What language did the locals speak before Okinawa was incorporated into Japan?

Okinawa, located between Kyushu Island in Japan and Taiwan Province Province in China, is now an administrative region of Japan. Then, before being incorporated into Japan, that is, in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Okinawa was also called Ryukyu Kingdom, which belonged to China at that time, and the locals spoke Ryukyu.

In China's history books, the earliest record of Ryukyu language and its characters is "making the characters outside Ryukyu remember foreign languages". At that time, Ryukyu language could be divided into two systems: language and writing. At the same time, it can also be divided into two schools. The northern school belongs to the same system as Kyushu dialect in Japan at that time, and has many similarities with Kyushu dialect. Southern School is an independent branch. At that time, Ryukyu people also learned a series of Chinese in order to be able to conduct diplomacy with shouting people.

With the development of Ryukyu language, Ryukyu characters at that time can be divided into two types: Japanese phonetic system and Chinese phonetic system. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Ryukyu sent overseas students to China for exchange and study. At that time, their main study place was Fuzhou, so they were also influenced by the local dialect. At that time, Ryukyu language developed into something similar to Min language. In addition to using Chinese characters, they also created their own characters on a secondary basis and called them? Ball word? .

1879, Ryukyu was annexed by Japan at that time, and on this basis, Ryukyu became the dialect of Japan at that time. However, there is still a big difference between Ryukyu and Japanese. After Japan annexed Ryukyu, Meiji government carried out the standard and popularization movement, that is, popularized and popularized standard Japanese in Ryukyu. At that time, local parents in Ryukyu would let their children learn standard Japanese in order not to be treated differently. With the local people in Ryukyu learning Japanese, in this process, they gradually merged it with their own Ryukyu language, forming a Japanese dialect with strong Ryukyu flavor-South Ryukyu Okinawa dialect. This has also become a feature of Okinawa now.