Ainu or Aynu may refer to: *

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 Ya ...

, an East Asian ethnic group of Japan and the Russian Far East *

Ainu languages The Ainu languages ( ), sometimes known as Ainuic, are a small language family, often regarded as a language isolate, historically spoken by the Ainu people of northern Japan and neighboring islands. The primary varieties of Ainu are alternately ...

, a family of languages **

Ainu language Ainu (, ), or more precisely Hokkaido Ainu, is a language spoken by a few elderly members of the Ainu people on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. It is a member of the Ainu language family, itself considered a language family isolate ...

of Hokkaido **

Kuril Ainu language Kuril Ainu or Kuril, is an extinct and poorly attested Ainu language of the Kuril Islands, now part of Russia. The main inhabited islands were Kunashir, Iturup and Urup in the south, and Shumshu in the north. Other islands either had small po ...

, extinct language of the Kuril Islands **

Sakhalin Ainu language Sakhalin Ainu is an extinct Ainu language, or perhaps several Ainu languages, that was or were spoken on the island of Sakhalin, now part of Russia. History and present situation The Ainu of Sakhalin appear to have been present on Sakhalin re ...

, extinct language from the island of Sakhalin *

Ainu music Ainu music is the musical tradition of the Ainu people of northern Japan. They did not have written words, so they have inherited the folklore and the laws conducted between ethnic orally such as tales and legends with music. The oral Ainu c ...

Ainu cuisine Ainu cuisine is the cuisine of the ethnic Ainu in Japan and Russia. The cuisine differs markedly from that of the majority Yamato people of Japan. Raw meat like sashimi, for example, is rarely served in Ainu cuisine, which instead uses methods ...

* Ainu (Middle-earth), spirit in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium * Ainu (insect), a beetle in the family Tenebrionidae * Äynu people, of Western China ** Äynu language

See also