Amanogawa 79 Posted April 11, 2004 Okinawa - no major problems with the dialect (haven't been there though do have Okinawan friends in Tokyo) Tohoku-ben is more difficult I think. awesome..... Sugoi! no problem with Okinawa native dialects?? wow. :-D Their native language ( origined in Ryukyuan ) is totally a foreign language to me... just amazing. And then your friend from Okinawa speaks the original Okinawa language? :-D ( how old is s/he??? ) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Mark Buckton 1 Posted April 11, 2004 Okinawa - no major problems with the dialect (haven't been there though do have Okinawan friends in Tokyo) Tohoku-ben is more difficult I think. awesome..... Sugoi! no problem with Okinawa native dialects?? wow. :-D Their native language ( origined in Ryukyuan ) is totally a foreign language to me... just amazing. And then your friend from Okinawa speaks the original Okinawa language? :-D ( how old is s/he??? ) Amanogawa-san, A dialect is very different from a language. Compare Tohoku BEN with Tohoku -GO. I can follow Okinawa-BEN easier than Tohoku-BEN. The Ryukyu - GO is essentially dead as far as young people go but as I am sure you know many non-Okinawan Japanese still consider the Okinawans as something akin to being foreign when it comes to language and culture. No offence but perhaps it takes an outsider like me to see how the 2 groups view each other. Mythical mostly and some Okinawan's I've met still don't fully consider themselves Japanese which probably helps this myth along. Okinawa wasn't part of Japan was it till relatively recently (not the 76 handover from the US) - the recent centuries assimilation to control trade with China & the then Formosa (Taiwan). Not unlike the Ogasawara (Bonin) islanders being half of European origin but being forced into using Japanese names in decades past. Actually, I understand caucasian DNA to be rather prominent down there and English still a dominant 'GO' Thus, with Japanese people quite new on those islands there has been no chance to develop a dialect yet and 'standard' Japanese is the norm (Hokkaido's recent importing of Honshu people (1860s on) another example). Note. For non-speakers of Japanese - 'GO' is language and BEN is dialect so Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Amanogawa 79 Posted April 12, 2004 (edited) A dialect is very different from a language. Edited April 12, 2004 by Amanogawa Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
