Wiktionary:About Okinawan

This page deals with the considerations on Wiktionary for the Okinawan language.

Dialects

The default dialect in Okinawan is Shuri. If any other dialect is listed, please specify it with the parameter |a= of the {{IPA}} template.

Northern Okinawa dialects belong to the Kunigami language (ryu), not here.

Phonology

For more information on the phonology, see Kokuritsu Kokugo Kenkyūjo (1963:29-57).

Consonants

There is a distinction in Shuri of glotallized and unglotallized (approximant) high vowels: OGJ transcribes them as [ʔu] :: [u ~ wu], [ʔi] :: [i ~ ji]. The latter is a secondary development, e.g. いぃゆん (yiyun, “to sit”) < pR *wi- (“id”), をぅとぅ (wutu, “husband”) < pR *woto (“id”).

A distinction of glotallized and unglotallized nasals also exist before approximants and nasals. An example of nasals is っんに ('nni, “rice plant”), but んに (nni, “breast”).

The samurai register of the Shuri dialect distinguishes aveolar and aveolo-palatal consonants, while the commoners tend to merge all of them into aveolar, with the exception of the high front vowel [i], which became only aveolo-palatal. For example, the word for "lion" is pronounced as [ɕīːɕī] for both registers, but "soot" is pronounced [sīːsī] for the samurai register and [ɕīːɕī] for the commoners; the latter makes "soot" a homophone with "lion" in the commoner language.

Grammar

Verbs

There are 3 different stems in verbs: continuative, basic, and conjunctive. They typically exhibit different reflexes, depending on the consonant of the verb stem. For example, the ま行 exhibits /-n-/ for continuative, /-m-/ basic, and /-d-/ for conjunctive.

Orthography

There is no general consensus for a orthographic system for the Okinawan languages. Sometimes, the language will be written in katakana. For example, Hirayama Teruo (平山照男) 1992-1994's 現代日本語方言大辞典 (Dictionary of Japanese Dialects) spells entries in a katakana format (including the Sesoko dialect of Kunigami).

If you spell the entry in kanji, be sure to either use the etymological spelling (e.g. 大和世 (yamatuyū, “an era where the Ryukyuan Islands are under Japanese control”) or the semantic spelling (e.g. 北 (nishi, “north”)).

Prosody

A three-class distinction exists in the Shuri dialect of Okinawan, but only for disyllables. Otherwise, at least two-class distinctions exist, where class A [1] (下降型) implies that the accent should fall after the second mora (for disyllables in isolation: after the first mora), and class B [0] (平板型) is made with either a low or middle tone (level tone?) and continues until the of the word.

Disyllables:

• A: LHː/Fː
• B: MM/Mː
• C: MːM

Entries

The head should be {{ryu-head|pos}} (replace pos with any part-of-speech).

Making references

If you are making an entry on the Shuri language, it is highly recommended to cite the sources for the dictionaries. The template {{R:ryu:Okinawa-go Jiten}} can be used for the Shuri dialect, while {{R:ryu:Okinawa Kogo Daijiten}} can be used if you are quoting information from the dictionary about Old or Middle Okinawan, especially quotations for old texts such as the Omoro Sōshi and the Ryūka.