Ainu (, ), or more precisely Hokkaido Ainu, is a language spoken by a few elderly members of the
Ainu people
The Ainu are the indigenous people of the lands surrounding the Sea of Okhotsk, including Hokkaido Island, Northeast Honshu Island, Sakhalin Island, the Kuril Islands, the Kamchatka Peninsula and Khabarovsk Krai, before the arrival of the Y ...
on the northern Japanese island of
Hokkaido
is Japan's second largest island and comprises the largest and northernmost prefecture, making up its own region. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaidō from Honshu; the two islands are connected by the undersea railway Seikan Tunnel.
The la ...
. It is a member of the
Ainu language family, itself considered a
language family isolate with no academic consensus of origin. It is classified as Critically Endangered by the
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...
Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
The UNESCO ''Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger'' is an online publication containing a comprehensive list of the world's endangered languages. It originally replaced the ''Red Book of Endangered Languages'' as a title in print after a ...
.
Until the 20th century, the Ainu languages – Hokkaido Ainu and the now-extinct
Kuril Ainu
The Ainu in Russia are an indigenous people of Siberia located in Sakhalin Oblast, Khabarovsk Krai and Kamchatka Krai. The Russian Ainu people (''Aine''; russian: айны, ayny), also called ''Kurile'' (курилы, ''kurily''), ''Kamcha ...
and
Sakhalin Ainu
The Ainu in Russia are an indigenous people of Siberia located in Sakhalin Oblast, Khabarovsk Krai and Kamchatka Krai. The Russian Ainu people (''Aine''; russian: айны, ayny), also called ''Kurile'' (курилы, ''kurily''), ''Kamchatka ...
– were spoken throughout Hokkaido, the southern half of the island of
Sakhalin
Sakhalin ( rus, Сахали́н, r=Sakhalín, p=səxɐˈlʲin; ja, 樺太 ''Karafuto''; zh, c=, p=Kùyèdǎo, s=库页岛, t=庫頁島; Manchu: ᠰᠠᡥᠠᠯᡳᠶᠠᠨ, ''Sahaliyan''; Orok: Бугата на̄, ''Bugata nā''; Nivkh: ...
and by small numbers of people in the
Kuril Islands
The Kuril Islands or Kurile Islands (; rus, Кури́льские острова́, r=Kuril'skiye ostrova, p=kʊˈrʲilʲskʲɪjə ɐstrɐˈva; Japanese: or ) are a volcanic archipelago currently administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast in the ...
. Due to the colonization policy employed by the Japanese government, the number of Hokkaido Ainu speakers decreased through the 20th century, and it is now
moribund
Moribund refers to a literal or figurative state near death.
Moribund may refer to:
* ''Moribund'' (album), a 2006 album by the Norwegian black metal band Koldbrann
* "Le Moribond", a song by Jacques Brel known in English as "Seasons in the Sun" ...
. A very few elderly people still speak the language fluently, though attempts are being made to revive it.
According to P. Elmer, the Ainu languages are a
contact language
Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for the ...
, having strong influences from various Japonic dialects/languages during different stages of their development, suggesting early and intensive contact between the languages somewhere in the
Tōhoku region
The , Northeast region, or consists of the northeastern portion of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. This traditional region consists of six prefectures (''ken''): Akita, Aomori, Fukushima, Iwate, Miyagi, and Yamagata.
Tōhoku retains a ...
, with Ainu borrowing a large amount of vocabulary and typological characteristics from early Japonic.
Speakers
![Pirka Kotan, Sapporo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Pirka_Kotan%2C_Sapporo.JPG)
According to
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...
, Ainu is an
endangered language
An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead langu ...
,
with few native speakers amongst the country's approximately 30,000 Ainu people,
a number that may be higher due to a potentially low rate of self-identification as Ainu within the country's ethnic Ainu population.
Knowledge of the language, which has been endangered since before the 1960s, has declined steadily since; , just 304 people within Japan were reported to understand the Ainu language to some extent.
, ''Ethnologue'' has listed Ainu as class 8b, "nearly extinct".
A survey of the Ainu people's life was done by the Hokkaido government in 2017, and about 671 people participated in it.
The participants were those who were believed to be descendants of Ainu or who joined Ainu families by marriage or adoption.
The topic of the survey included the Ainu language, and in regard to fluency, 0.7% of participants answered that they would "be able to have a conversation" in the Ainu language, 3.4% answered that they would "be able to have a conversation a little," 44.6% answered they would "not be able to have a conversation but have a little knowledge of the Ainu language," and 48.1% answered that they would "not be able to have a conversation or understand the language by listening".
The survey was done in 2006 and 2013 as well, and by comparing those with the 2017 survey, notable trends were observed: the percentage of people who answered they would "be able to have a conversation in the Ainu language" declined in the age 60s group (2.3% in 2006, 1.9% in 2013, and 0.4% in 2017), but increased in the age 30s group (0% in 2006, 0% in 2013, and 2.3% in 2017).
However, there was little change overall (0.7% in 2006, 0.9% in 2013, and 0.7% in 2017).
Recognition
The Japanese government made a decision to recognize Ainu as an indigenous language in June 2008.
[ , the Japanese government is constructing a facility dedicated to preserving Ainu culture, including the language.
]
Phonology
Ainu syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
s are CV(C); they have an obligatory syllable onset
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
consisting of one consonant and one vowel, and an optional syllable coda
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of Phone (phonetics), speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered t ...
consisting of a consonant. There are few consonant cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fie ...
s.
Vowels
There are five vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
s in Ainu:
Consonants
Plosives may be voiced between vowels and after nasals. Both and are realized as , and becomes before and at the end of syllables. A glottal stop is often inserted at the beginning of words, before an accented vowel, but is non-phonemic.
The Ainu language also has a pitch accent
A pitch-accent language, when spoken, has word accents in which one syllable in a word or morpheme is more prominent than the others, but the accentuated syllable is indicated by a contrasting pitch ( linguistic tone) rather than by loudness ( ...
system. Generally, words containing affix
In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ar ...
es have a high pitch on a syllable in the stem. This will typically fall on the first syllable if that is long (has a final consonant or a diphthong), and will otherwise fall on the second syllable, though there are exceptions to this generalization.
Typology and grammar
Typologically, Ainu is similar in word order (and some aspects of phonology) to Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
.
Ainu has a canonical word order of subject, object, verb, and uses postpositions rather than preposition
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
s. Noun
A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for:
* Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...
s can cluster to modify one another; the head comes at the end. Verbs, which are inherently either transitive or intransitive, accept various derivational affixes. Ainu does not have grammatical gender
In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns ...
. Plurals are indicated by a suffix.
Classical Ainu, the language of the , is polysynthetic
In linguistic typology, polysynthetic languages, formerly holophrastic languages, are highly synthetic languages, i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes (word parts that have independent meaning but may or may not be able to ...
, with incorporation of nouns and adverbs; this is greatly reduced in the modern colloquial language.
Applicatives may be used in Ainu to place nouns in dative
In grammar, the dative case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a ...
, instrumental
An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to instru ...
, comitative
In grammar, the comitative case (; abbreviated ) is a grammatical case that denotes accompaniment. In English, the preposition "with", in the sense of "in company with" or "together with", plays a substantially similar role (other uses of "with", l ...
, locative
In grammar, the locative case (abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by". The locative case belongs to the general local cases, together with the ...
, allative
In grammar, the allative case (; abbreviated ; from Latin ''allāt-'', ''afferre'' "to bring to") is a type of locative grammatical case. The term allative is generally used for the lative case in the majority of languages that do not make finer ...
, or ablative
In grammar, the ablative case (pronounced ; sometimes abbreviated ) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in the grammars of various languages; it is sometimes used to express motion away from something, among other uses. T ...
roles. Besides freestanding nouns, these roles may be assigned to incorporated nouns, and such use of applicatives is in fact mandatory for incorporating oblique
Oblique may refer to:
* an alternative name for the character usually called a slash (punctuation) ( / )
* Oblique angle, in geometry
*Oblique triangle, in geometry
*Oblique lattice, in geometry
* Oblique leaf base, a characteristic shape of the b ...
nouns. Like incorporation, applicatives have grown less common in the modern language.
Ainu has a closed class of plural verb
In linguistics, pluractionality, or verbal number, if not used in iterative aspect, its aspectual sense, is a grammatical aspect that indicates that the action or Verb argument, participants of a verb is/are grammatical number, plural. This diffe ...
s, and some of these are suppletive In linguistics and etymology, suppletion is traditionally understood as the use of one word as the inflected form of another word when the two words are not cognate. For those learning a language, suppletive forms will be seen as "irregular" or even ...
.
Ainu has a system of verbal affixes (shown below) which mark agreement for person and case. The specific cases that are marked differ by person, with nominative–accusative marking for the first person singular, tripartite marking for the first person plural and indefinite (or 'fourth') person, and direct or 'neutral' marking for the second singular and plural, and third persons (i.e. the affixes do not differ by case).
Sentence types
Intransitive sentences
Transitive and ditransitive sentences
Writing
The Ainu language is written in a modified version of the Japanese katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...
syllabary
In the linguistic study of written languages, a syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or (more frequently) moras which make up words.
A symbol in a syllabary, called a syllabogram, typically represents an (optiona ...
, although it is possible for Japanese loan words and names to be written in kanji
are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...
(for example, "mobile phone" can be written or ). There is also a Latin-based alphabet in use. The '' Ainu Times'' publishes in both. In the Latin orthography
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...
, is spelled ''c'' and is spelled ''y''; the glottal stop, , 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
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology.
In English, morphemes are ...
boundaries, such as after a prefix. Its pitch accent is denoted by acute accent
The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...
in Latin script (e.g., ''á''). This is usually not denoted in katakana.
Rev. John Batchelor
John Calvin Batchelor (born April 29, 1948) is an American author and host of ''Eye on the World'' on the CBS Audio Network. His flagship station is New York's 710 WOR. The show is a hard-news-analysis radio program on current events, world his ...
was an English missionary who lived among the Ainu, studied them and published many works on the Ainu language. Batchelor wrote extensively, both works about the Ainu language and works in Ainu itself. He was the first to write in Ainu and use a writing system for it. Batchelor's translations of various books of the Bible were published from 1887, and his ''New Testament
The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christ ...
'' translation was published in Yokohama in 1897 by a joint committee of the British and Foreign Bible Society
The British and Foreign Bible Society, often known in England and Wales as simply the Bible Society, is a non-denominational Christian Bible society with charity status whose purpose is to make the Bible available throughout the world.
The Soc ...
, the American Bible Society
American Bible Society is a U.S.-based Christian nonprofit headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As the American member organization of United Bible Societies, it supports global Bible translation, production, distribution, literacy, engage ...
, and the National Bible Society of Scotland
Scottish Bible Society (SBS), founded in 1809 as the Edinburgh Bible Society, amalgamated in 1861 with the Glasgow Bible Society (founded 1812) to form the National Bible Society of Scotland, is a Scottish Christian charity that exists to make t ...
. Other books written in Ainu include dictionaries, a grammar, and books on Ainu culture and language.
Special katakana for the Ainu language
A Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
standard exists for a set of extended katakana (Katakana Phonetic Extensions
Katakana Phonetic Extensions is a Unicode block containing additional small katakana characters for writing the Ainu language, in addition to characters in the Katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system ...
) for transliterating the Ainu language and other languages written with katakana. 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 either are smaller in size or have a handakuten
The , colloquially , is a diacritic most often used in the Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a syllable should be pronounced voiced, for instance, on sounds that have undergone rendaku (sequential voicing).
The , co ...
. As few fonts yet support these extensions, workarounds exist for many of the characters, such as using a smaller font with the regular katakana to produce ク to represent the separate small katakana glyph used as in ().
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 not been added to Unicode as they can be represented as a sequence of two existing codepoints.
Basic syllables
Diphthongs
Final
Final, Finals or The Final may refer to:
*Final (competition), the last or championship round of a sporting competition, match, game, or other contest which decides a winner for an event
** Another term for playoffs, describing a sequence of cont ...
is spelled ''y'' in Latin, small ィ in katakana. Final is spelled ''w'' in Latin, small ゥ in katakana. Large イ and ウ are used if there is a morpheme boundary with イ and ウ at the morpheme head. is spelled ''ae'', アエ or アェ.
Example with initial
In a written or published work, an initial capital, also referred to as a drop capital or simply an initial cap, initial, initcapital, initcap or init or a drop cap or drop, is a letter at the beginning of a word, a chapter, or a paragraph that ...
''k'':
Since the above rule is used systematically, some katakana combinations have different sounds from conventional Japanese.
Oral literature
The Ainu have a rich oral tradition
Oral tradition, or oral lore, is a form of human communication wherein knowledge, art, ideas and cultural material is received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another. Vansina, Jan: ''Oral Tradition as History'' (1985 ...
of hero-sagas called , which retain a number of grammatical and lexical archaisms. were memorized and told at get-togethers and ceremonies that often lasted hours or even days. The Ainu also have another form of narrative often used called , which was used in the same contexts.
A native written form of the Ainu language has never existed; therefore, the Ainu people traditionally relied on memorization and oral communication to pass down their literature to the next generation. Ainu literature includes nonfiction, such as their history and "hunting adventures," and fiction such as stories about spiritual avatars, magic, myths, and heroes.[
]
Research on oral literature
The oral literature of the Ainu languages has been studied mainly by Japanese and European researchers; thus, Ainu literature has been transcribed using writing systems such as Japanese katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...
(commonly used for foreign-language text) and the Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...
, and documented in the languages of the researchers themselves. One prominent researcher of the Ainu languages is Bronisław Piłsudski, a Polish anthropologist who lived in Sakhalin from 1886 to 1905,[ and who published "Materials for the Study of the Ainu Language and Folklore" in 1912. In addition, Piłsudski made audio recordings from 1902 to 1903, which is believed to be the first attempt to do so in the history of Ainu oral literature study.][ Japanese linguist Kyosuke Kindaichi is also famous for his work on the oral literature of the Ainu languages,][ and for his publication in 1913.
]
Recent history
Many of the speakers of Ainu lost the language with the advent of Japanese colonization. During a time when food production methods were changing across Japan, there was less reason to trade with the Ainu, who mainly fished and foraged the land. Japan was becoming more industrialized and globalization created a threat to Japanese land. The Japanese government, in an attempt to unify their country to keep out invasion, created policy for the assimilation of the Ainu diversity, culture, and subsistence. The assimilation included exploitation of land, commodification of culture, and placing Ainu children in schools where they only learned Japanese.
More recently, the Japanese government has acknowledged the Ainu people as an indigenous population. As of 1997 they were given indigenous rights under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) to their culture, heritage, and language.
The Ainu Cultural Promotion Act in 1997 appointed the Foundation for Research and Promotion of Ainu Culture (FRPAC). This foundation is tasked with language education, where they promote Ainu language learning through training instructors, advanced language classes and creation and development of language materials.
Revitalization
In general, Ainu people are hard to find because they tend to hide their identity as Ainu, especially in the young generation. Two thirds of Ainu youth do not know that they are Ainu. In addition, because Ainu students were strongly discouraged from speaking their language at school, it has been challenging for the Ainu language to be revitalized.
Despite this, there is an active movement to revitalize the language, mainly in Hokkaido but also elsewhere such as Kanto
Kantō (Japanese)
Kanto is a simplified spelling of , a Japanese word, only omitting the diacritics.
In Japan
Kantō may refer to:
*Kantō Plain
*Kantō region
*Kantō-kai, organized crime group
*Kanto (Pokémon), a geographical region in the ' ...
.[ Ainu oral literature has been documented both in hopes of safeguarding it for future generations, as well as using it as a teaching tool for language learners.] Beginning in 1987, the Ainu Association of Hokkaido
The is an umbrella group of which most Hokkaidō Ainu people, Ainu and some other Ainu are members. Originally controlled by the Politics of Japan, government with the intention of speeding Ainu assimilation and integration into the Japanese nati ...
with approximately 500 members[ began hosting 14 Ainu language classes, Ainu language instructors training courses and Family Ainu Learning Initiative] and have released instructional materials on the language, including a textbook. Also, Yamato
was originally the area around today's Sakurai City in Nara Prefecture of Japan, which became Yamato Province and by extension a name for the whole of Japan.
Yamato is also the dynastic name of the ruling Imperial House of Japan.
Japanese his ...
linguists teach Ainu and train students to become Ainu instructors in university. In spite of these efforts, the Ainu language is not yet taught as a subject in any secondary school in Japan.[
Due to the Ainu Cultural Promotion Act of 1997, Ainu dictionaries transformed and became tools for improving communication and preserving records of the Ainu language in order to revitalize the language and promote the culture. As of 2011, there has been an increasing number of second-language learners, especially in Hokkaido, in large part due to the pioneering efforts of the late Ainu folklorist, activist and former ]Diet
Diet may refer to:
Food
* Diet (nutrition), the sum of the food consumed by an organism or group
* Dieting, the deliberate selection of food to control body weight or nutrient intake
** Diet food, foods that aid in creating a diet for weight loss ...
member Shigeru Kayano
was one of the last native speakers of the Ainu language and a leading figure in the Ainu ethnic movement in Japan.
Early life
Kayano was born in Nibutani village in Biratori, Hokkaidō, Japan. His family name at birth was Kaizawa, but he ...
, himself a native speaker, who first opened an Ainu language school in 1987 funded by Ainu Kyokai. The Ainu Association of Hokkaido
The is an umbrella group of which most Hokkaidō Ainu people, Ainu and some other Ainu are members. Originally controlled by the Politics of Japan, government with the intention of speeding Ainu assimilation and integration into the Japanese nati ...
is the main supporter of Ainu culture in Hokkaido.[ Ainu language classes have been conducted in some areas in Japan and small numbers of young people are learning Ainu. Efforts have also been made to produce web-accessible materials for conversational Ainu because most documentation of the Ainu language focused on the recording of folktales. The Ainu language has been in media as well; the first Ainu radio program was called ''FM Pipaushi'', which has run since 2001 along with 15-minute radio Ainu language lessons funded by FRPAC, and newspaper '' The Ainu Times'' has been established since 1997.] In 2016, a radio course was broadcast by the STVradio Broadcasting to introduce Ainu language. The course put extensive efforts in promoting the language, creating 4 text books in each season throughout the year.
In addition, the Ainu language has been seen in public domains such as the outlet shopping complex's name, , which means 'wind', in the Minami Chitose area and the name , meaning 'young', at a shopping centre in the Chitose area. There is also a basketball team in Sapporo
( ain, サッ・ポロ・ペッ, Satporopet, lit=Dry, Great River) is a city in Japan. It is the largest city north of Tokyo and the largest city on Hokkaido, the northernmost main island of the country. It ranks as the fifth most populous city ...
founded under the name , after 'god of the wind' (its current name is Levanga Hokkaido
Levanga Hokkaido is a Japanese professional basketball team based in the city of Sapporo on the island of Hokkaido.
The club was founded in 2006 as ''Rera Kamuy Hokkaido'', this name comes from the language of the Ainu, an ethnic group indigenou ...
).[ The well-known Japanese fashion magazine's name means 'flower' in Ainu.
Another Ainu language revitalization program is Urespa, a university program to educate high-level persons on the language of the Ainu. The effort is a collaborative and cooperative program for individuals wishing to learn about Ainu languages.] This includes performances which focus on the Ainu and their language, instead of using the dominant Japanese language.
Another form of Ainu language revitalization is an annual national competition, which is Ainu language-themed. People of many differing demographics are often encouraged to take part in the contest. Since 2017, the popularity of the contest has increased.
The Ainu language has also been featured in the manga and anime ''Golden Kamuy
is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Satoru Noda (artist), Satoru Noda. It was serialized in Shueisha's Seinen manga, manga magazine ''Weekly Young Jump'' from August 2014 to April 2022, with its chapters collected in thirt ...
''.
On 15 February 2019, Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
approved a bill to recognize the Ainu language for the first time and enacted the law on April 19, 2019.
Outside of Japan, there have also been efforts to revive the Ainu culture and language in other countries, including Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
and Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
.
Sample text
Below is a sample text from a traditional Ainu folktale, in Ainu, Japanese and English.
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Further reading
* Miyake, Marc. 2010
Is the ''itak'' an isolate?
External links
translated by John Batchelor, digitized by Richard Mammana and Charles Wohlers
Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Ainu
in Samani, Hokkaido
, is a town located in Hidaka Subprefecture, Hokkaido, Japan.
As of April 2017, the town has an estimated population of 4,482, with 2,242 households, and a density of 12 persons per km2. The total area is 364.33 km2.
The local economy is ...
''A Grammar of the Ainu Language''
by John Batchelor
John Calvin Batchelor (born April 29, 1948) is an American author and host of ''Eye on the World'' on the CBS Audio Network. His flagship station is New York's 710 WOR. The show is a hard-news-analysis radio program on current events, world his ...
''An Ainu-English-Japanese Dictionary'', including ''A Grammar of the Ainu Language''
by John Batchelor
"The 'Greater Austric' hypothesis"
by John Bengtson (undated)
''Ainu for Beginners''
by Kane Kumagai, translated by Yongdeok Cho
*
A talking dictionary of Ainu: a new version of Kanazawa's Ainu conversational dictionary
', with recordings of Mrs. Setsu Kurokawa
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hokkaido Ainu Language
Ainu languages
Critically endangered languages
Languages of Japan
Subject–object–verb languages