Discover

:''For the language spoken in Central Asia, see Aini language.''
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. It was once spoken in the Kurile Islands, the northern part of Honshū, and the southern half of Sakhalin.

Contents

Relation to other languages

Speakers

Phonology

Typology and grammar

Writing

Special katakana for the Ainu language

Basic syllables

Diphthongs

Long vowels

Oral literature

See also

Notes

References

External links

Relation to other languages

Ainu is currently considered a language isolate with no known relation to other languages. It is sometimes grouped with the Paleosiberian languages, but this is merely a cover term for several isolates and small language families believed to have been present in Siberia prior to the arrival of Turkic and Tungusic speakers; it is not a proper language family. Most 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; there are also loanwords both from Ainu to Japanese and Japanese to Ainu. In recent years, the Japanese linguist Shichiro Murayama and others have tried to link it by both vocabulary and cultural comparisons to the Austronesian languages. Alexander Vovin (1993) presented evidence suggesting a distant connection with Austroasiatic; he regards this hypothesis as preliminary. More recently, Joseph Greenberg (2000–2002) has argued that Ainu belongs to the “Eurasiatic languages”; this hypothesis remains highly controversial. Evidence from studies of the genetics of Ainu and other world populations tend to hint that the Ainu people, and therefore also their language, may have some distant connection to Japanese, Koreans, or Turkic peoples of Central Asia, but it is clear from all forms of inquiry that the Ainu people and language have a very long history of isolation and independent development. They do appear, however, to have experienced some intensive contact with the Nivkhs during the course of their history; it is not known to what extent this might have affected the Ainu language.

Speakers

Ainu is a moribund language, and has been endangered for at least the past few decades. Most of the 150,000 ethnic Ainu in Japan speak only Japanese. In the town of Nibutani (part of Biratori, Hokkaido) 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 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. 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. 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.

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.
There are five vowels:

The vowels of Ainu

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

Consonants:

The consonants of Ainu

	Bilabial	Labio- velar	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
'Stop'
'Affricate'
'Nasal'
'Fricative'
'Approximant'
'Tap/flap'

The glottal stop only occurs at the beginning of words, before an accented vowel. The sequence is realized as and becomes before and at the end of syllables. The affricate has voiced and post-alveolar variants. There is some variation among dialects; in the Sakhalin dialect, syllable-final , , , lenited and merged into . After an , this is pronounced as .
There is a pitch accent system. 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.

Typology and grammar

Ainu is SOV, with postpositions. 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.
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.
Ainu traditionally featured incorporation of nouns and adverbs; this is rare in the modern colloquial language.
Applicatives may be used in Ainu to place nouns in the dative, instrumental, comitative, locative, allative, or ablative roles. Besides freestanding nouns, these roles may be assigned to incorporated nouns, and such use of applicatives is in fact mandatory for incorporating oblique nouns. 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. There is also a Latin-based alphabet in use. The ''Ainu Times'' publishes in both. In the Latin orthography, is spelt ''c'' and as ''y''; , 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. Its pitch accent is denoted by acute accent in Latin (e.g. ''á''). It 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.^[1][2] 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. 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.

Character	Unicode	Appearance	Name	Ainu usage
ㇰ	31F0	ク	Katakana Letter Small Ku	Final ''k''
ㇱ	31F1	シ	Katakana Letter Small Si	Final ''s''
ㇲ	31F2	ス	Katakana Letter Small Su	Final ''s'', used to emphasize it's pronounced rather than normal . and are allophones in Ainu.
ㇳ	31F3	ト	Katakana Letter Small To	Final ''t''
ㇴ	31F4	ヌ	Katakana Letter Small Nu	Final ''n''
ㇵ	31F5	ハ	Katakana Letter Small Ha	Final ''h'' , succeeding the vowel ''a''. (e.g. アハ ''ah'') Sakhalin dialect only.
ㇶ	31F6	ヒ	Katakana Letter Small Hi	Final ''h'' , succeeding the vowel ''i''. (e.g. イヒ ''ih'') Sakhalin dialect only.
ㇷ	31F7	フ	Katakana Letter Small Hu	Final ''h'' , succeeding the vowel ''u''. (e.g. ウフ ''uh'') Sakhalin dialect only.
ㇸ	31F8	ヘ	Katakana Letter Small He	Final ''h'' , succeeding the vowel ''e''. (e.g. エヘ ''eh'') Sakhalin dialect only.
ㇹ	31F9	ホ	Katakana Letter Small Ho	Final ''h'' , succeeding the vowel ''o''. (e.g. オホ ''oh'') Sakhalin dialect only.
ㇺ	31FA	ム	Katakana Letter Small Mu	Final ''m''
ㇻ	31FB	ラ	Katakana Letter Small Ra	Final ''r'' , succeeding the vowel ''a''. (e.g. アラ ''ar'')
ㇼ	31FC	リ	Katakana Letter Small Ri	Final ''r'' , succeeding the vowel ''i''. (e.g. イリ ''ir'')
ㇽ	31FD	ル	Katakana Letter Small Ru	Final ''r'' , succeeding the vowel ''u''. (e.g. ウル ''ur'')
ㇾ	31FE	レ	Katakana Letter Small Re	Final ''r'' , succeeding the vowel ''e''. (e.g. エレ ''er'')
ㇿ	31FF	ロ	Katakana Letter Small Ro	Final ''r'' , succeeding the vowel ''o''. (e.g. オロ ''or'')
Rejected characters ''(Unicode represents them using combining characters)''
	31F7 + 309A	プ	Katakana Letter Small Pu	Final ''p''
	30BB + 309A	セ゜	Katakana Letter Se With Semi-Voiced Sound Mark	''ce''
	30C4 + 309A	ツ゜	Katakana Letter Tu With Semi-Voiced Sound Mark	''tu''. ツ゜ and ト゜ are interchangeable.
	30C8 + 309A	ト゜	Katakana Letter To With Semi-Voiced Sound Mark	''tu''. ツ゜ and ト゜ are interchangeable.

Basic syllables

	a [a]	i [i]	u [u̜]	e [e]	o [o]
	a ア [a]	i イ [i]	u ウ [u̜]	e エ [e]	o オ [o]
k [k] 1	ka カ [ka]	ki キ [ki]	ku ク [ku̜]	ke ケ [ke]	ko コ [ko]
	-k ク [-k̚]
s [s] ~ [ʃ]	sa シャ/サ 2 [sa] ~ [ʃa]	si シ [ʃi]	su シュ/ス 2 [su̜] ~ [ʃu̜]	se シェ/セ 2 [se] ~ [ʃe]	so ショ/ソ 2 [so] ~ [ʃo]
	-s シ/ス 2 [-ʃʲ]
t [t] 1	ta タ [ta]	ci チ [tʃi]	tu ト゜/ツ゜ 2 [tu̜]	te テ [te]	to ト [to]
	-t ト/ッ 3 [-t̚]
c [ts] ~ [tʃ] 1	ca チャ [tsa] ~ [tʃa]	ci チ [tʃi]	cu チュ [tsu̜] ~ [tʃu̜]	ce チェ [tse] ~ [tʃe]	co チョ [tso] ~ [tʃo]
n [n]	na ナ [na]	ni ニ [nʲi]	nu ヌ [nu̜]	ne ネ [ne]	no ノ [no]
	-n ヌ/ン 4 [-n/-m-/-ŋ-] 5
h 6 [h]	ha ハ [ha]	hi ヒ [çi]	hu フ [ɸu̜]	he ヘ [he]	ho ホ [ho]
-h 6 [-x]	-ah ハ [-ax]	-ih ヒ [-iç]	-uh フ [-u̜x]	-eh ヘ [-ex]	-oh ホ [-ox]
p [p] 1	pa パ [pa]	pi ピ [pi]	pu プ [pu̜]	pe ペ [pe]	po ポ [po]
	-p プ [-p̚]
m [m]	ma マ [ma]	mi ミ [mi]	mu ム [mu̜]	me メ [me]	mo モ [mo]
	-m ム [-m]
y [j]	ya ヤ [ja]		yu ユ [ju̜]	ye イェ [je]	yo ヨ [jo]
r [ɾ]	ra ラ [ɾa]	ri リ [ɾi]	ru ル [ɾu̜]	re レ [ɾe]	ro ロ [ɾo]
	-ar ラ [-aɾ]	-ir リ [-iɾ]	-ur ル [-u̜ɾ]	-er レ [-eɾ]	-or ロ [-oɾ]
w [w]	wa ワ [wa]	wi ウィ/ヰ 2 [wi]		we ウェ/ヱ 2 [we]	wo ウォ/ヲ 2 [wo]

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

Diphthongs

Final is spelt ''y'' in Latin, small ィ in katakana. Final is spelt ''w'' in Latin, small ゥ in katakana. is spelt ''ae'', アエ, or アェ.
Example with initial ''k'':

kay	kuy	koy	kaw	kiw	kew	kow	key
カィ	クィ	コィ	カゥ	キゥ	ケゥ	コゥ	ケィ

Since the above rule is used systematically, some katakana combinations have different sounds from conventional Japanese.

	ウィ	クィ	スィ	ティ	トゥ	フィ
Ainu	,
Japanese		~

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.
Example with initial ''k'':

[kaː]	[kiː]	[kuː]	[keː]	[koː]
kâ	kî	kû	kê	kô
kā	kī	kū	kē	kō
カー	キー	クー	ケー	コー

Oral literature

The Ainu have rich oral tradition of hero-sagas called Yukar, which retain a number of grammatical and lexical archaisms.

See also

★ List of Ainu terms

★ Ainu music

★ Kannari Matsu

★ Chiri Mashiho

★ Chiri Takao

★ Kyōsuke Kindaichi

★ Bronisław Piłsudski

★ Shigeru Kayano

Notes

1. Katakana Phonetic Extensions – Test for Unicode support in Web browsers
2. The Unicode Standard, 4.1

References

★ The Genetic Relationship of the Ainu Language, Patrie, James, , , The University Press of Hawaii, 1982, ISBN 0-8248-0724-3

★ The Ainu Language, Tamura, Suzuko, , , Sanseido, 2000, ISBN 4-385-35976-8

★ A Reconstruction of Proto-Ainu, Vovin, Alexander, , , E. J. Brill, 1993, ISBN 90-04-09905-0

★ The Languages of Japan, Shibatani, Masayoshi, , , Cambridge University Press, 1990, ISBN 0-521-36918-5

★ Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives, Greenberg, Joseph H., , , Stanford University Press, 2000-2002, ISBN 0-8047-3812-2, ISBN 0-8047-4624-9

External links

★ Listing of literature and learning materials for Ainu Language learners

★ The Book of Common Prayer in Ainu

★ Ainu sentences

★ Radio lessons on Ainu language - Presented by Sapporo TV

★ Ainu word list

★ Ethnologue entry for Ainu

★ Information at the RosettaProject

★ Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Ainu in Samani, Hokkaido

★ 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.)''