An investigation of the Miyako - Yaeyama dialects in Okinawa

我以“冲绳的宫古和八山方言，重点是伊布和伊洛摩的Sarahama和Sonai方言”为标题提交的资助申请获得了2000和2001学年的批准。根据研究计划，2000年在伊里奥莫特岛的索奈地区进行了语音、共轭和微粒用法的系统研究。在接下来的一年里，设想了一个类似的地点研究，结果发现萨拉哈马地区居住着最初来自伊科马岛的人。因此，区位研究的重点转移到长滨，以寻找萨拉哈马方言的原型。这项研究在冲绳群岛的两个地区进行，研究对象是70多岁或以上的人，他们可能保留了两种方言的纯粹形式。然而，在对这两种方言进行了激烈的语音和语法调查之后，即使是那些更纯粹的方言形式，也明显受到标准日语的影响，比如在长浜最初被认为是u的元音“o”和在最初的方言中不存在的元音“e”。虽然标准日语正在迅速渗透到冲绳群岛两个地区的方言中（虽然并不局限于这两个地区），但从70多岁或以上的调查对象所体现的语音和词典编纂的变化可以看出，这种趋势在年轻一代中更为明显。这项研究通过记录和分析冲绳群岛南部岛屿在一个历史时刻的方言，以对话流的方式，证明了它的价值，因为它可以永远保存活的方言。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.