An investigation of the Miyako - Yaeyama dialects in Okinawa

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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.