1.1 About the language
Uchinaaguchi is a language spoken by less than 250,000 people (with only about 90,000 speaking it as their first tongue) residing mainly in the southern part of Okinawa Island, which is situated within the Ryukyu Island chain of Southern Japan. It also has a small population of speakers living in Hawaii, where the language is being promoted for cultural purposes.
As a result of language policies enforced in the late 19th through the mid-to-late 20th century, the native Okinawan tongue was strongly discouraged and the Tokyo dialect of Japanese was enforced as the standard language of education and business. As a result, younger speakers are no longer actively learning the language, and most fluent speakers today are over the age of 60 years old.
Despite this, Uchinaaguchi remains the most widely spoken Ryukyuan language today, and the most well-known outside of Japan. Linguistically, the language is fairly similar to Japanese and so those with knowledge of Japanese will have a greater advantage picking up the language.
(Map source: BBC)
1.2 Sounds and Spelling
Phonemes are presented between slashes and written with IPA, and their corresponding orthographic representations are presented between angled brackets. The spelling system is remnant of the Hepburn Romanization system for Japanese, and features a few modifications based on the popular Okinawan-English Wordbook. (For a fancier representation of the following, see the corresponding Wikipedia article for details.)
Vowels:
/a i u e o/ <a i u e o>
Long vowels are doubled in writing: <aa ii uu ee oo>.
Consonants:
Nasals: /m n N/ <m n *>
Plosives: /p b t d kʷ gʷ k g ʔ/ <p b t d kw gw k g **>
Affricates: /t͡ɕ d͡ʑ/ <ch j>
Fricatives: /ɸ s h/ <f s h>
Other: /ɾ j w/ <r y w>
* Note that the sound /N/ represents a full moraic nasal and will assimilate to the place of articulation of the following sound. It will here be written <m> when followed by a labial consonant within the same word, and <n> everywhere else.
** All vowels are predictably glottalized at the beginning of words in Okinawan. So <uchinaaguchi> is actually pronounced [ʔu.t͡ɕi.naa.gu.t͡ɕi]. However, the glottal mark does contrast before the moraic nasal and the approximants /w/ and /j/. In these cases, it'll be distinctively marked with the letter <q>.
When vowels are not glottalized, they tend to glide, so such cases will here be uniformly marked with a glide: <yii>, <wu>, etc.
1.3 Allophony
The moraic /N/ mentioned earlier is pronounced [m] before a labial consonant, [n] before an alveolar one, and [N] everywhere else.
As with Japanese, the vowel /i/ will palatalize any preceding /s/ into [ɕ]: <si> [ɕi].
The vowel /e/ has two realizations possible: [e] and [je]. The sound [je] tends to palatalize any preceding /s/ into [ɕ]. When the sound [je] can be predicted in word-initial position, it will be marked as <ye>, but elsewhere it will be uniformly written <e> since the pronunciation varies depending on the speaker and dialect.
The sounds /d/ and /ɾ/ are in the process of merging. The first tends to reduce to the flap in medial position, while the second tends to become [d] in word-initial position.
/ɸ/ and /h/ contrast before the vowel /a/, and seem to be in allophonic variation before /i/ and /e/. Before /u/, only /ɸ/ is possible. And before /o/, only /h/ is possible.
1.4 Historical changes and differences with Japanese
I'm going to go over this fairly quickly, but note the following changes (in order, as much as possible):
Long vowels coalesce:
/au/, /ao/ > /oo/
/ai/, /ae/ > /ee/
/ei/ > /ii/
Yotsugana merge:
/tu/ > /ti/ > /t͡ɕi/
/su/ > /si/ [ɕi]
/zu/ > /zi/ > /d͡ʑi/
/du/ > /di/ > /d͡ʑi/
T and K palatalize to CH, and D and G palatalize to J:
/ti/, /ki/ > /t͡ɕi/
/di/, /gi/ > /d͡ʑi/
/t(i)j/, /k(i)j/ > /t͡ɕ/
/d(i)j/, /g(i)j/ > /d͡ʑ/
Moraic:
The sequences /nu/, /ni/, /mu/ and /mi/ reduce to the moraic /N/.
Short mid vowels are raised:
/e/ > /i/
/o/ > /u/
Note: /ke/ becomes /ki/ [ki], and /te/ becomes /ti/ [ti] (not /t͡ɕi)
/ge/ becomes /gi/ [gi], and /de/ becomes /di/ [di] (not /d͡ʑi)
/re/ becomes /ri/ (not /i/)
/no/ becomes /nu/ (not /N/)
However: /se/ becomes /si/ [ɕi] (no difference)
Other changes:
/awa/ > /aa/
/ri/ > /i/ (some exceptions exist, e.g. the sequence /iɾi/)
/z/ > /d͡ʑ/
Short vowels in monomoraic/monosyllabic words lengthen:
/CV/ > /CVV/
Historically palatalized sequences with /j/ will depalatalize:
/s(i)j/ > /s/
/z(i)j/ > /d͡ʑ/
/m(i)j/ > /n/
All word-initial vowels predictably glottalize:
/V..../ > [ʔV....] (arguably /ʔ...../)
Preglottalization of word-initial vowels also led to the following changes:
/uwV/ > /ʔwV/
/unV/ > /ʔNnV/
/umV/ > /ʔNmV/
/ijV/ > /ʔjV/
(Other changes and differences do exist, but since they're less predictable or dependent on certain factors, you can ignore them here. Some examples include sporadic vowel lengthening of the first syllable of a disyllabic word, retention of the historical sound /ɸ/ in some words but not others, different vowel coalescence rules for topicalization, differences based on different historical forms, etc.)
1.5 Got that? Examples!
Here are some example vocabulary to demonstrate the previous changes:
/okinawa/ "Okinawa"
> /ot͡ɕinawa/ (palatalization)
> /ot͡ɕinaa/ (intervocalic -w- dropping)
> /ut͡ɕinaa/ (mid vowel raising)
= [ʔut͡ɕinaa] (word-initial vowel glottalization)
/tori/ "bird"
> /turi/ (mid vowel raising)
> /tui/ (ri to i reduction)
= [tui]
/mune/ "chest"
> /Nne/ (mu to N)
> /Nni/ (mid vowel raising)
= [n̩ni]
/ame/ "rain"
> /ami/ (mid vowel raising)
= [ʔami] (word-initial vowel glottalization)
*/s(i)jori/ "Shuri (the capital of Okinawa)"
> /sjuri/ (mid vowel raising)
> /sjui/ (ri to i)
> /sui/ (depalatalization)
= [sui]
*/ijo/ "fish"
> /iju/ (mid vowel raising)
> [ʔiju] (preglottalization)
> /ʔju/ (glottalized vowel assimilated into glide)
> /ʔjuu/ (monomoraic word vowel lengthening)
= [ʔjuu]
Homework!
Care to try a few guesses? See if you can derive the following:
*/kaminari/ "thunder"
*/inu/ "dog"
*/sekai/ "world"
*/kjoodai/ "sibling"
*/sjomotu/ "books"
*/su/ "nest"
*/ti/ "blood"
*/seNsei/ "teacher"
*/uma/ "horse"
Next lesson: basic vocabulary and expressions...