This chapter provides a broad overview of the way in which language shift has progressed in the Ryukyus over the last century. It is organized roughly in chronological order, beginning with a brief introduction to the literature on Ryukyuan sociolinguistics. The main text is divided into two main sections. The first is a roughly chronological account of the language shift process as it has progressed in the Ryukyus to date. It deals first with the period of Japanese language spread in the public domains through education and punishment in the early twentieth century before summarizing the post-war era of broken intergenerational transmission and subsequent decline of Ryukyuan languages in private domains. The second section focuses on the observable effects of language shift on Ryukyuan people’s language repertoires, behaviors and attitudes in the present day.

Following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the Ryukyu Islands were annexed by the Meiji state and Japanese was spread there. By 1950 language shift to Japanese reached the family domain, and all six Ryukyuan languages became endangered. By now two generations have been raised as Japanese monolingual speakers. However, in particular in the new millennium a great number of efforts have been made to reverse the trend of language shift and language loss. This chapter discusses efforts of clarification why Ryukyuan languages should be maintained and revived, then efforts of strengthening Ryukyuan languages in domains were they have been maintained, and then attempts to use the language in domains where Japanese is now the default language choice. It concludes that current efforts remain insufficient to maintain Ryukyuan at this stage but that recent trends are encouraging. In particular, contact between small children and the old generation are identified as promising settings, because no fixed language choice exists between them. It is also recommended that research into Ryukyuan sociolinguistics should be strengthened and that research into Ryukyuan language pedagogy should be established.

This paper discusses four different linguistic landscapes in Okinawa Prefecture: Naha Airport, Yui Monorail, Heiwadōri Market and Yonaguni Island. In addition to Japanese, Ryukyuan local languages are spoken there – Uchinaaguchi in Okinawa and Dunan in Yonaguni. Okinawan Japanese (Ryukyuan-substrate Japanese) is also used. In the linguistic landscapes these local languages and varieties are rarely represented and, if they are, they exhibit processes of language attrition. The linguistic landscape reproduces language nationalism and monolingual ideology. As a result, efficiency in communication and the actual language repertoires of those using the public space take a back seat. English differs from all languages employed in that it is used generically to address “non-Japanese” and not simply nationals with English as a national language. The public space is not simply filled with language. The languages employed are hierarchically ordered. Due to this, and to the different people using these public spaces, the meaning of public sign(post)s is never stable. The way in which meaning is created is also hierarchically ordered. Difference in meaning is not a question of context but one of scale.

This chapter focuses on varieties of Japanese spoken in the Ryukyus which have retained a substratum showing certain features of Ryukyuan languages. These varieties can be summarized under the term Ryukyu-substrate Japanese. The text provides insights into Ryukyu-substrate Japanese by summarizing the literature from 1930 to the present day, and traces the emergence of an apolitical linguistics approach in the Ryukyus. The reader is shown how past scholars viewed substratal influence as something that must be corrected through school education, while more recent scholars generally regard it as a positive marker of local identity. This comprehensive review of the studies to date allows the reader to understand how the foci of research have diverged into four main areas: survey questionnaires, theoretical classification, interviews and conversation analysis. The text concludes with a discussion of different scholars’ predictions as to the future of Ryukyu-substrate Japanese.

This book chapter presents a broad summary of activities oriented towards the preservation and revitalisation of Ryukyuan languages conducted up until the early 2000s and into the 21st century. These endeavours are evaluated in terms of their success in achieving their aims, and the islanders' attitudes towards language revitalisation are examined in order to ascertain whether or not there was a general sense of the value of Ryukyuan languages at the time. APA citation: Anderson, Mark (2014). Revitalisation attempts and language attitudes in the Ryukyus. In Mark Anderson and Patrick Heinrich (Eds.), Language Crisis in the Ryukyus (pp. 1-30). Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

This chapter provides a description of the various dialects of Ryukyu-substrate Japanese, that is, informal varieties of Japanese with substratal influence from Ryukyuan languages. Ryukyu-substrate Japanese has developed along with the language shift process over the last century as each generation adopts or discards certain features of their local language. Since younger generations have not acquired their local language, they assign new functions to linguistic items heard in the speech of their elders, or otherwise create new ones based on Ryukyuan word formation rules. The text summarizes the most important studies of geographical and generational variation in phonological, grammatical and lexical contact effects on the Japanese spoken in Amami, Okinawa, Miyako, Yaeyama and Yonaguni.

Every two weeks one of the world's estimated 6,000 languages dies. It appears inevitable to many that the number of languages spoken throughout the world will have drastically diminished by the end of the 21st century. Pessimistic estimations consider that as many as 80% of the languages currently used will by then have vanished. The danger of such loss does not go unnoticed. Many speakers of indigenous minority languages around the world struggle to retain their mother tongues. This holds also true for the Ryukyu Islands, located between Kyushu and Taiwan. In the course of the nation building process since the Meiji era, a language regime was established throughout Japan in which the language of Tokyo came to serve as the means of interregional communication throughout Japan, including the Ryukyu Islands. The spread of Standard Japanese led to re-negotiations of the language-identity nexus in the Ryukyu Islands. As a matter of fact, so strong proved the idea of one unitary Japa...