Okinawa Matt

Ryukyu vs Ryukyuan

Dear Matt, First of all, welcome to Wikipedia! It's always wonderful to meet another editor interested in working on Japan-related articles, and even moreso Okinawa-related topics. There are surprisingly few of us out there, particularly people with any real expertise, so I definitely look forward to working with you in the future.

Now, as for the edit you made to the Gokoku-ji article, I can certainly appreciate that different things sound natural to different people; I respect that based on your experience, the word Ryukyuan may sound unfamiliar and unnatural. I've certainly felt the same way on a number of occasions. I once got into a lengthy and heated argument with another user over his use of the word "ceremonial" as a noun (e.g. "court ritual and ceremonial"); I had never heard the word used before, and it sounded totally unnatural to me.

However, there are articles entitled Ryukyuan people and Ryukyuan religion; the word shows up as an established word in English dictionaries if you make a Google search for "ryukyuan" and "dictionary", and it is used in most if not all the books I've ever read on the subject.

So... what shall we do? LordAmeth (talk) 04:04, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Nice to meet you! When I was reading the article in question, it does sound a little odd to me. When ever I'm speaking with Okinawans here in english and use Ryukyu as an adjective, they use "Ryukyu" and not "Ryukyuan" This seems to fit with my idea that words such as "Ainuan" or "Satsuman" do not appear in english. I use "Ryukyu" as an adjective in discussions and papers at school and have not been corrected before. I'd like to discuss this more however, thanks for talking with me. Okinawa Matt (talk) 04:24, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, that's certainly true. If you compare it to "Satsuma samurai" or "Ainu rituals" or "Tokyo restaurants", I wouldn't alter any of those words, just use the noun as if it were an adjective. However, in the case of "Ryukyuan", for whatever reason, it is a word which has entered the English language. I almost find it hard to believe that I'm saying this, since I have argued the opposite position so many times, but, there is a set naming convention for using English; I trust your personal experience, but Okinawans (or Japanese) are not exactly the best experts on what is proper English. I have several English-language sources that use the word "Ryukyuan" extensively, and this is supported by various major dictionaries (Websters, Oxford English, etc). There was also an extensive discussion some time ago as to the use of various Ryukyu-related words. I do not wish to be stubborn about this issue, but I think that for the sake of consistency and maintaining a standard across all Okinawa-related articles, we need to either obey the conventions already in place, or bring it to a wider discussion at WikiProject Japan or elsewhere. Thanks. LordAmeth (talk) 15:45, 26 July 2008 (UTC)