An investigation of the Miyako - Yaeyama dialects in Okinawa

我在2000和2001学年以“冲绳的宫古和八山方言，重点是伊拉哈马和伊里奥莫特的沙拉哈马方言和松奈方言”为题提交的拨款申请获得批准。根据该研究建议，2000年在伊里奥莫特岛的索奈岛对语音、词缀和助词的用法进行了系统的研究。第二年，设想进行一项类似的定位研究，结果发现萨拉哈马地区居住的是最初来自伊科马岛的人。于是，地点研究的重点转移到长滨，寻找萨拉哈马所说的白话的原型。这项研究在冲绳群岛的两个地区进行，目标是70年代或70年代以上的人，他们可能保留了这两种方言更纯粹的形式。然而，在对这两种方言进行了深入的语音和语法研究后，即使是那些更纯粹的白话形式，也在长滨语中原本应该发音为u的o和在原始白话中不存在的e等元音中明显地显示出标准日语的影响。尽管标准的日本人正在迅速进入冲绳群岛两个地区的白话(尽管不仅限于这两个地区)，调查对象在70多岁或70多岁时表现出的语音和词典学变化就证明了这一点，但这一趋势在年轻一代中更加突出。这项研究通过记录和分析冲绳群岛南部岛屿在对话流中某一历史时刻所说的方言，通过永久保存活着的方言来证明其价值。研究结果将于2002年3月发表在一篇论文中。

My grant application submitted under the title "Miyako and Yaeyama Dialects in Okinawa with a Focus on Sarahama and Sonai Vernaculars in Irabu and Iriomote" was approved for the 2000 and 2001 academic years. According to the research proposal a systematic study of phonetic, conjugational, and particle usages was conducted in the Sonai disctrict of Iriomote Island in 2000. In the following year a similar locational study was envisaged only to find that the Sarahama area was inhabited by the people who originally hailed from Ikema Island. Thereupon the focus of locational study shifted to Nagahama in search of the prototype of the vernacular spoken in Sarahama. The study conducted in two areas of the Okinawan Archipelago targeted people in the seventies or over who have presumably preserved the purer forms of the two vernaculars. After intense phonetic and grammatical investigation of the two dialects, however, even those purer forms of vernaculars manifest unmistakable influences of the standard Japanese in such vowels as o, which was originally supposed to be pronounced u in Nagahama, and e, which was non-existent in the original vernacular. Although the standard Japanese is making a fast inroad into the vernaculars spoken in the two areas of the Okinawan Archipelago (although not limited to only those two areas), as evidenced by the phonetic and lexicographical changes instantiated by investigative subjects in their seventies or over, the tendency is even more salient among the younger generations. This research, by recording and analyzing the dialects spoken in southern islands of the Okinawan Archipelago at one historical conjuncture in a dialogic flow, demonstrates its worth by preserving living vernaculars for eternity. The outcome of the research will be published in a paper in March 2002.