexation, War

In 1429 the Ryukyu Kingdom unified the islands, trading with China, Japan and Southeast Asia. The Satsuma domain invaded in 1609 and controlled it indirectly, and Japan annexed it as Okinawa Prefecture in 1879. Assimilation policies followed, including 'dialect tags' hung on schoolchildren caught speaking their language. The Battle of Okinawa in 1945 killed about a quarter of the civilian population, and US occupation lasted until 1972. In 2009 UNESCO listed six Ryukyuan languages as endangered.

On the map

Where its languages are spoken

Spoken todayShading marks whole countries, not the regions within them.
  1. JapanNorthern Ryukyuan · Southern Ryukyuan

Figures are rough first-language estimates, rounded, from censuses and Ethnologue. Counts for small or scattered communities are especially uncertain.

Rings along the limb

Turning points

Oldest first.

  1. Splitc. 10th – 12th century CEContested

    South into the islands

    Proto-Ryukyuan speakers, already separated from the ancestors of Japanese in Kyushu, move south into the Ryukyu Islands with the Gusuku-period farming expansion. The timing of the split and of the migration are debated.

    Sources (1)
    • Pellard, Thomas. 2015. The linguistic archeology of the Ryukyu Islands. In Handbook of the Ryukyuan Languages, ed. Patrick Heinrich, Shinsho Miyara & Michinori Shimoji. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
  2. Contact1609

    The Satsuma invasion

    The Satsuma domain of southern Kyushu invades the Ryukyu Kingdom and brings it under indirect Japanese control while it continues to pay tribute to China.

    Sources (1)
    • Heinrich, Patrick. 2012. The Making of Monolingual Japan: Language Ideology and Japanese Modernity. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
  3. Contact1879 onward

    Annexation and assimilation

    Japan annexes the kingdom as Okinawa Prefecture and pursues assimilation through schooling in standard Japanese, including punishing children with 'dialect tags'. Transmission of the Ryukyuan languages collapses in the 20th century.

    Sources (1)
    • Heinrich, Patrick. 2012. The Making of Monolingual Japan: Language Ideology and Japanese Modernity. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
  4. Revitalization2009

    Recognised as endangered languages

    UNESCO lists Amami, Kunigami, Okinawan, Miyako, Yaeyama and Yonaguni as separate endangered languages, a turning point for local revival efforts that treat them as languages and not as dialects of Japanese.

    Sources (1)
    • Moseley, Christopher, ed. 2010. Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, 3rd ed. Paris: UNESCO Publishing.

Outside the tree

Contested classifications

These disagreements may never be settled. Each position is given with its grounds, and no side is declared correct.

  • Widely accepted

    Ryukyuan as a sister of Japanese

    Ryukyuan branched off before Old Japanese and does not descend from it

    Evidence for

    Ryukyuan keeps some vowel and accent distinctions that Japanese had already merged by the 8th century, so it cannot descend from the language of the Old Japanese texts.

    Evidence against

    Some scholars have argued that Ryukyuan split off later, from a Kyushu dialect of Japanese, and that the apparent archaisms can be explained otherwise. The late archaeological date of the settlement of the islands also needs explaining.

    Sources (1)
    • Pellard, Thomas. 2015. The linguistic archeology of the Ryukyu Islands. In Handbook of the Ryukyuan Languages, ed. Patrick Heinrich, Shinsho Miyara & Michinori Shimoji. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.