Have any of you karateka here ever had to decrypt it in your travels? I've heard it's more like a separate language rather than merely a dialect.
sorry to butt in, as i'm not a karateka, and i seem to have taken over the japan forum... but, do you mean has anyone come across it while travelling to okinawa? i don't see why anyone would. only really old people and people who study the language speak any of the ryukuan languages any more. you heard correctly though. it is a seperate language. though this does depend on which linguist you speak to. most agree that ryukuan languages (of which Okinawa hogen, or Uchina-guchi) and japanese languages fall under the umbrella title of Japonic languages. Japanese and Uchinanchu mostly think that Ryukuan is a dialect of Japanese, but their grammatical and phonetic structures are so different, and they're mutually unintelligable. people here tend to use very few okinawan words to unite them as uchinanchu, though. a big "mensore" greets you as you come through the airport (welcome- "youkoso" in japanese) "haisai!" for hello (or "haitai" if you're female; "konnichiwa" in japanese) you hear "niheedeebiru" for thank you quite a lot ("arigatou" in japanese). everyone says "aga!" when they get hurt, get sunburnt, get bitten by a mosquito, stub their toe, and anything else even remotely connected to pain ("itai!" in japanese). "ayena!" for "oh my god!". i have no idea what this is in japanese. if you hear someone talking about "naicha", they mean people from the japanese mainland. and, of course, everyone here embraces the philosophy of "ichariba choodee" - once met, we are brothers. or family, anyway.
Thanks for your explanation, Succubus. Niheedeebiru, um...uh...what's Uchinaguchi for "succubus"? Sorry, just had to. I was curious about it because I've never been to Okinawa. You mentioned that the 'mensore' is written at the airport; how is Uchinaguchi written? Do they have a separate script? Or was it Japanese with katakana? I guess I'll ask another, more tangentially Okinawa-related question; I've also heard that as liquors go, a'amori is essentially rotgut firewater. Is that the case, or is it a traveler's tale?
at the airport, the "mensore" is written in hiragana. to be honest, i haven't actually figured out how it works. i'd have thought it would be written in katakana, but they use hiragana for most uchina things that i see written. though, one of the military bases here, kadena, is written with kanji, but it's an uchina word. hmmm... awamori.... have you had sake? it tastes better than sake, but it gets you drunk waaaay faster. and gives you a ******* of a hangover in the morning. i'd rather drink awamori than sake though. habu-shu is the thing to watch out for though. they take a live snake (called a habu), then wash it out with alcohol, and put it in the jar of alcohol while it's still alive. what you get looks like so:
