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Ryukyuan Culture
Ryukyuan culture (琉球の文化, ''Ryūkyū no bunka'') are the cultural elements of the indigenous Ryukyuan people, an ethnic group native to Okinawa Prefecture and parts of Kagoshima Prefecture in southwestern Japan. The cultural elements of the Ryukyuans are far from a unified entity, with different islands having their own distinct subculture and practices. Furthermore, the inhabitants of the Tokara and Ōsumi Islands are of Yamato Japanese descent, akin to the inhabitants of mainland Japan. Music There are many styles of music exclusive to the Ryukyu Islands. The most popular one is arguably the genre of eisa from the Okinawa Islands. It typically incorporates dancing, taiko drums and the three-stringed sanshin (Okinawan shamisen). In the Amami Islands of Kagoshima, a musical style known as shima-uta has gained recent popularity in mainland Japan as a result of its usage by contemporary singers. Besides eisa and shima-uta, there are many more traditional styles of Ryu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ryukyuan People
The Ryukyuan people ( ryu, 琉球民族 (るーちゅーみんずく), Ruuchuu minzuku or ryu, どぅーちゅーみんずく, Duuchuu minzuku, label=none, ja, 琉球民族/りゅうきゅうみんぞく, Ryūkyū minzoku, also Lewchewan or Loochooan) are an East Asian ethnic group native to the Ryukyu Islands, which stretch between the islands of Kyushu and Taiwan. Administratively, they live in either the Okinawa Prefecture or the 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. Hachijō is sometimes considered by linguists to constitute a third branch. Ryukyuans are not a recognized minority group in Japan, as Japanese authorities consider them just a subgroup of the Japanese people, akin to the Yamato people. Although officially unrecognized, Ryukyuans constitute the largest ethnolinguistic minority group in Japan, with 1.4 mil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ryukyuan Languages Map
The Ryukyu Islands are a volcanic arc archipelago. Ryukyu may also refer to: * Kingdom of Ryukyu, a former kingdom annexed by the Empire of Japan * Ryukyuan languages * Ryukyuan people * Ryukyu (My Hero Academia), a character in the manga series My Hero Academia See also * Okinawa (other) * Okinawan (other) * Liuqiu * Lewchewan (other) Lewchewan may refer to: * Ryukyuan languages (''Lewchewan languages'') * Ryukyuan people (''Lewchewan people'') See also * Ryukyuan (other) The Ryukyu Islands are a volcanic arc archipelago. Ryukyu may also refer to: * Kingdom of Ryuky ... {{disambig Language and nationality disambiguation pages ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Japanese
is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language, recorded in documents from the Nara period (8th century). 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. Old Japanese was written using man'yōgana, using Chinese characters as syllabograms or (occasionally) logograms. It featured a few phonemic differences from later forms, such as a simpler syllable structure and distinctions between several pairs of syllables that have been pronounced identically since Early Middle Japanese. The phonetic realization of these distinctions is uncertain. Internal reconstruction points to a pre-Old Japanese phase with fewer consonants and vowels. As is typical of Japonic languages, Old Japanese was primarily an agglutinative language with a subject–object–verb word order, adjectives and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Japonic
Proto-Japonic 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 (including eastern dialects) and Ryukyuan languages. The major reconstructions of the 20th century were produced by Samuel Elmo Martin and Shirō Hattori. Background The Japonic language family comprises Japanese, spoken in the main islands of Japan; Hachijō, spoken on Hachijō-jima, Aogashima, and the Daitō Islands; and the Ryukyuan languages, spoken in the Ryukyu Islands. Most scholars believe that Japonic was brought to northern Kyushu from the Korean peninsula around 700 to 300 BC by wet-rice farmers of the Yayoi culture and spread throughout the Japanese archipelago, replacing indigenous languages. The oldest attested form is Old Japanese, which was recorded using Chinese characters in the 7th and 8th centuri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Korean Peninsula
Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic of Korea) comprising its southern half. Korea consists of the Korean Peninsula, Jeju Island, and several minor islands near the peninsula. The peninsula is bordered by China to the northwest and Russia to the northeast. It is separated from Japan to the east by the Korea Strait and the Sea of Japan (East Sea). During the first half of the 1st millennium, Korea was divided between three states, Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla, together known as the Three Kingdoms of Korea. In the second half of the 1st millennium, Silla defeated and conquered Baekje and Goguryeo, leading to the "Unified Silla" period. Meanwhile, Balhae formed in the north, superseding former Goguryeo. Unified Silla eventually collapsed into three separate states due to civi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yayoi People
The were an ancient ethnicity that migrated to the Japanese archipelago from Korea and China during the Yayoi period (300 BCE–300 CE). Although highly controversial, a single study that utilized radiometric dating techniques inconclusively suggested a period that began between 1000 and 800 BCE. They interacted, intermarried, and warred with the established Jōmon people to form the modern Japanese people. Modern Japanese people have primarily Yayoi ancestry (about 90% on average, with their remaining ancestry deriving from the Jōmon). Origin The terms Yayoi and Wajin can be used interchangeably, though "Wajin" (倭人) refers to the people of Wa and "Wajin" (和人) is another name for the modern Yamato people.David Blake Willis & Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu''Transcultural Japan: At the Borderlands of Race, Gender and Identity,'', p. 272: ‘“Wajin,” which is written with Chinese characters that can also be read “Yamato no hito” (Yamato person)’. There are seve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Language
is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as the Ainu, Austroasiatic, Koreanic, and the now-discredited Altaic, but none of these proposals has gained widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), there was a massive influx of Sino-Japanese vocabulary into the language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese. Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords. The basis of the standard dialect moved f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amami Language
The The name ''Amami-guntō'' was standardized on February 15, 2010. Prior to that, another name, ''Amami shotō'' (奄美諸島), was also used. 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 for the Amami Islands. Prior to that, was also used. The name of Amami is probably cognate with , the goddess of creation in the Ryukyuan creation myth. Geography The Amami Islands are limestone islands of coralline origin and have a total area of approximately , of which constitute the city (''-shi'') of Amami, and constitute the district (''-gun'') of Oshima. The highest elevation is ''Yuwandake'' with a height of on Amami Ōshima. The climate is a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification ''Cfa'') with very warm summers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yonaguni
, one of the Yaeyama Islands, is the westernmost inhabited island of Japan, lying from the east coast of Taiwan, between the East China Sea and the Pacific Ocean proper. The island is administered as the Towns of Japan, town of Yonaguni, Okinawa, Yonaguni, Yaeyama, Okinawa, Yaeyama Gun, Okinawa Prefecture, Okinawa, and there are three settlements: Sonai, Kubura, and Higawa. History Early human migration from Taiwan to Yonaguni island has long been the subject of scholarly debate. In 2019, a team of Japanese and Taiwanese researchers succeeded in completing the two-day journey from Cape Wushibi in Taitung County to Yonaguni island along the Kuroshio current in a dugout canoe based on technology and materials from 30,000 years ago. Otherwise, the early history of Yonaguni remains vague. The first written record that ever mentions the island is a 1477 Korean document (''Chosen Hyōryūmin no Yaeyama kenbunroku''), an account of several fishermen from the current Jeju Province who ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yaeyama Language
The Yaeyama language (, ''Yaimamuni'') 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 , 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 langua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miyakoan Language
The Miyakoan language ( ''Myākufutsu/Myākufutsї'' or ''Sumafutsu/Sїmafutsї'') is a diverse dialect cluster spoken in the Miyako Islands, located southwest of Okinawa. The combined population of the islands is about 52,000 (as of 2011). Miyakoan is a Southern Ryukyuan language, most closely related to Yaeyama. The number of competent native speakers is not known; as a consequence of Japanese language policy which refers to the language as the , 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 mostly uses Japanese as their first language. Miyakoan is notable among the Japonic languages in that it allows non-nasal syllable-final consonants, something not found in most Japonic languages. Variants The most divergent variant is that of Tarama Island, the farthest island away. The other variants cluster as Ikema– Irabu and Central Miyako. Given the low degree of mutual intell ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kunigami Language
The Kunigami or Northern Okinawan language (), is a Ryukyuan language of Northern Okinawa Island in Kunigami District and city of Nago, otherwise known as the Yanbaru region, historically the territory of the kingdom of Hokuzan. The Nakijin dialect is often considered representative of Kunigami, analogous to the Shuri-Naha dialect of Central Okinawan. The number of fluent native speakers of Kunigami is not known. As a result of Japanese language policy, the younger generation mostly speaks Japanese as their first language. Location In addition to the northern portion of Okinawa Island, Kunigami is spoken on the small neighboring islands of Ie, Tsuken and Kudaka. Scope and classification ''Glottolog'', following Pellard (2009), classifies Kunigami with Central Okinawan as the two Okinawan languages. ''Ethnologue'' adds Okinoerabu and Yoron; these (along with all other languages of the northern Ryukyu Islands) are classified as Amami languages by ''Glottolog''. The UNESCO ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
