Okinawan languages
| Northern Ryukyuan | |
|---|---|
| Amami–Okinawan | |
| Geographic distribution |
The Amami Islands, Kagoshima Prefecture and the Okinawa Islands, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan |
| Linguistic classification |
Japonic
|
| Subdivisions |
|
| Glottolog | nort3255 |
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.
Within the Ryukyu Kingdom, territory was divided into magiri, which in turn were divided into shima. A magiri was comparable to a Japanese prefecture while shima were individual villages. There were about 800 shima in the Ryukyu Kingdom. Linguists Seizen Nakasone and Nishioka Satoshi have proposed that each shima developed their own distinct dialects or accents due to people very rarely traveling outside of their shima.
At high level, linguists mostly agree to make the north–south division. In this framework, Northern Ryukyuan covers the Amami Islands, Kagoshima Prefecture and the Okinawa Islands, Okinawa Prefecture. The subdivision of Northern Ryukyuan, however, remains a matter of scholarly debate.
In the Okinawa-go jiten (1963), Uemura Yukio simply left its subgroups flat:
Several others have attempted to create intermediate groups. One of two major hypotheses divides Northern Ryukyuan into Amami and Okinawan, drawing a boundary between Amami's Yoron Island and Okinawa Island. The same boundary was also set by early studies including Nakasone (1961) and Hirayama (1964). Nakamoto (1990) offered a detailed argument for it. He proposed the following classification.
The other hypothesis, the three-subdivision hypothesis, is proposed by Uemura (1972). He first presented a flat list of dialects and then discussed possible groupings, one of which is as follows:
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