Ainu (Ainu: , ''Aynu itak''; Japanese: ''Ainu-go'') is one of the Ainu languages, spoken by members of the Ainu ethnic group on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaidō.
Until the twentieth century, Ainu languages were also spoken throughout the southern half of the island of Sakhalin and by small numbers of people in the Kuril Islands. All but the Hokkaidō language are extinct, with the last speaker of Sakhalin Ainu having died in 1994; and Hokkaidō Ainu is moribund, though there are ongoing attempts to revive it.
Ainu has no generally accepted genealogical relationship to any other language family. For the most frequent proposals, see Ainu languages.
Speakers
Ainu is a moribund language, and has been endangered for at least the past few decades. Most of the 25,000 – 200,000 ethnic Ainu in Japan speak only Japanese. 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.
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.
Vowels
There are five
vowel sounds in Ainu:
{|class="wikitable" style="text-align: center"
|-
! !!
Front !!
Central !!
Back
|-
!
Close
| || ||
|-
!
Mid
| || ||
|-
!
Open
| || ||
|}
Consonants
{|class="wikitable" style="text-align: center"
!
!
Bilabial
!
Labio-velar
!
Alveolar
!
Palatal
!
Velar
!
Glottal
|-
!
Plosive
| align=center |
|
| align=center |
|
| align=center |
|
|-
!
Affricate
|
|
| align=center |
|
|
|
|-
!
Nasal
| align=center |
|
| align=center |
|
|
|
|-
!
Fricative
|
|
| align=center |
|
|
| align=center |
|-
!
Approximant
|
| align=center |
|
| align=center |
|
|
|-
!
Tap/flap
|
|
| align=center |
|
|
|
|}
Plosives may be voiced between vowels and after nasals. Both and are realized as , and becomes before and at the end of syllables. There is some variation among dialects; in the Sakhalin dialect, syllable-final , , , lenited and merged into . After an , this is pronounced . A glottal stop is often inserted at the beginning of words, before an accented vowel, but is non-phonemic.
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
Typologically, Ainu is similar in word order (and some aspects of phonology) to
Japanese.
Ainu has a canonical word order of SOV, and it uses postpositions rather than prepositions. 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. Ainu does not have grammatical gender. Plurals are indicated by a suffix.
Classical Ainu, the language of the ''yukar'', is polysynthetic, 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 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.
Ainu has a closed class of plural verbs, and some of these are suppletive.
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''). This is usually not denoted in katakana.
Rev. John Batchelor was an English missionary in Japan. He 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.
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. 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. As few fonts yet support these extensions, workarounds exist for many of the characters, such as using a smaller font with the regular katakana ク ''ku'' to produce
ク to represent the separate small katakana glyph ''ku'' used as in (''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 not been added to Unicode as they can be represented as a sequence of two existing codepoints.
{| cellpadding="3" border="0" class="wikitable"
|-
! Character
! Unicode
! Appearance
! Name
! Ainu usage
|-
|
| 31F0
| ク
| Katakana Letter Small Ku
| Final ''k''
|-
|
| 31F1
| シ
| Katakana Letter Small Shi
| Final ''s''
|-
|
| 31F2
| ス
| Katakana Letter Small Su
| Final ''s'', used to emphasize its pronunciation as rather than . and are allophones in Ainu.
|-
|
| 31F3
| ト
| Katakana Letter Small To
| Final ''t''
|-
|
| 31F4
| ヌ
| Katakana Letter Small Nu
| Final ''n''
|-
|
| 31F5
| ハ
| Katakana Letter Small Ha
| Final ''h'' , succeeding the vowel ''a''. (e.g. ''ah'') Sakhalin dialect only.
|-
|
| 31F6
| ヒ
| Katakana Letter Small Hi
| Final ''h'' , succeeding the vowel ''i''. (e.g. ''ih'') Sakhalin dialect only.
|-
|
| 31F7
| フ
| Katakana Letter Small Fu
| Final ''h'' , succeeding the vowel ''u''. (e.g. ''uh'') Sakhalin dialect only.
|-
|
| 31F8
| ヘ
| Katakana Letter Small He
| Final ''h'' , succeeding the vowel ''e''. (e.g. ''eh'') Sakhalin dialect only.
|-
|
| 31F9
| ホ
| Katakana Letter Small Ho
| Final ''h'' , succeeding the vowel ''o''. (e.g. ''oh'') Sakhalin dialect only.
|-
|
| 31FA
| ム
| Katakana Letter Small Mu
| Final ''m''
|-
|
| 31FB
| ラ
| Katakana Letter Small Ra
| Final ''r'' , succeeding the vowel ''a''. (e.g. ''ar'')
|-
|
| 31FC
| リ
| Katakana Letter Small Ri
| Final ''r'' , succeeding the vowel ''i''. (e.g. ''ir'')
|-
|
| 31FD
| ル
| Katakana Letter Small Ru
| Final ''r'' , succeeding the vowel ''u''. (e.g. ''ur'')
|-
|
| 31FE
| レ
| Katakana Letter Small Re
| Final ''r'' , succeeding the vowel ''e''. (e.g. ''er'')
|-
|
| 31FF
| ロ
| Katakana Letter Small Ro
| Final ''r'' , succeeding the vowel ''o''. (e.g. ''or'')
|-
! colspan="5" align="left" | Characters represented using combining characters
|-
|
| 31F7 + 309A
| プ
| Katakana Letter Small Pu
| Final ''p''
|-
|
| 30BB + 309A
|
| Katakana Letter Se With Semi-Voiced Sound Mark
| ''ce''
|-
|
| 30C4 + 309A
|
| Katakana Letter Tu With Semi-Voiced Sound Mark
| ''tu''. ツ゚ and ト゚ are interchangeable.
|-
|
| 30C8 + 309A
|
| Katakana Letter To With Semi-Voiced Sound Mark
| ''tu''. ツ゚ and ト゚ are interchangeable.
|-
|}
Basic syllables
| !! i !! u !! e !! o
|
|
a ア |
i イ | | u ウ |
e エ |
o オ
|
rowspan=2>k 1 |
ka カ< | | | ki キ |
ku ク |
ke ケ |
ko コ
|
colspan=5>-k ク |
|
sa シャ/サ 2< ~ | | | si シ |
su シュ/ス 2 ~ |
se シェ/セ 2 ~ |
so ショ/ソ 2 ~
|
colspan=5>-s シ/ス 2 |
|
ta タ< | | | ci チ |
tu ト゜/ツ゜ 2 |
te テ |
to ト
|
colspan=5>-t ト/ッ 3 |
c< | ~ 1 |
ca チャ ~ | | ci チ |
cu チュ ~ |
ce チェ ~ |
co チョ ~
|
rowspan=2>n |
na ナ< | | | ni ニ |
nu ヌ |
ne ネ |
no ノ
|
colspan=5>-n ヌ/ン 4, , 5 |
h 6< | |
ha ハ | | hi ヒ |
hu フ |
he ヘ |
ho ホ
|
-h 6 |
-ah ハ | | -ih ヒ |
-uh フ |
-eh ヘ |
-oh ホ
|
rowspan=2>p 1 |
pa パ< | | | pi ピ |
pu プ |
pe ペ |
po ポ
|
colspan=5>-p プ |
|
ma マ< | | | mi ミ |
mu ム |
me メ |
mo モ
|
colspan=5>-m ム |
y< | |
ya ヤ | | |
yu ユ |
ye イェ |
yo ヨ
|
rowspan=3>r |
ra ラ< | | | ri リ |
ru ル |
re レ |
ro ロ
|
-ar ラ2 |
-ir リ2 | | -ur ル2 |
-er レ2 |
-or ロ2
|
colspan=5>-r ル2 |
w |
wa ワ | | wi ウィ/ヰ 2 |
|
we ウェ/ヱ 2 |
wo ウォ/ヲ 2
|
:
1: ''k'', ''t'', ''c'', ''p'' are sometimes voiced 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: before , before , elsewhere. Unlike Japanese, it does not become other sounds such as
nasal vowels.
:
6: Initial ''h'' and final ''h'' are different phenomes. Final ''h'' exists in Sakhalin dialect only.
Diphthongs
Final is spelled ''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 |
|
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'':
!! !! !! !!
|
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 a rich
oral tradition of hero-sagas called ''
yukar'', which retain a number of grammatical and lexical archaisms.
Notes
References
Further reading
(Published by the METHODIST PUBLISHING HOUSE, Ginza, Tokyo London KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER, CO.)(the University of Michigan)(Digitized Dec 8, 2006)
((PUBLISHED BY THE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY, TOKYO)(Harvard University)(Digitized Nov 30, 2007)
(Harvard University)(Digitized Oct 8, 2008)
(Harvard University)(Digitized Oct 8, 2008 )
(Harvard University)(Digitized Jun 9, 2008)
(Compiled by Mashiho Chiri)(the University of Michigan)(Digitized Aug 15, 2006)
(the University of Michigan)(Digitized May 14, 2008)
See also
List of Ainu terms
Ainu music
Kannari Matsu
Kyōsuke Kindaichi
Bronisław Piłsudski
External links
Literature and materials for learning Ainu
The ''Book of Common Prayer'' in Ainu
Ethnologue entry for Ainu
Information at the Rosetta Project
Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Ainu in Samani, Hokkaidō
''A Grammar of the Ainu Language'' by John Batchelor
''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
Radio lessons on Ainu language presented by Sapporo TV
Ainu word list (
Archived 2009-10-24)
Category:Subject–object–verb languages
Category:Endangered language isolates
ar:لغة آينوية
ast:Llingua ainu
bn:আইনু ভাষা
zh-min-nan:Ainu-gú
be-x-old:Мова айну
bg:Айнски език
bo:ཨའི་ནུ་སྐད།
br:Ainoueg
ca:Ainu
cv:Айну чĕлхи
cs:Ainština
de:Ainu (Sprache)
es:Idioma ainu
eo:Ajnua lingvo
eu:Ainuera
fa:زبان آینو
fr:Aïnou (langue du Japon)
gl:Lingua ainu
ko:아이누어
hr:Ainu (izolirani jezik)
id:Bahasa Ainu
os:Айнаг æвзаг
is:Aínúmál
it:Lingua ainu
he:איינו (שפה)
ka:აინუური ენა
kv:Айну кыв
la:Lingua Ainuana
lt:Ainų kalba
mk:Аину јазик
ms:Bahasa Ainu
nl:Aino (taal)
ja:アイヌ語
no:Ainu (språk)
oc:Aino (lenga)
pms:Lenga ainu
nds:Ainu (Spraak)
pl:Język ajnuski
pt:Língua ainu
ro:Limba ainu
ru:Айнский язык
scn:Lingua ainu
simple:Ainu language
sr:Аину језик
fi:Ainun kieli
sv:Ainu (språk)
ta:ஐனு மொழி
th:ภาษาไอนุ
uk:Айнська мова
vi:Tiếng Ainu
zh:阿伊努語