Let’s suppose that one day we all wake up in the same alternate reality – a rather boring one where everything is the same, aside from an island not so far east of Washington. It’s been there the ...

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 ...

Counted among the native-born Japanese people in Polk County are people from Japan's Ryukyu islands. One of the southernmost islands in Japan and the largest in the Ryukyu chain, Okinawa is populated ...

As local languages continue to disappear, Associate Professor Natsuko Nakagawa from the Faculty of Humanities is dedicated to documenting and preserving them while uncovering the linguistic principles ...

This 2008 photo provided by Mark Hudson shows excavations in progress at the Nagabaka site on Miyako Island in Okinawa Prefecture. TOKYO -- The origin of the Japanese language can be traced back to ...

For 450 years, the little-known Ryukyu Kingdom thrived in what is now Japan. Now, after nearly vanishing, its unique fusion cuisine is being revived. "You can learn a lot about a person by looking at ...