Know some "Okinawan dialect"? Did you hear it on the popular NHK drama "Churasan," perhaps? Well, actuawlly, what you get to hear on TV or from younger Okinawans is not a dialect of Okinawan at all but a type of Japanese — namely, Okinawan Japanese.

In fact, Okinawan proper is a language distinct both from Japanese and the other five Ryukyuan languages: Amami, Kunigami, Miyako, Yaeyama and Yonaguni. Since Japanese has replaced these languages in almost all contexts in daily life, all six languages are highly endangered today. Only older people speak them, and they speak them rarely.

The six Ryukyuan tongues are therefore listed in the "UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger of Disappearing" compiled by the U.N.'s culture and educational agency. UNESCO supports language revitalization because languages constitute intangible heritage culture. In Okinawa's case, according to UNESCO, all Ryukyuan languages and the cultures expressed through these languages are on course for extinction by 2050.