Okinawan Glossary

The language in brief

Uchinaaguchi is one of the Ryukyuan languages, a family that split from the Japanese of the main islands by the Nara period (710–794) and divided further across the archipelago. UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger listed six of them as endangered in 2009: Amami, Kunigami, Okinawan, Miyako, Yaeyama and Yonaguni. Okinawan proper is the speech of Shuri and the south-central main island. The prefecture has marked 18 September as Shimakutuba no Hi, Island Language Day, since 2006, and its second promotion plan, adopted in March 2023, runs through fiscal 2031.

In the prefecture’s 2024 survey, published in 2025, 42.5 percent of respondents said they use the island languages at least for greetings. The 2019 survey found 56.7 percent. Different methods, so read them as two snapshots rather than a trend. Either way, the majority of the prefecture does not use the language daily.

The sound system is what makes the words look strange in roman letters. There are five vowels, and Japanese o tends to become u while e becomes i: standard kome (rice) is kumi, fune (boat) is funi. A glottal stop changes meaning outright: waa is “my,” while the same syllable with a catch in the throat is “pig.” Visitors hear that difference before they can make it. Most of what you will hear is words rather than sentences: greetings from hotel staff, dish names, place names, the calls of a festival. For more on the language itself, including how it sounds, its regional varieties and how to start learning it, see our guide to the Okinawan language.

Greetings and everyday words

Okinawan has no word that maps neatly onto “hello.” People greeted each other by remarking on the weather, asking whether the other had eaten, noting that they had woken; the prefectural handbook says so plainly. What follows is what you will hear now, mostly in hotels, shops and on television.

Meeting and parting

• haisai ハイサイ — hello, said by a man, at any hour. It serves as a greeting, a “how are you” and even a phone answer, since Uchinaaguchi has no moshi moshi. Most young people know it from television.
• haitai ハイタイ — the same hello, said by a woman; the split is consistent across the prefectural handbook, Naha’s materials and the online dictionaries.
• mensooree めんそーれー — welcome. Everywhere in tourism, but not what a shopkeeper says to a customer; that is closer to maatan, mensooree. A 1975 Ocean Expo slogan.
• nifee deebiru にふぇーでーびる — thank you. Men say deebiru, women deebitan. Among equals the everyday form is kahuusi, which sounds abrupt but is not rude.
• kuwatchii sabira くゎっちー さびら — said before eating, roughly “I receive this.” After a meal, kuwatchii sabitan.
• chuun mata uuganabira ちゅーん また うぅがなびら — the polite hello, literally “and again today I have seen you”; the prefectural handbook marks it Shuri speech, addressed upward.
• yukui misooree ゆくいみそーれー — good night, literally “please rest.”
• wan naa ya … yaibiin わん なーや … やいびーん — my name is …, the frame for a self-introduction. Shuri speakers say waa for “I” where Naha says wan.
• yutasarugutu unigee sabira ゆたさるぐとぅ うにげー さびら — please look after me, the closing line of a self-introduction.
• hajimiti yaasai はじみてぃやー さい — how do you do, on a first meeting.
• ippee maasan いっぺー まーさん — very delicious, the compliment a cook wants.

Everyday words

• nagamun ナガムン — snake, a euphemism avoiding the habu’s name.
• chimu ちむ — liver, and by extension the heart as the seat of feeling; the word turns up in terms for sincerity and courage.
• deeji でーじ — very, or serious, depending on the sentence; deeji maasan is “really good.”
• nuchidu takara ぬちどぅ たから — “life is a treasure,” the phrase most often quoted back to visitors.
• ichariba choodee いちゃりば ちょーでー — once you have met, you are already brothers; the full saying ends yasaa.
• uchinaanchu うちなーんちゅ — an Okinawan person, as against a yamatunchu.
• yamatunchu やまとぅんちゅ — a Japanese person from the mainland, once specifically someone from Satsuma; other Japanese were uhu-yamatunchu, “greater mainlanders.”

Food and drink

Cooking is where the language is most alive for a visitor, because dish names stay in Uchinaaguchi even on menus printed in standard Japanese; the recipes are collected separately. A useful rule: irichi is a dish fried in oil, jiru soup.

Dishes you will be served

• aasa アーサ — a green seaweed, stirred into soup or tempura.
• sibui シブイ — winter melon, the mild gourd in many simmered dishes.
• gooyaa ゴーヤー — bitter melon, and the prefecture shipped 6,247 tonnes (6,880 tons) of it in 2018, more than double the next prefecture.
• chanpuruu チャンプルー — a stir-fry of island tofu with seasonal vegetables. The tofu is not optional.
• toohu 豆腐 — tofu, made differently from the mainland kind: pressed before boiling rather than after, so it is firmer, and sold warm.
• rafutee ラフテー — pork belly with the skin on, simmered in sugar, soy and awamori until dark and soft; once a keeping food, now served at celebrations and memorial meals.
• sooki ソーキ — pork spare rib, usually in sooki jiru.
• mimigaa ミミガー — pig’s ear, sliced thin and dressed with vinegar.
• inamuduchi イナムドゥチ — a dark miso soup of pork and vegetables, named as a stand-in for boar: ina is boar, muduchi “in the manner of.”
• kuubu irichi クーブイリチー — kombu fried with pork, kamaboko, egg and tofu; a New Year dish and the clearest example of irichi.
• chibichi チビチ — pork trotters, simmered with kombu and daikon until the meat falls apart.
• naabeeraa ナーベーラー — loofah gourd, eaten young, usually simmered with miso.
• juushii ジューシー — seasoned rice. The firm ceremonial version is kuufa juushii; the soupy everyday one yafara juushii.

Drink and sweets

• saki サキ — the ordinary word for liquor, in practice always awamori. Locals order saki; the label says awamori.
• kuusu クース — aged awamori, at least three years and sometimes far longer, kept in clay jars and topped up as they are drawn down.
• chinsukoo ちんすこう — the finger-shaped biscuit of rice flour, sugar and lard, with roots in the court confectionery of the Ryukyu Kingdom.
• saataa andaagii サーターアンダーギー — a deep-fried dough ball; saataa is sugar, andaagii fried.

Culture, religion and the arts

The spirit world

• mabui まぶい — the soul of a living person; the spirit of someone dead is tamashii, a distinction most English summaries miss. A mabui can wander off, and the rite that calls it home is mabuigumi.
• utaki 御嶽 — a sacred place, usually a grove or stone enclosure. The dictionary is precise: a taki is a mountain with a place of worship on it, and such a mountain is called utaki.
• ugwanju 拝所 — any place where worship is performed. An utaki is one kind of ugwanju, not the other way around; a survey of Nanjo published in 2018 counted more than 1,100 of them in that one city.
• ugwan 御願 — a prayer, and the small roadside or household shrine where one is made; smaller than an utaki.
• noro ノロ — a priestess of the kingdom’s state religion; the word survives in family and shrine names.
• kaminchu 神人 — a person who serves the gods, covering priestesses from village to court.
• yuta ユタ — a diviner, usually a woman, consulted about illness, house sites and unhappy dead, as described in this site’s guide to religion and spirituality.
• hinukan 火の神 — the hearth god, honored at the stove.
• munjuru 門中 — a patrilineal lineage, sharing a tomb and the major memorial rites.
• haka 墓 — a tomb. The house-shaped Okinawan tomb, with a paved forecourt for gatherings, is among the island’s most distinctive buildings.
• shiimii 清明 — the solar term in early April, and the tomb-visiting festival held then, when families clean the tomb and sit down to a meal together. For many lineages it is the year’s largest gathering.

Performance

• sanshin 三線 — the three-stringed Okinawan lute, which gave rise to the mainland shamisen and is still the backbone of Okinawan music. The strings are named for a family: uujiru the male, nakajiru the middle, miijiru the female.
• kumiudui 組踊 — classical Ryukyuan musical drama, fusing noh and kabuki in verse, with chant, dance and stylized combat; state theater before the kingdom fell.
• ruuka 琉歌 — the Ryukyuan short verse form, in lines of 8, 8, 8 and 6 syllables; in ordinary speech, simply uta, a song.
• umui ウムイ — a sacred chant preserved by local priestesses. Those collected by the Shuri court are omoro; the two are not interchangeable.
• kweena クェーナ — a long song sung by the women of a traveler’s household to pray for his safe return.
• eisa エイサー — the drum dance of the Bon season, performed by young people parading the streets on the night the ancestors are sent back, and one of the festivals worth timing a trip around. Its origin is disputed.
• haarii ハーリー — the dragon-boat race on the fourth day of the fifth lunar month, crews rowing from Tomari harbor to Onoyama.
• shishi シーシ — the lion of the lion dance, made of banana-fiber thread and treated as a playful animal, not a fierce one.
• ishigantoo 石敢当 — a stone tablet set where a road runs straight at a house, to turn away whatever comes down it. The custom came from China.

Karate and kobudo

Okinawan martial arts are Japanese in their public vocabulary and Uchinaaguchi underneath. The older word for the art was tii, “hand,” and the art itself Toodii, “China hand.”

• tii ティー — hand, and by extension the technique of the hand.
• Toodii 唐手 — the older name for karate, written with the character for Tang China; a 1721 Chinese record of the kingdom already notes a Ryukyuan term for a closed fist.
• karate 空手 — the modern name. On 25 October 1936 a round-table of masters hosted by the Ryukyu Shimpo settled on characters meaning “empty hand”; the prefecture later made that date Karate Day.
• kata 型 — a set form practiced alone, with names opaque even to Japanese speakers: Kuusanchuu, Naihanchii, Passai.
• bushi ブシ — a master; the word is a transferred use of “warrior” and attaches to the great teachers’ names.
• makiwara 巻藁 — a short post wrapped in straw, struck to build knuckles and stance.
• boo 棒 — the staff, about 1.8 m (6 ft) of hardwood, and the foundation of kobudo.
• sai 釵 — the short forked truncheon, carried in pairs, and one of the weapons named in the prefecture’s kobudo designation.
• nunchaku ヌンチャク — two sticks joined by a cord or chain, originally a grain flail.
• tonfa トンファー — a side-handled baton, in origin a millstone handle.
• kama 鎌 — the sickle, used singly or in pairs, with its own word for the handle, iranajiku.
• kobudo 古武道 — the old martial ways, the weapons arts alongside empty-hand karate. The prefecture designated karate and kobudo an intangible cultural property in 1997, and as of 2026 has named sixteen new holders.

Places and geography

Most place names are Uchinaaguchi, even where the official Japanese reading has replaced them. The older name explains much of what looks arbitrary on a map.

Words from the landscape

• tiida てぃーだ — the sun.
• ami アミ — rain; the same sound is also the word for a fishing net and for candy.
• kii キー — a tree, and also hair.
• kaara カーラ — a river; the same word means a roof tile.
• majaa マヤー — a cat, politely majuu.

Islands and districts

• Uchinaa 沖縄 — Okinawa, properly the main island rather than the prefecture.
• gusuku グスク — a castle, and the name of the stone-walled fortresses of the kingdom, several of which you can still walk through. Nine, with related sites, became a World Heritage site on 2 December 2000.
• Shuri 首里 — the royal capital, on a hill above Naha; its speech is the standard the dictionaries describe.
• agari あがり — east. Iri is west, but nishi is north, not west, which unsettles visitors reading old maps.
• majiri 間切 — the pre-1879 administrative district, roughly a modern village.
• tumai 泊 — a harbor or landing, and the port district beside Naha.
• Yonaguni 与那国 — the westernmost island of Japan. The yona element means sand, which is why Yonabaru and Yonashiro carry it too.
• Miyako 宮古 — the island group southwest of the main island, with its own language.
• Yaeyama 八重山 — the far southwestern group, including Ishigaki, Taketomi and Iriomote. The speech there is a separate language again.

Textiles and crafts

Textile vocabulary is the densest part of this glossary, because one cloth may carry a place name, a weave name and a dye name at once. The textile pages go deeper on each.

• bingata 紅型 — stencil-resist dyeing in brilliant colors, the court textile of Shuri, and the best known of the Ryukyuan textiles.
• bashofu 芭蕉布 — cloth woven from banana-plant fiber, light enough for summer, still made at Kijoka.
• kasuri 絣 — the speckled pattern made by dyeing threads before weaving, the basis of Ryukyu kasuri. In Uchinaaguchi the technique is kachiri.
• ee 藍 — indigo, the dye plant and the color, still fermented in jars for the deeper blues of Ryukyu indigo.
• Kumejima tsumugi 久米島紬 — the pongee of Kume Island, hand-reeled silk dyed with mud and tree bark.
• Miyako jofu 宮古上布 — the finest of the hemp cloths, prized for its crisp finish.
• tonbyan トンビャン — a narrow woven band, once used to bind the hair or trim a garment.
• Yaeyama jofu 八重山上布 — a fine hemp cloth, historically paid to the court as tax.
• Shuri ori 首里織 — the brocaded and striped weaves of the old capital, revived in the twentieth century.

Words that trip people up

A handful of terms get recycled in English travel writing with a gloss that is confident and wrong. Most are listed above with their script; what follows is the correction.

• utaki and ugwanju — an utaki is a sacred grove or enclosure; an ugwanju is any place of worship, of which an utaki is one kind. English writing uses them as synonyms, and sometimes calls an utaki a temple, which it is not.
• mabui — the soul of a living person, not of the dead, who have tamashii. “Okinawan soul” as a word for the culture rests on the error.
• yunta — a work song of the Yaeyama islands, sung responsively by men and women at communal labor. Not a spell, not a spirit, not a general term for Okinawan folk song. The best known, Asadoya Yunta, is a Taketomi song.
• sanshin and shamisen — the sanshin is the Okinawan instrument; the mainland shamisen descends from it. The usual account has it reaching Sakai in the 1550s or 1560s, though reference works note the dates are uncertain. Okinawans do not call theirs a jamisen.
• awamori and shochu — awamori is distilled from rice and water with black koji in a single pot still, and is not shochu. Nor is it “Okinawan sake,” which implies brewing. Locals call it saki, and there the confusion starts.
• gusuku and jo — a gusuku is an Okinawan fortress, not a Japanese castle; calling one a jo imports a different architecture. The character is the same, the building is not.
• shisa pairs — the guardians are often described as male with an open mouth and female with a closed one. Curators note that a shisa may stand alone, that a pair need not be sexed at all, and that the rule came from Japanese guardian lions and was applied afterward. Some kilns still state it. Treat the sexing as decorative.

Sources and further reading

Sources are numbered and labelled by kind. Japanese titles are given as published. Everything above was checked against these, and the entries do not rest on English Wikipedia.

Dictionaries and reference works

1. 国立国語研究所『沖縄語辞典』（国立国語研究所資料集5）, first published 1963, ninth printing revised 2001, Shuri dialect. The electronic data set, including the Okinawan-to-standard and standard-to-Okinawan indexes, is published as 沖縄語辞典データ集 at mmsrv.ninjal.ac.jp/okinawago — reference work, national research institute.
2. 国立国語研究所「消滅危機言語」project page, on the 2009 UNESCO listing of eight endangered languages in Japan, six of them Ryukyuan, ninjal.ac.jp — reference work, national research institute.
3. 国立国語研究所 ことば研究館, digest pages on the UNESCO Atlas and on the difference between documenting and transmitting an endangered language, kotoba.ninjal.ac.jp — reference work, national research institute.
4. 国立国語研究所「ニホンゴ探検2021 キき耳」, on the sounds of Ie and Tarama, ninjal.ac.jp — reference work, national research institute.
5. 青井隼人「琉球諸語の喉頭化音」, 国立国語研究所一般公開2018 poster, PDF — reference work, conference material.
6. 国立国会図書館 レファレンス協同データベース, case 1000085462 on the transmission of the sanshin to the mainland, citing 『沖縄の三線』（沖縄県教育委員会, 1993）and 『新琉球史 近世編 上』（琉球新報社, 1989）, crd.ndl.go.jp — reference work, national library.
7. コトバンク entries for ユンタ, drawing on 『日本大百科全書』（小学館）and 『世界大百科事典』（平凡社）, kotobank.jp — reference work, encyclopedia.

Prefectural and municipal pages, surveys and registers

8. 沖縄県「しまくとぅばの日に関する条例」平成18年3月31日条例第35号, designating 18 September, 沖縄県法規集 — official register, prefectural ordinance.
9. 沖縄県「しまくとぅば普及推進計画」, page 1011778, updated 11 September 2025, on the 2009 UNESCO listing, the 2013 survey and the second plan adopted March 2023, pref.okinawa.jp — prefectural page.
10. 沖縄県「令和元年度 しまくとぅば県民意識調査」報告書, fieldwork 14 January to 14 February 2020, 2,551 valid responses, PDF — statistical report, prefectural survey.
11. 沖縄県「令和6年度 しまくとぅば県民意識調査」報告書, fieldwork 14 January to 16 February 2025, 1,043 valid responses, PDF — statistical report, prefectural survey.
12. うるま市「うちなーぐちって何？」, updated 8 December 2023, on the UNESCO listing, the dialect boundary and the 方言札, city.uruma.lg.jp — municipal page.
13. 沖縄県「沖縄空手 世界に誇る伝統文化(1)」, 空手振興課, page 1009644, updated 11 January 2024, pref.okinawa.jp — prefectural page.
14. 沖縄県公文書館「10月25日は空手の日」, on the 1936 唐手座談会 and the 2005 assembly resolution, archives.pref.okinawa.jp — prefectural archive.
15. 沖縄県 文化財課「沖縄の空手・古武術」無形文化財指定に係る報告, 令和8年3月27日審議会資料, naming the designated weapons and the 2026 additions, PDF — official register, cultural property designation.
16. 沖縄県「沖縄の世界遺産」, on the reading of 城 as グスク and the nine inscribed sites, pref.okinawa.jp — prefectural page.
17. 文化庁 世界文化遺産特別委員会 配布資料, on the 2 December 2000 inscription and the criteria, PDF — official register, national agency.
18. 内閣府 沖縄復帰50周年記念サイト「エイサー」, cao.go.jp — government page.
19. 沖縄国税事務所「泡盛技術情報ポータル」, on black koji, the single-pot still and 古酒, nta.go.jp — official register, tax agency.
20. 農林水産省「うちの郷土料理」沖縄県ページ, on ゴーヤーチャンプルー, ラフテー and ヤファラジューシー, maff.go.jp — government page, Ministry of Agriculture.
21. 地理的表示産品情報発信サイト, 登録番号155「ちんすこう」, registered 27 August 2024, pd.jgic.jp — official register, geographical indication.
22. 農畜産業振興機構「琉球菓子とちんすこう」, alic.go.jp — public agency report.
23. 農畜産業振興機構「月報 野菜情報 今月の野菜 にがうり」2020年8月, on the 2018 planting area and shipment figures by prefecture, vegetable.alic.go.jp — public agency report.

Language-learning material

24. 沖縄県『しまくとぅばハンドブック てぃんだな しまくとぅば』, three-column phrasebook for Naha, Ishigaki and Miyako, PDF — language-learning material, prefectural.
25. 沖縄県文化協会 しまくとぅば普及センター「学習資料」index, listing the 読本, the graded 単語帳, the 50音表 and the per-hamlet word lists, shimakutuba.jp — language-learning material.
26. 『しまくとぅば単語帳 8・7級 中南部言葉編』, 15 October 2019, PDF — language-learning material.
27. 那覇市「うちなーぐち・しまくとぅば（沖縄県内各地の方言）で自己紹介を」, 那覇市ハイサイ運動推進計画, March 2012, PDF — municipal page, language-learning material.
28. 沖縄文化・学術振興財団 しまくとぅば塾 ちむぐくる「声門閉鎖音」, on the waa and ʔwaa pair, okinawa.bunkaju.jp — language-learning material, foundation.
29. 沖縄方言辞典 あじまぁ, entry for ハイサイ, hougen.ajima.jp — language-learning material, online dictionary.

News and reporting

30. 琉球新報「マブイロードを歩く Vol.1」, 11 October 2017, on the origin of mensooree as a welcome slogan, ryukyushimpo.jp — news feature.
31. 琉球新報「しまくとぅば使用率49.8%」, on the 2018 survey and the breakdown by age, ryukyushimpo.jp — news report.
32. 琉球新報「沖縄の空手・古武術、無形文化財に16人追加」, 25 July 2026, ryukyushimpo.jp — news report.
33. 琉球新報「沖縄用語辞典」, a browsable newspaper dictionary, ryukyushimpo.jp — newspaper dictionary.
34. nippon.com「シーサーにオス・メスはあるのか」, interview with curator 酒井若葉 of the 沖縄県立博物館・美術館, nippon.com — news feature.
35. 沖縄ヒストリア「沖縄の伝説」, on 富盛の石彫大獅子 and the spread of roof shisa, historipedia.jp — regional history site.
36. 沖縄県酒造組合「泡盛の名前の由来」, on the 1671 document and the competing etymologies, okinawa-awamori.or.jp — industry body.
37. 専修大学「泡盛今昔」, on 徐葆光『中山伝信録』and the early records, PDF — university paper.