In this period, Ryukyu, the name of Okinawa Prefecture before Japanese occupation, remained an independent region without a central government. Local languages developed freely and diversified into a continuum of Ryukyuan languages.

 

Origin

 

           Human activity in the Okinawa archipelago could be predated back to the Paleolithic period, as human fossils remained for about 18,000 years were discovered in the region close to Naha (Hanihara, 1994 as cited in Osumi, 2001: 69). The Ryukyuans and the Japanese in the mainland are believed to be sharing the same Neolithic Jomon culture, which is approximately between 5000BC and 500BC (Kaner & Ishikawa, 2007: 1), as ancient pottery found in Ryukyu and mainland Japan are revealing the same special and unique rope patterns (Takara & Dana, 1993 as cited in Osumi, 2001: 70).

 

Development of Ryukyuan languages

 

           Even though their cultures were once similar, they were developing in significantly different ways later on. The divergence started around the 3rd century BC (Osumi, 2001: 70). The Ryukyuans had developed a practice of cremation and adopted pork as their main diets while the Japanese rarely performed these practices (Chamberlain, 1985, as cited in Osumi, 2001: 70).

 

          Later, the linguistic system also became separated around the 5th and 8th century AD ,for example, phonetically, in the Ryukyu archipelago the /p/ sound were changing to /f/ or /h/ sound (Osumi, 2001: 70). However, a few words in Ryukyuan could still be found in the Japanese from the mainland until the 9th century, for instance, “warabi” and “shitimiti” which refers to “child” and “early morning” respectively (ibid).

 

          Within the 10th and 12th century, there was numerous immigrants moved to the Ryukyu Islands from Kyushu, one the main island of Japan, and the Kyushu varieties were introduced into Ryukyu since then (Heinrich, 2012: 40). Therefore, the Ryukyuan language, especially the northern varieties, and the Kyushu dialects would share some similarities (Osumi, 2001: 70). Despite of this, the Ryukyuan languages which developed later displaced the introduced Kyushu languages (Heinrich, 2012: 40).

 

          However, the development in the Ryukyu Islands, in the aspects of socioeconomic status, culture and language, was not in good progress. The development in Ryukyu is commented as about 1000 years lagged behind compared to that in the mainland Japan (Hokama, 1968: 170)[1].  One of the reasons would be the formation and the structure of the society. Until the 12th century, people in Ryukyu were only forming small communities and different groups of people usually lived rather separately (Osumi, 2001: 71). The distance between the clans deterred the communication and hence the interactions of technologies and cultures, slowing down the pace of development of the whole archipelago.

          

          The isolation of the Ryukyuan communities helped create an abundant diversity of culture and language (ibid). The group of language varieties in the islands could be described using the linguistic term “abstand languages”, which means that they are “languages by distance” (Heinrich, 2012: 42). The Ryukyuan languages are also described as “unroofed” because it is difficult to find a single standard language that unifies all the others (ibid).

          

          Although one language could hardly unify the Ryukyuan languages, the languages are not totally separated from each other. The Ryukyuan language is more often referred as a “dialect continuum” (ibid), as the speakers in one community could understand the words from people in the nearby communities (Osumi, 2001: 70), but could not communicate with people in the rest of the islands (Mastumori, 1995: 25 as cited in Osumi, 2001: 70).

 

First touch with characters  

          The first contact with text in Ryukyu happened in the 13th century (Hokama, 1968: 172)[2]. In 1265, Zenkan, a priest of Buddhist from Japan, had arrived to Ryukyu, and brought the Buddhist culture, Japanese literature and the Japanese writing system along with him (ibid)[3] .  In fact, writings had been adopted in the mainland Japan long ago in about 6th century, and the period between 6th and 15th century in Ryukyu is called the “Empty Period” (Hokama, 1968: 171)[4]  which manifested the great difference in the degree of development between the two places and may explained why the Ryukyuan languages had been developing like a dialect, especially when compared with Japanese in the mainland.