The Ainu language (Ainu: アイヌ イタク, aynu itak; Japanese: アイヌ語 ainu-go) is spoken by the Ainu ethnic group on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaidō. is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities ʔáinu (also called Ezo in historical texts are an ethnic group indigenous to Hokkaidō, the Kuril Islands, and much of Sakhalin. WikipediaWikiProject Japanese prefectures for guidelines --> formerly known as Ezo, Yezo, Yeso, or Yesso, is Japan 's It was once also spoken in the Kuril Islands and the southern half of Sakhalin. The Kuril Islands (ˈkʊrɪl or /ˈkjuˈriˈl/ Кури́льские острова́ əstrʌˈva ru-Latn ''Kuril'skie ostrova'' or Kurile Islands in Russia Sakhalin (Сахали́н səxʌˈlʲin Japanese:nihongo|樺太|karafuto or; Chinese: 庫頁 Kùyè also Saghalien, is a large elongated

Relation to other languages

Pirka Kotan museum, Ainu language and cultural center in Sapporo (Jozankei area)

Ainu is often considered a language isolate, that is, a language that has not been shown to have a particularly close relation to any other language or group of languages. is the fifth-largest city in Japan by population It is the capital of Hokkaidō Prefecture, located in Ishikari Subprefecture, and an A language isolate, in the absolute sense is a Natural language with no demonstrable genealogical (or "genetic" relationship with other living languages that is

It is sometimes grouped with the Paleosiberian languages, but this is merely a cover term for several language families believed to have been present in Siberia prior to the arrival of Turkic and Tungusic speakers, not a true language family. Paleosiberian (Palaeosiberian Paleo-Siberian languages or Paleoasian languages (Palaeo-Asiatic (from Greek palaios, "ancient"is a term of convenience The Turkic languages constitute a Language family of some thirty languages spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the The Tungusic languages (also known as Manchu-Tungus Tungus are spoken in Eastern Siberia and Manchuria. List of language familiesA language family is a group of Languages related by descent from a common ancestor called the Proto-language of that family

In recent years, the Japanese linguist Shichiro Murayama and others have tried to link Ainu to the Austronesian languages through both vocabulary and cultural comparisons. The vocabulary of a person is defined either as the set of all Words that are understood by that person or the set of all words likely to be used by that person when constructing

Alexander Vovin (1993) presented evidence suggesting a distant connection with Austroasiatic. Alexander Vovin is currently an interim chair and professor at the Ruhr University Bochum and a professor of East Asian Languages at the University of The Austro-Asiatic languages are a large Language family of Southeast Asia, and also scattered throughout India and Bangladesh. He regards this hypothesis as preliminary.

Joseph Greenberg (2000, 2002) classed Ainu with Korean and Japanese. Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28 1915 – May 7 2001 was a prominent and controversial linguist and Africanist anthropologist known for his work in both typology He regarded Korean-Japanese-Ainu as forming a distinct subgroup within his proposed Eurasiatic language family. Subgrouping in Linguistics is the division of a Language family into its constituent branches Eurasiatic is a hypothetical macro-family proposed by Joseph Greenberg that groups together several language families of Europe Asia and North America

None of these proposals has gained wide acceptance at the present time (2008).

Ainu appears to have experienced intensive contact with the Nivkhs during the course of their history. The Nivkhs (also Nivkh, Nivkhi, or Gilyak; ethnonym Nivxi language нивхгу - Nivxgu are an indigenous ethnic group inhabiting the It is not known to what extent this has affected the language. Some linguists believe the shared vocabulary between Ainu and Nivkh (spoken in the northern half of Sakhalin and on the Asian mainland facing it) is due to borrowing. Nivkh or Gilyak (ethnonym нивхгу Japanese: ja ニヴフ語/ギリヤーク語 nivufu-go/giriyāku-go is a language spoken in Outer Manchuria Sakhalin (Сахали́н səxʌˈlʲin Japanese:nihongo|樺太|karafuto or; Chinese: 庫頁 Kùyè also Saghalien, is a large elongated A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one Language from another with little or no translation

There are also loanwords both from Ainu to Japanese and Japanese to Ainu. A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one Language from another with little or no translation

Speakers

Ainu is a moribund language, and has been endangered for at least the past few decades. An endangered language is a Language that it is at risk of falling out of use generally because it has few surviving speakers Most of the 150,000 ethnic Ainu in Japan speak only Japanese. ʔáinu (also called Ezo in historical texts are an ethnic group indigenous to Hokkaidō, the Kuril Islands, and much of Sakhalin. In the town of Nibutani (part of Biratori, Hokkaidō) where many of the remaining native speakers live, there are 100 speakers, out of which only 15 used the language every day in the late 1980s. The Nibutani (二風谷 Niputay (ニプタイ in Ainu, district is part of the town of Biratori in Hokkaidō, Japan, a particularly is a town located in Saru District, Hidaka, Hokkaidō, Japan. The number of speakers today (by whatever definition one may use) is not known with any certainty. In all of Hokkaidō, it is estimated that there are perhaps 1,000 native speakers, almost all older than 30. A first language (also mother tongue, native language, arterial language, or L1) is the language a human being learns from birth Among Ainu speakers (broadly defined), second-language learners presently outnumber native ones.

However, use of the language is on the rise. There is currently an active movement to revitalize the language — mainly in Hokkaidō but also elsewhere — to reverse the centuries-long decline in the number of speakers. Language revitalization is the attempt by interested parties including individuals cultural or community groups governments or political authorities to recover the spoken use of a This has led to an increasing number of second-language learners, especially in Hokkaidō, in large part due to the pioneering efforts of the late Ainu folklorist, activist and former Diet member Shigeru Kayano, himself a native speaker. The is Japan's Bicameral Legislature. It is composed of a Lower house, called the House of Representatives, and an Upper house, called ( June 15, 1926 – May 6, 2006) was one of the last native speakers of Ainu language and a leading figure in the Ainu ethnic movement

Phonology

Ainu syllables are CV(C) (that is, they have an obligatory syllable onset and an optional syllable coda) and there are few consonant clusters. A syllable ( Greek:) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds In Phonetics and Phonology, a syllable onset is the part of a Syllable that precedes the Syllable nucleus. In Phonology, a syllable coda comprises the Consonant sounds of a Syllable that follow the nucleus, which is usually a Vowel In Linguistics, a consonant cluster (or consonant blend) is a group of Consonants which have no intervening Vowel.

There are five vowels:

Consonants:

The glottal stop /ʔ/ only occurs at the beginning of words, before an accented vowel. In Phonetics, a vowel is a Sound in spoken Language, such as English ah! or oh!, pronounced with an open Vocal tract A front vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far forward A central vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between A back vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as A close vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in many spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as A mid vowel is a Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an An open vowel is a Vowel sound of a type used in most spoken Languages The defining characteristic of an open vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far as In Articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a Speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper Vocal tract, the upper vocal In Phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a Consonant articulated with both Lips The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet The term labiovelar is ambiguous It may mean labial-velar (a Consonant made at two places of articulation, one at the lips and the other at the soft The term labiovelar is ambiguous It may mean labial-velar (a Consonant made at two places of articulation, one at the lips and the other at the soft Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior Alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets Palatal consonants are Consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the Hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth Glottal consonants are Consonants articulated with the Glottis. A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a Consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the Vocal tract. Affricate Consonants begin as stops (most often an alveolar, such as or) but release as a fricative (such as or or occasionally into A nasal consonant (also called nasal stop or nasal continuant) is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth allowing air to escape freely through the Fricatives are Consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together Approximants are speech sounds ( Phonemes) that could be regarded as intermediate between Vowels and typical Consonants In the articulation of approximants In Phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of Consonantal sound which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator (such as the The sequence /ti/ is realized as [ʧi] and /s/ becomes [ʃ] before /i/ and at the end of syllables. The affricate /ts/ has voiced and post-alveolar variants. There is some variation among dialects; in the Sakhalin dialect, syllable-final /p, t, k, r/ lenited and merged into /x/. Sakhalin (Сахали́н səxʌˈlʲin Japanese:nihongo|樺太|karafuto or; Chinese: 庫頁 Kùyè also Saghalien, is a large elongated Lenition is a kind of Consonant mutation that appears in many Languages Along with assimilation, it is one of the primary sources of historical change After an /i/, this /x/ is pronounced as [ç].

There is a pitch accent system. Pitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a Syllable The accentuation of specific words varies somewhat from dialect to dialect. Generally, words including affixes have a high pitch on the stem, or on the first syllable if it is closed or has a diphthong, while other words have the high pitch on the second syllable, although there are exceptions to this generalization. An affix is a Morpheme that is attached to a stem to form a word

Typology and grammar

Ainu is SOV, with postpositions. In Linguistic typology, Subject Object Verb (SOV is the type of languages in which the subject, object, and Verb of a sentence appear or usually In Grammar, a preposition is a Part of speech that introduces a prepositional phrase. Subject and object are usually marked with postpositions. Nouns can cluster to modify one another; the head comes at the end. Verbs, which are inherently either transitive or intransitive, accept various derivational affixes. In Linguistics, derivation is "Used to form new words as with happi-ness and un-happy from happy, or determination from

Typologically, Ainu is similar in word order (and some aspects of phonology) to Japanese and Korean, while its high degree of synthesis is more reminiscent of languages to its north and east. Linguistic Typology is an international Peer-reviewed journal in the field of Linguistic typology, founded in 1997 is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities This article is mainly about the spoken Korean language See Hangul for details on the native Korean writing system A synthetic language, in Linguistic typology, is a Language with a high Morpheme -per- word ratio

Ainu traditionally featured incorporation of nouns and adverbs; this is rare in the modern colloquial language. Incorporation is a phenomenon by which a word usually a Verb, forms a kind of compound with for instance its Direct object or Adverbial modifier

Applicatives may be used in Ainu to place nouns in the dative, instrumental, comitative, locative, allative, or ablative roles. The applicative voice is a Grammatical voice which promotes an oblique argument of a Verb to the (core patient argument and indicates the oblique The dative case is a Grammatical case generally used to indicate the Noun to whom something is given The instrumental case (also called the eighth case) is a Grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the The comitative case, also known as the associative case, is a Grammatical case that denotes companionship and is used where English would use "in company with" Locative (also called the seventh case) is a Grammatical case which indicates a location Allative case ( abbreviated ALL, from Latin allāt-, afferre "to bring to" is a type of the locative In Linguistics, ablative case ( abbreviated ABL) is a name given to cases in various languages whose common characteristic Besides freestanding nouns, these roles may be assigned to incorporated nouns, and such use of applicatives is in fact mandatory for incorporating oblique nouns. An oblique case (casus generalis in Linguistics is a Noun case of Synthetic languages that is used generally when a Noun is the object Like incorporation, applicatives have grown less common in the modern language.

Writing

Officially, the Ainu language is written in a modified version of the Japanese katakana syllabary. is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities is a Japanese Syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with Hiragana, Kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet There is also a Latin-based alphabet in use. The Ainu Times publishes in both. The Ainu Times is the only newspaper published in the Ainu language. In the Latin orthography, /ts/ is spelt c and /j/ as y; /ʔ/, which only occurs initially before accented vowels, is not written. Other phonemes use the same character as the IPA transcription given above. An equals sign (=) is used to mark morpheme boundaries, such as after a prefix. In Morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning. Its pitch accent is denoted by acute accent in Latin (e. History An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels. g. á). This is usually not denoted in katakana.

Special katakana for the Ainu language

A Unicode standard exists for a set of extended katakana (Katakana Phonetic Extensions) for transliterating the Ainu language and other languages written with katakana. In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's is a Japanese Syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with Hiragana, Kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet ^[3][4] These characters are used to write final consonants and sounds that cannot be expressed using conventional katakana. The extended katakana are based on regular katakana and are either smaller in size, or feature a dakuten or handakuten. colloquially ten-ten ("dot dot" is a Diacritic sign most often used in the Japanese Kana syllabaries to indicate that the Consonant colloquially ten-ten ("dot dot" is a Diacritic sign most often used in the Japanese Kana syllabaries to indicate that the Consonant As few fonts yet support these extensions, workarounds exist for many of the characters, such as the small katakana ク ku used as in アイヌイタク (Aynu itak).

This is a list of special katakana used in transcribing the Ainu language. Most of the characters are of the extended set of katakana, though a few have been used historically in Japanese, and thus are part of the main set of katakana. A number of previously proposed characters have been removed from future Unicode implementations as they can be easily displayed as a combination of two existing characters.

Basic syllables

¹: k, t, c, p are sometimes voiced as [g], [d], [dz] ~ [dʒ], [b], respectively. It doesn't change the meaning of a word, but it sounds more rough/masculine. When they are voiced, they may be written as g, d, j, dz, b, ガ, ダ, ヂャ, ヅァ, バ, etc.

²: Both used according to actual pronunciations, or to writer's preferred styles.

³: ッ is final t at the end of a word. (e. g. pet = ペッ = ペト) In the middle of a polysyllabic word, it's a final consonant preceding the initial with a same value. (e. g. orta /otta/ = オッタ. オロタ is not preferred. )

⁴: At the end of a word, n can be written either ヌ or ン. In the middle of a polysyllabic word, it's ン. (e. g. tan-mosir = タンモシリ = タヌ+モシリ, but not タヌモシリ. )

⁵: [m] before [p], [ŋ] before [k], [n] elsewhere. Unlike Japanese, it does not become other sounds such as nasal vowels. A nasal vowel is a Vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through Nose as well as the Mouth.

⁶: Initial h [h] and final h [x] are different phenomes. Final h exists in Sakhalin dialect only.

Diphthongs

Final [ɪ] is spelt y in Latin, small ィ in katakana. In Phonology, a syllable coda comprises the Consonant sounds of a Syllable that follow the nucleus, which is usually a Vowel Final [ʊ] is spelt w in Latin, small ゥ in katakana. [ae] is spelt ae, アエ, or アェ.

Example with initial k:

Since the above rule is used systematically, some katakana combinations have different sounds from conventional Japanese. In Phonetics and Phonology, a syllable onset is the part of a Syllable that precedes the Syllable nucleus.

Long vowels

There are long vowels in Sakhalin dialect. Either circumflex or macron is used in Latin, long vowel sign (ー) is used in katakana. Pitch The circumflex accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, where it occurred (subject to certain rules on the accented syllable A macron, from Greek el μακρόv ( makrón) meaning "long" is a Diacritic ¯ placed over or under a Vowel which was originally The, also known as,, or Katakana-Hiragana Prolonged Sound Mark by the Unicode Consortium is a Japanese symbol which indicates a chōon

Example with initial k:

Oral literature

The Ainu have rich oral tradition of hero-sagas called Yukar, which retain a number of grammatical and lexical archaisms. Oral literature corresponds in the sphere of the spoken (oral word to Literature as literature operates in the domain of the written word are Ainu sagas that form a long rich tradition of Oral literature.

See also

• List of Ainu terms
• Ainu music
• Kannari Matsu
• Chiri Mashiho
• Chiri Takao
• Kyōsuke Kindaichi
• Bronisław Piłsudski
• Shigeru Kayano

Notes

References and further reading

• Greenberg, Joseph H. (2000-2002). Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-3812-2, ISBN 0-8047-4624-9.  
• Patrie, James (1982). The Genetic Relationship of the Ainu Language. Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii. ISBN 0-8248-0724-3.  
• Refsing, Kirsten (1986). The Ainu Language: The Morphology and Syntax of the Shizunai Dialect. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. ISBN 8-772-88020-1.  
• Refsing, Kirsten (1996). Early European Writings on the Ainu Language. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-700-70400-0.  
• Shibatani, Masayoshi (1990). The Languages of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-36918-5.  
• Tamura, Suzuko (2000). The Ainu Language. Tokyo: Sanseido. ISBN 4-385-35976-8.  
• Vovin, Alexander (1993). A Reconstruction of Proto-Ainu. Leiden: E. J. Brill. ISBN 90-04-09905-0.  

External links

• Listing of literature and learning materials for Ainu Language learners
• The Book of Common Prayer in Ainu
• Ethnologue entry for Ainu
• Information at the RosettaProject
• Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Ainu in Samani, Hokkaidō
• Full text of John Batchelor's A Grammar of the Ainu Language
• Full text of John Batchelor's An Ainu-English-Japanese Dictionary (including A Grammar of the Ainu Language.)

Japanese

• (Japanese) Radio lessons on Ainu language presented by Sapporo TV
• (Japanese) Ainu word list