Okinawan is a Japonic language spoken on Okinawa Island. Okinawan-language documents of the Ryukyu Kingdom were written in kanji and hiragana, derived from Japan.
Although generally agreed among linguists to be a distinct language, most Japanese, as well as some Okinawans, tend to think of Okinawan as merely a regional dialect of Japanese, even though it is not mutually intelligible to monolingual Japanese speakers. Modern Okinawan is not written frequently.
Kana (仮名; Japanese pronunciation: [ka.na]) are syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. In current usage, kana most commonly refers to hiragana and katakana. It can also refer to their ancestor magana (真仮名; lit. 'true kana'), which were Chinese characters used phonetically to transcribe Japanese (e.g. man'yōgana); and hentaigana, which are historical variants of the now-standard hiragana.
Katakana, with a few additions, are also used to write Ainu. A number of systems exist to write the Ryūkyūan languages, in particular Okinawan, in hiragana. Taiwanese kana were used in Taiwanese Hokkien as ruby text for Chinese characters in Taiwan when it was under Japanese rule.