Ainu language

File:WIKITONGUES- Teruyo speaking Ainu.webm

An Ainu speaker, recorded in Japan

Ainu (, ), or more precisely Hokkaido Ainu (Template:Langx), 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 with no academic consensus of origin. It is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.

Until the 20th century, the Ainu languages – Hokkaido Ainu and the now-extinct Kuril Ainu and Sakhalin Ainu – were spoken throughout Hokkaido, the southern half of the island of Sakhalin and by small numbers of people in the Kuril Islands. 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. A very low number of elderly people still speak the language fluently, though attempts are being made to revive it.

Speakers

The entrance to the carpark of the Pirka Kotan Museum.

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

The term "Ainu" comes from the endonym of the Ainu people, (), meaning "people" or "human".

According to UNESCO, Ainu is an endangered language with few native speakers.Template:Sfnp Although there are estimated to be at least 30,000 Ainu people in Japan,Template:Sfnp there is a low rate of self-identification as Ainu among people with Ainu ethnic roots.Template:Sfnp Knowledge of the language was already endangered by the 1960s and has continued to decline since. In 2011Template:Dated maintenance category (articles), just 304 people within Japan were reported to understand the Ainu language to some extent.Template:Sfnp since 2016Template:Dated maintenance category (articles), Ethnologue listed Ainu as "nearly extinct" (class 8b).

In 2017, 671 people aged 15 or above from 291 randomly selected households participated in a Hokkaido government survey on the lives of Ainu people. Participants were believed to be descendants of Ainu people or those who joined Ainu families by marriage or adoption. In response to survey questions about fluency in the Ainu language, 0.7% of participants answered that they "would be able to have a conversation" in Ainu, 3.4% answered that they "would be able to converse a little", 44.6% answered they "couldn't speak but had some knowledge about Ainu language", and 48.1% answered that they "couldn't speak at all".

In a subsequent survey of 472 respondents in 2023, 0.8% of respondents answered that they "would be able to have a conversation" in Ainu, 8.9% answered they "would be able to converse a little", 19.3% answered they "could barely converse at all", and 69.3% answered they "would not be able to converse at all" .

Ainu language usage amongst Ainu people in Hokkaido, surveys 1993-2023

Ainu language level	1993	1999	2006	2013	2017	2023
Can hold a conversation (%)	0.8	0.8	0.7	0.9	0.7	0.8
Can speak a little (%)	5.4	4.5	3.9	6.3	3.4	8.9
Cannot speak but have some knowledge (%)	37.1	38.3	32.4	44.2	44.6	REDIRECT Template:En dash
Neither speak nor understand (%)	54.8	51.6	61.2	46.2	48.1	REDIRECT Template:En dash
Unknown (%)	1.9	4.8	1.7	2.4	3.1	1.7
Sample size (# of Respondents)	642	715	712	586	671	472

Official recognition

The Japanese government made a decision to recognize Ainu as an indigenous language in June 2008.Template:Sfnp The Japanese government approved and passed a bill officially recognising the indigeneity of the Ainu people in 2019.

On 12 July 2020, the Japanese government opened the National Ainu Museum in Shiraoi, Hokkaido. It forms one of three institutions named Upopoy (which means 'singing in a large group' in the Ainu language) alongside the National Ainu Park and a memorial site on high ground on the east side of Lake Poroto (ポロト湖) where Ainu services are held. Its director, Masahiro Nomoto, says that "One of our main objectives is to preserve and revive the language, as this is one of the most threatened elements of Ainu culture".

Announcements on some bus routes in Hokkaido can since be heard in Ainu, efforts are being undertaken to archive Ainu speech recordings by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, and there is a popular educational YouTube channel which teaches conversational Ainu.

While these measures have been praised for taking steps to protect the Ainu language and culture, the museum and related government efforts have been criticised for failing to acknowledge the history of Japanese discrimination against the Ainu people, and for the government's refusal to apologise for past misdeeds against the Ainu.

Phonology

Ainu syllables are (C)V(C); they have an obligatory vowel, and an optional syllable onset and coda consisting of one consonant. There are few consonant clusters.

Vowels

There are five vowels in Ainu:

	Front	Central	Back
Close	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
Mid	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
Open		Template:IPA link

Consonants

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
Plosive	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
Affricate		Template:IPA link
Fricative		Template:IPA link			Template:IPA link
Flap		Template:IPA link
Semivowel			Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link

Obstruents may be voiced between vowels and after nasals. can be heard as Template:IPAblink in free variation among speakers. Both and are realized as , and becomes Template:IPAblink before and at the end of syllables. is heard as Template:IPAblink when occurring before . is heard as Template:IPAblink when before , as well as in final position. A glottal stop Template:IPAblink is often inserted at the beginning of words, before an accented vowel, but is non-phonemic.

The Ainu language also has a pitch accent system. Generally, words containing affixes 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.

Ainu has a canonical word order of subject, object, verb, and 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 , 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 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.

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).Template:Sfnp

Saru Ainu agreement affixesTemplate:Sfnp

		Subject		Object
		Intransitive	Transitive (Agent)
1st person	singular	ku- ク-		en- エン-
	plural	-as -アㇲ	ci- チ-	un- ウン-
2nd person	singular	e- エ-
	plural	eci- エチ-
3rd person		Ø-
4th person		-an -アン	a- ア-	i- イ

Writing

File:Yoanne-Batchelor-01.png

Gospel of John in Latin-script Ainu

The Ainu language is written in a modified version of the Japanese katakana syllabary, although it is possible for Japanese loan words and names to be written in kanji (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, 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 boundaries, such as after a prefix. Its pitch accent is denoted by acute accent in Latin script (e.g., á). This is usually not denoted in katakana.

The Rev. John Batchelor 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 translation was published in Yokohama in 1897 by a joint committee of the British and Foreign Bible Society, the American Bible Society, and the National Bible Society of Scotland. Other books written in Ainu include dictionaries, a grammar, and books on Ainu culture and language.

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 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.

Character	Unicode	Name	Ainu usage	Pronunciation
	31F0	Katakana Letter Small Ku	Final k	Template:IPAslink
	31F1	Katakana Letter Small Shi	Final s Template:IPAblink	Template:IPAslink or Template:IPAslink
	31F2	Katakana Letter Small Su	Final s, used to emphasize its pronunciation as Template:IPAblink rather than Template:IPAblink. Template:IPAblink and Template:IPAblink are allophones in Ainu.	Template:IPAslink
	31F3	Katakana Letter Small To	Final t	Template:IPAslink
	31F4	Katakana Letter Small Nu	Final n	Template:IPAslink
	31F5	Katakana Letter Small Ha	Final h Template:IPAblink, succeeding the vowel a. (e.g. ah) Sakhalin Ainu only.	Template:IPAslink or Template:IPAslink
	31F6	Katakana Letter Small Hi	Final h Template:IPAblink, succeeding the vowel i. (e.g. ih) Sakhalin Ainu only.	Template:IPAslink or Template:IPAslink
	31F7	Katakana Letter Small Fu	Final h Template:IPAblink, succeeding the vowel u. (e.g. uh) Sakhalin Ainu only.	Template:IPAslink or Template:IPAslink
	31F8	Katakana Letter Small He	Final h Template:IPAblink, succeeding the vowel e. (e.g. eh) Sakhalin Ainu only.	Template:IPAslink or Template:IPAslink
	31F9	Katakana Letter Small Ho	Final h Template:IPAblink, succeeding the vowel o. (e.g. oh) Sakhalin Ainu only.	Template:IPAslink or Template:IPAslink
	31FA	Katakana Letter Small Mu	Final m	Template:IPAslink Voiced bilabial nasal
	31FB	Katakana Letter Small Ra	Final r Template:IPAblink, succeeding the vowel a. (e.g. ar)	Template:IPAslink Voiced alveolar tap
	31FC	Katakana Letter Small Ri	Final r Template:IPAblink, succeeding the vowel i. (e.g. ir)	Template:IPAslink Voiced alveolar tap
	31FD	Katakana Letter Small Ru	Final r Template:IPAblink, succeeding the vowel u. (e.g. ur)	Template:IPAslink Voiced alveolar tap
	31FE	Katakana Letter Small Re	Final r Template:IPAblink, succeeding the vowel e. (e.g. er)	Template:IPAslink Voiced alveolar tap
	31FF	Katakana Letter Small Ro	Final r Template:IPAblink, succeeding the vowel o. (e.g. or)	Template:IPAslink Voiced alveolar tap
Characters represented using combining characters
	31F7 + 309A	Katakana Letter Small Pu	Final p	Template:IPAslink
	30BB + 309A	Katakana Letter Se With Semi-Voiced Sound Mark	ce	Template:IPAslink + Template:IPAslink
	30C4 + 309A	Katakana Letter Tu With Semi-Voiced Sound Mark	tu. and are interchangeable.	Template:IPAslink + Template:IPAslink
	30C8 + 309A	Katakana Letter To With Semi-Voiced Sound Mark		Template:IPAslink + Template:IPAslink

Basic syllables

	a Template:IPAblink	i Template:IPAblink	u Template:IPAblink	e Template:IPAblink	o Template:IPAblink
	a ア	i イ	u ウ	e エ	o オ
k Template:IPAblink	ka カ	ki キ	ku ク	ke ケ	ko コ
	-k ㇰ
s Template:IPAblink ~ Template:IPAblink	sa シャ / サ ~	si シ	su シュ / ス ~	se シェ / セ ~	so ショ / ソ ~
	-s ㇱ / ㇲ
t Template:IPAblink	ta タ	ci チ	tu /	te テ	to ト
	-t ㇳ / ッ
c Template:IPAblink ~ Template:IPAblink	ca チャ ~	ci チ	cu ツ / チュ ~	ce / チェ ~	co チョ ~
n Template:IPAblink	na ナ	ni ニ	nu ヌ	ne ネ	no ノ
	-n ㇴ / ン , ,
h Template:IPAblink	ha ハ	hi ヒ	hu フ	he ヘ	ho ホ
-h	-ah ㇵ	-ih ㇶ	-uh ㇷ	-eh ㇸ	-oh ㇹ
p Template:IPAblink	pa パ	pi ピ	pu プ	pe ペ	po ポ
	-p ㇷ゚
m Template:IPAblink	ma マ	mi ミ	mu ム	me メ	mo モ
	-m ㇺ
y Template:IPAblink	ya ヤ		yu ユ	ye イェ	yo ヨ
r Template:IPAblink	ra ラ	ri リ	ru ル	re レ	ro ロ
	-ar ㇻ	-ir ㇼ	-ur ㇽ	-er ㇾ	-or ㇿ
	-r ㇽ
w Template:IPAblink	wa ワ	wi ウィ / ヰ		we ウェ / ヱ	wo ウォ / ヲ

Diphthongs

Final Template:IPAblink is spelled y in Latin, small ィ in katakana. Final Template:IPAblink 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 k:

カィ	クィ	ケィ	コィ	カゥ	キゥ	ケゥ	コゥ
カイ	クイ	ケイ	コイ	カウ	キウ	ケウ	コウ

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

	ウィ	クィ	コウ	スィ	ティ	トゥ	フィ
Ainu
Japanese

Oral literature

The Ainu have a rich oral tradition 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.Template:Sfnp Ainu literature includes nonfiction, such as their history and "hunting adventures," and fiction such as stories about spiritual avatars, magic,Template:Sfnp myths, and heroes.Template:Sfnp

Research on oral literature

The oral literature of the Ainu languages has been studied mainly by Japanese and European researchers;Template:Sfnp thus, Ainu literature has been transcribed using writing systems such as Japanese katakana (commonly used for foreign-language text) and the Latin alphabet, and documented in the languages of the researchers themselves.Template:Sfnp One prominent researcher of the Ainu languages is Bronisław Piłsudski, a Polish anthropologist who lived in Sakhalin from 1886 to 1905,Template:Sfnp and who published "Materials for the Study of the Ainu Language and Folklore" in 1912.Template:Sfnp 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.Template:Sfnp Japanese linguist Kyosuke Kindaichi is also famous for his work on the oral literature of the Ainu languages,Template:Sfnp and for his publication in 1913.

Recent history

Many of the speakers of Ainu lost the language with the advent of Japanese colonization, which formally began with the establishment of the Hokkaido Colonization Office in 1869. Japanese officials viewed the assimilation of Ainu a critical component of the Hokkaido colonization project, and developed policies designed to discourage or eliminate the use of the Ainu language, cultural practices, and traditional lifeways.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp The assimilation included the exploitation of Ainu land, the commodification of their culture, and the placing of Ainu children in schools where they learned only Japanese.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

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.Template:SfnpTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

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.Template:Sfnp

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.Template:Sfnp 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.Template:Sfnp 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.Template:Sfnp Beginning in 1987, the Ainu Association of Hokkaido, with approximately 500 members,Template:Sfnp began hosting 14 Ainu language classes, Ainu language instructors training courses and Family Ainu Learning InitiativeTemplate:Sfnp and have released instructional materials on the language, including a textbook.Template:Sfnp Also, Yamato linguists teach Ainu and train students to become Ainu instructors in university.Template:Sfnp In spite of these efforts, since 2011Template:Dated maintenance category (articles) the Ainu language was not yet taught as a subject in any secondary school in Japan.Template:Sfnp

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.Template:Sfnp This act had aims to promote, disseminate, and advocate on behalf of Ainu cultural traditions.Template:Sfnp The main issue with this act however, was that not a single Ainu person was included in the "Expert" meetings prior to the law's passage, and as a result of this there was no mention of language education and how it should be carried out.Template:Sfnp The focus at this point was on Ainu culture revitalization rather than Ainu language revitalization.

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 member Shigeru Kayano, himself a native speaker, who first opened an Ainu language school in 1987 funded by Ainu Kyokai.Template:Sfnp The Ainu Association of Hokkaido is the main supporter of Ainu culture in Hokkaido.Template:Sfnp 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.Template:Sfnp 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.Template:Sfnp 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 founded under the name , after 'god of the wind' (its current name is Levanga Hokkaido).Template:Sfnp 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.Template:Sfnp

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.

On 15 February 2019, Japan 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 and Russia.

In 2019, researchers working together from both the Society for Academic Research of Ainu (SARC), representatives from Hokkaido University, and with the assistance of linguists spanning multiple universities and countries assisted in the creation of AI Pirika, an AI created with the goal of assisting with speech recognition and serving as a conversation partner.

Sample text

Below is a sample text from a traditional Ainu folktale, in Ainu, Japanese and English.

Ainu original	Latin transliteration	Japanese translation	English translation
			One day, as I went out to play at the spring, there was a little man at the spring hitting stakes made of walnut wood, in order to erect (some) wooden beams. His hip bent (and he bent down) and he straightened out (as he worked, going up and down over and over).

Further reading

• Miyake, Marc. 2010. Is the itak an isolate?

External links

• Literature and materials for learning Ainu Template:Webarchive
• The Book of Common Prayer in Ainu, translated by John Batchelor, digitized by Richard Mammana and Charles Wohlers
• Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Ainu in Samani, Hokkaido
• 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 Template:Webarchive by Kane Kumagai, translated by Yongdeok Cho
• Radio lessons on Ainu language presented by Sapporo TV Template:In lang
• A talking dictionary of Ainu: a new version of Kanazawa's Ainu conversational dictionary, with recordings of Mrs. Setsu Kurokawa