Re: Okinawanized Kata names and Uchina-guchi Regarding Chinkuchi

Dante Da. Dante Victor,

Thank you for your email. It is sunny here as well a bit too much for Southern California if you ask me. Good thing I can go practice in my pool. 

Thank you for asking the questions and pointing out clawing techniques. I can say that I also learned clawing techniques from my teacher. I really have no idea if they are the same as you learned as I would need to see if they were they similar since I have no working reference. 

The term for pinch is not the same or related to the term "chinkuchi". I was beginning to wonder if someone was ever going to ask about the term Chinkuchi since these terms seems to be the most popular among the "Okinawan" terms used these days. Chinkuchi is generally written using katagana チンクチ

チ(Chi) ン(n) ク(ku) チChi

There have been various things written on Chinkuchi so I will not go into this too much as the definition is very different then the etymology of the word. The Okinawan language or Uchina-guchi (Uchinaaguchi) have compound words just like other Asian languages (Japanese, Chinese, etc). The difficult part with trying to figure out the etymology of the word chinkuchi is that is written in kana and not kanji. However, the kanji that some people come up with do not match how those kanji would be pronounced in Okinawan, but some are very accurate. However, as one studies more about the Okinawan language there are more questions about if what others come up with are accurate or not as it pertains to the Okinawan language. 

"Chin" by itself can mean several things in the Okinawan language such as gold, a measurement of weight, and a few others. This does not mean that all words that have Chin have anything to do with the word "chin" by itself. For example, Chinshi is the word for "lap" but this has nothing to do with gold or measurements. 

Anyhow, here are a few words that may interest you.

The word for tendon is Chiru which is represented by 筋. 

 

The word for Ki is Chii or Chi- (This is not Chi and if it was part of the work Chinkuchi it would be written differently in katagana such as チ- ンクチ, please note the "-") and is represented by 気

The word for inspection is Chinbun which is made up of two characters. 検 which means to inspect, examine, or test (Chin in Okinawan and Ken in Japanese) and 分 (Bun in Japanese and Okinawan) which sometimes means "part". (Note some words that have parts tat are pronounced with "ken" in Japanese are pronounced "Chin" in Okinawan)

The word for Bone is kuchi which represented by the character 骨. This is NOT the same kuchi meaning mouth which is represented by the character 口

I have seen some people write that chinkuchi means tendons and bones which is represented by two characters 筋骨 which in Japanese in pronounced Kinkou or Sujibane. Now taking the first character pronounced "kin" in Japanese one would logically think that since most words that are pronounced "kin" in Japanese such as gold are pronounced Chin in Okinawan. Therefore Chinkuchi is the Okinawan word for Kinkou. However, looking at Okinawan words that use 筋 as part of the word, Chin never comes up. For example, the Japanese word for the bridge of the nose is hanatsuji which is pronounced hanagita in Okinawan which is represented by these characters: 鼻(Hana) 筋 (Gita). Logically someone could think that this is pronounced hanachin in Uchinaguchi since as I stated before any word pronounced "kin" in Japanese is pronounced "Chin" in Okinawan. So is Chinkuchi really only the Okinawan pronunciation of the Japanese word kinkou or sujibane then dare is say that Chinkuchi has roots in Japanese and not really an Okinawan word? (Can of worms is now open!)

I know that this response was very lengthy, and I could go further in detail with Okinawan words and references, but I think it would be very boring to most people unless they are interested in really studying the Okinawan language. I am willing to discuss this further if there are those that are interested. 

Respectfully,

Robert Orozco

 

https://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/2012/01/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none.html

https://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/2021/05/further-thoughts-on-chinkuchi.html

https://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/2023/08/joe-swift-on-chinkuchi.html

https://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/2022/01/chinkuchi-kakin.html

https://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/2021/12/a-j-advincula-on-chinkuchi.html

https://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/2023/12/chinkuchi-explored-or-discussed.html