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The [labialized velar
consonants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labialized_velar_consonant) are rare
even in historical Japanese; besides (possibly) one verb ( _kweru_ ), they (
_kwa-_ , _gwa-_ , _kwe-_ , _gwe-_ ) occur only in some Sino-Japanese
morphemes. In Japanese, they merged with the non-labialized versions ( _ka-_ ,
_ga-_ , _ke-_ , _ge-_ ) as late as the early 20th Century.

But do they remain in Ryūkyūan?

Or, did they even exist in Ryūkyūan? Obviously, Ryūkyūan also borrowed
multiple Sino-Xenic terms, some of which must have been necessarily present:
such as name of the goddess Kwannon. Do we know the current status of words
like this? Even if such words are Sino-Japanese borrowed from Japanese, did
the labiovelars remain in Ryūkyūan even when, very recently, Japanese stopped
pronouncing them with the //-w-// glide? Unfortunately, the vast corpus of
scholarly work, to my knowledge, rarely deals with the Sinitic layer in
Ryūkyūan.
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question
phonology wago-and-kango phonetics ryukyuan-languages
Did labialized consonants remain in Ryūkyūan?
After poking around a bit in the Shuri-Naha Dialect Dictionary that covers the
Okinawan branch of Ryūkyūan, it appears that here, at least, labiovelars did
persist. A sampling of entries that show maintained labiovelars:

  * [クヮンジミ](http://ryukyu-lang.lib.u-ryukyu.ac.jp/srnh/details.php?ID=SN11879), Japanese 缶詰【かんづめ】
  * [クェーチウイウェー](http://ryukyu-lang.lib.u-ryukyu.ac.jp/srnh/details.php?ID=SN11122), Japanese 快気【かいき】祝【いわ】い
  * [クヮンヌン](http://ryukyu-lang.lib.u-ryukyu.ac.jp/srnh/details.php?ID=SN11888), Japanese 観音【かんのん】
  * [カングヮーシ](http://ryukyu-lang.lib.u-ryukyu.ac.jp/srnh/details.php?ID=SN50495), apparently equivalent to Japanese 羊羹【ようかん】 + 菓子【かし】; the entry also mentions ムイグヮーシ with a given kanji spelling of 盛菓子.
  * [グェーシチ](http://ryukyu-lang.lib.u-ryukyu.ac.jp/srnh/details.php?ID=SN11116), Japanese 外戚【がいせき】
  * [クェーテー](http://ryukyu-lang.lib.u-ryukyu.ac.jp/srnh/details.php?ID=SN11124), Japanese 懐胎【かいたい】

I did find a term where Japanese dictionaries indicate an older //gwa-//
pronunciation, but Okinawan doesn't reflect the labiovelar.

  * [ガンジュー](http://ryukyu-lang.lib.u-ryukyu.ac.jp/srnh/details.php?ID=SN10780), Japanese 頑丈【がんじょう】

This appears to be an exception to the rule, however, which raises the
question of whether this was a later borrowing from Japanese, rather than an
older import when the kanji term was borrowed from Middle Chinese.

Notably, the labiovelars I can find reflected in Okinawan are all traceable to
older //kwa-// or //gwa-//. The //kwe-// and //gwe-// variants found in
Japanese appear to have undergone different sound shifts in Okinawan, such
that the labiovelar was apparently lost. One clear example I could find was
[トゥチー](http://ryukyu-lang.lib.u-ryukyu.ac.jp/srnh/details.php?ID=SN22336),
cognate with Japanese 時計【とけい】. The likely original, Chinese-derived spelling
was 土圭, and 圭 apparently had an older reading of //kwei//. So it seems that
the //kwe-// labiovelars may have shifted first to something like //ki-//, and
then underwent the regular change to become affricate //t͡ʃi-// (incidentally,
much like the pronunciation of ⟨ci⟩ went from Latin //ki// to Italian
//t͡ʃi//).

* * *

Please comment if the above does not fully address your question.
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answer