Nakamaese people

Nakamaese (南和人) is an ethnic group that is native to Nakamaese archipelago. There are estimated about 132 millions of Nakamaese world wide as of 2018.

The term Nakamaese not to be confused with the usage of Yamato people as an ethnicity which shared with Japanese people and not include Namiya people or Fuuki people which considered as part of Nakamaese in general term. Nakamaese formally used to referring the population with descendant from Nakama region.

Language
Nakamaese formally uses Japanese as their daily language which is a Japonic language which also include the language from Ryukyuan language and Namiyan language. The Japanese language has a tripartite writing system using Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. The adult literacy rate in Nakama for Japanese as of 2016 is 95% while in general is almost 100%.

Minorities from Namiya and Fuuki may also use their traditional language however this practice decreased as Japanese become the predominance language in Nakama since 19th century. Unlike Japanese and Namiya which part of Japonic language, Fuuki language is part of Austronesian languages and considered to be closely related with Buginese language.