Linguistic Comparison in Vocabulary for Japanese to Understand Okinawan

ABSTRACT

The goal of this research is to compare the differences and similarities in the vocabulary between Okinawan and Japanese, which are the two most spoken Japonic languages. Both languages are still alive to this day. This will use the 索引篇(標準語引き)database created by the National Language Research Institute and compare it by using the point class system described by Beaufils’ eLinguistics.net’s sound correspondence, which are integer values of 0, 70, 85, 95, or 100. This method has been chosen because vowels change more rapidly than consonants (Beaufils, 2023). Then, it was computed using the R code created by the author to determine the mutual intelligibility between the two languages. On average, the Okinawan words are 39.34638% similar to Japanese but vary based on the criteria and metric. This research is significant because it has provided insight into multiple perspectives on the quantitative differences between Okinawan and Japanese vocabularies. Depending on the calculation method, the value for mutual intelligibility differs.