There exists no 'national language' (kokugo) in
Japan
if the concept of national language is taken serious. The Japanese cannot be defined as 'one nation' on linguistic grounds. Indigenous language families include the Ainu, Ryukyuan and Ogasawa Creole English. With regard to the
Ryukyu Islands
, five major varieties can be ascertained. These are, form north to south, the language varieties of Amami,
Okinawa
, Miyako, Yaeyama and Yonaguni. These varieties came to be designated as Greater Dialects of the national language on political grounds in accordance with a nation imagining ideology which claimed congruence between the boundaries of the Japanese state, nation and the language (Oguma 1998. Lee 1996). While the Ryukyuan language varieties have long been treated as languages in their own rights by comprehensive encyclopaedias of world languages (e.g. Grimes 2000, Voegelin 1977), Japanese scholars have been more reluctant to grant the language varieties in the
Ryukyu Islands
language status (e.g. Hattori 1932, Tōjō 1966). Some scholars of Okinawa Studies have claimed language rights for the Ryukyuan languages (e.g. Kinjō 1944), but it is only in recent years that a growing number of linguistics are overcoming the political kokugo ideology and start treating the language varieties of Ryukyuan as languages in their own rights (e.g. Uemura 2003).
The languages of the
Ryukyu Islands
are severely endangered (Heinrich 2004, 2005). With natural language transmission having been interrupted in the 1950s, the Ryukyuan population is divided between a local language speaking older generation, a middle generation of semi-speakers and a monolingual Standard Japanese speaking generation. Since the latter constitutes the child bearing generation, they are unable to pass the local languages on to their children. This is why the local languages are prone to die out, unless counter action aiming at conscious and planned efforts of language revival are taken.
Several attempts of language revitalisation can be ascertained in the
Ryukyu Islands
. Most notably in this respect are the efforts of the 'Society of Okinawan Language Revival' (SOLaR). Such efforts can however only prove successful if supported by a large part of the local population, in other words, if language revitalization efforts meet language attitudes supportive of the Ryukyuan languages. The present paper investigates language use and language attitudes in the
Ryukyu Islands
. It reports on the results of questionnaire surveys carried out by the author in Amami,
Okinawa
, Miyako, Ishigaki and Yonaguni. It shows that all local populations are supportive to the maintenance of the local languages and assume a responsibility of the Japanese state to safeguard their local languages. There are, however, marked differences in the awareness of language endangerment and a lingering influence of kokugo ideology, counterproductive to the goal of language revitalisation. It is therefore argued that language revitalization must start in raising an awareness of language endangerment.
