Research on the Ryukyu Mandarin texts

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Throughout the two-year research period, a substantial volume of materials have been collected not only from Universities and Research Institutes of Okinawa main island, but from museums and municipal offices of Ishigakijima and Kumejima as well.The libraries of Tenri University, Kyoto University and Okinawa Research Institute of Hosei Unversity, as well as Nagasaki city library and museum, provided me with many essential materials too.Among all these fruitful collections, the most valuable finding was the conversation text <Baixing guanhua>, in 5 different kinds of copies, which will prove extremely useful for my research activities henceforward.I am at present working on a portion of the collected materials, and the separate report, a recap of <Xue guanhua>, is to show a part of the 1st phase studies.I will in due course extend my studies to all of the materials, roughly in the following order ;(1) Comparative studies on all the texts : difference/similarities/uniqueness in words, locutions, phonetic tones and annotations.(2) Comparative studies between the Ryukyu Mandarin texts and the textbooks used by the interpreters of Nagasaki and Satsuma.(3) Linguistic transition and the contemporary social background.(4) Detailed studies on the texts in conjunction with historical documents of the old Ryukyu.Ryukyu Mandarin texts playd a meaningful role of surviving a vacant period of Chinese education in Japan, and the contents clearly reveal the Mandarin used in the vast southern region during the era of Qing dynasty. This is also a very interesting aspect from a standpoint of bringing the linguistic uniqueness of the texts into focus, in comparison to the Beijing Mandarin of the corresponding period. Through these manifold studies, I wish to reach a certain conclusion as to how and where the Ryukyu Mandarin texts are to be positioned in the history of Chinese language education.