Shiraho (Okinawa, Southern Ryukyuan)

Abstract

The Language and Its SpeakersShiraho is spoken in Shiraho village on Ishigaki Island, which is located in the southernmost islands of the Ryukyu archipelago. While Shiraho village has a population of about 1,600, the number of speakers of Shiraho is under 100. This is because the majority of speakers are over seventy years of age. Community members in their fifties and sixties seem to have passive language knowledge of Shiraho, but the situation among younger generations is not known. Shiraho belongs to Yaeyaman, which is a sub-branch of Macro-Yaeyaman, within the Southern Ryukyuan languages (Pellard 2015). The language-internal genealogical classification of Yaeyaman is the subject of discussion, but according to Lawrence (2000), Shiraho and Hateruma diverged from other Yaeyaman dialects at an early stage. This genealogical relationship with Hateruma is due to the twice forced migration from Hateruma Island in 1710 and 1771.There are previous works focused on Shiraho written in Japanese. Notable works are Nakagawa et al. (2016), which is the first grammar sketch of Shiraho, and Ryūkyū Hōgen Kenkyū Club (2006), which gives a vocabulary list. This chapter gives a grammatical overview of Shiraho with new data collected in my fieldwork. This paper is also a grammar sketch, but diverges from Nakagawa et al. (2016) in terms of (i) updated analysis of simple sentences, and (ii) giving basic description of complex sentences. There are descriptive studies on other Yaeyaman dialects: Aso (2020) for Hateruma, Harada (2015) for Kuroshima, and Izuyama (2003) for Miyara. Lawrence (2011) describes Southern Ryukyuan, focusing on the data from the Hatoma dialect.