Abstract
When you say "linguistic ability in the national language in Okinawa," you will fell something contradictory. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how we should grasp "linguistic ability in the national language in Okinawa" which was once an independent state and has its own vernacular, and where the people have been taught Japanese as the national language after "the Ryukyu-Shobun (the Disposal of Ryukyu)" in 1879, when Okinawa became a quasi-colony. For this purpose I consider two basic problems, (1) what attitude Okinawan people have taken toward Japanese as the national language, (2) what kind of linguistic culture is covered in school education. From this consideration, the following results are found. (1) We should grasp "linguistic ability in the national language in Okinawa" over the tension between the terms, "the national language" or "the standerd language" and "Ryukyu dialect" or "Ryukyu language", using the terms of the intelligentsia and teachers, or, using the terms of the ordinary people, between "Uchina-guchi (Okinawan tongue)" and Yamato-guchi (Japanese). The consciousness of the tense relation between their mother tongue and "the national language" will be the part of "linguistic ability in the national language in Okinawa".
