Arthur Lynn Andrews’ Chair Lecture

Arthur Lynn Andrews’ Chair, Professor Shinsho Miyara (University of the Ryukyus) will give a lecture titled “Okinawan Language Revitalization.” This lecture is presented by the Center for Japanese Studies and co-sponsored by the School of Pacific & Asian Studies.

Uchināguchi (Okinawan) is a native language spoken on the main island of Okinawa and neighboring off-shore islands. Okinawan has been treated as a dialect in Japanese dialectology and simultaneously as a deviation bound to vanish together with the Ainu language owing to the measures of promoting the national language (kokugo) or so-called “standard” Japanese taken by the Japanese government.

In April 2006, the Okinawan Prefectural Government began to tackle this language problem by issuing an ordinance of local language revitalization. A key player in the ordinance’s enactment was the Society of Okinawan Language Revitalization (SOLR). Professor Miyara has been deeply involved in language revitalization activities as secretary general of SOLR for almost six years and vice-president later.

Now that a long-standing academic society Kokugogakkai changed its name to Nihongogakkai, Professor Miyara believes it should be an appropriate time to free Okinawan from the spell of the national language (kokugo) and to define it as a language in its own right.

In his talk, he will first sketch some unique linguistic properties of Okinawan and then define it as a legitimate language in terms of sociolinguistic criteria of language and dialect. For the second half of the talk, he will discuss the steps that are being taken to revitalize the Okinawan language.

Ticket Information
Free and Open to the Public

Event Sponsor
Center for Japanese Studies, Manoa

More Information
Center for Japanese Studies, 956-2665, cjs@hawaii.edu, http://www.hawaii.edu/cjs/

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