Ainu language

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For the language spoken in Central Asia, see Aini language.
Ainu
アイヌ イタク Aynu itak 
Pronunciation: IPA: ai̯nu itak̚
Spoken in: Japan, Russia 
Region: Hokkaidō, formerly Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, the tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula, and Tōhoku in Honshū
Total speakers: near-extinct, 15 speakers in Japan were known in 1991[1]
Language family: language isolate
 Ainu
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: ain [2]
ISO/FDIS 639-3: ain
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

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

[edit] Relation to other languages

Ainu is generally thought to be 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.

[edit] Speakers

Ainu is a moribund language, and has been endangered for at least the past few decades. Most of the 150,000 self-proclaimed ethnic Ainu in Japan (many additional Ainu are not aware of their origins or are secretive for fear of discrimination)[citation needed] 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.[citation needed] 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 revitalization movement — 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.

[edit] 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 p   t   k ʔ
Affricate     ts      
Nasal m   n      
Fricative     s     h
Approximant   w   j    
Tap/flap     ɾ      

The glottal stop /ʔ/ only occurs at the beginning of words, before an accented vowel. The sequence /ti/ is realized as [ʧi] and /s/ becomes [ʃ] before /i/ and at the end of syllables. The affricate /ts/ has voiced and post-alveolar variants. There is some variation among dialects; in the Sakhalin dialect, syllable-final /p, t, k, r/ lenited and merged into /x/. After an /i/, this /x/ is pronounced as [ç].

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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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, /ts/ is spelt c and /j/ as y; /ʔ/, 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.

[edit] 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.[3][4]. 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
ㇰ 31F0 ク (small katakana ku) KATAKANA LETTER SMALL KU (AINU K)
ㇱ 31F1 シ (small katakana shi) KATAKANA LETTER SMALL SI (AINU SI?)
ㇲ 31F2 ス (small katakana su) KATAKANA LETTER SMALL SU (AINU S?)
ㇳ 31F3 ト (small katakana to) KATAKANA LETTER SMALL TO (AINU T)
ㇴ 31F4 ヌ (small katakana nu) KATAKANA LETTER SMALL NU (AINU N)
ㇵ 31F5 ハ (small katakana ha) KATAKANA LETTER SMALL HA (AINU A)
ㇶ 31F6 ヒ (small katakana hi) KATAKANA LETTER SMALL HI (AINU I)
ㇷ 31F7 フ (small katakana fu) KATAKANA LETTER SMALL HU (AINU U)
ㇸ 31F8 ヘ (small katakana he) KATAKANA LETTER SMALL HE (AINU E)
ㇹ 31F9 ホ (small katakana ho) KATAKANA LETTER SMALL HO (AINU O)
ㇺ 31FA ム (small katakana mu) KATAKANA LETTER SMALL MU (AINU M)
ㇻ 31FB ラ (small katakana ra) KATAKANA LETTER SMALL RA (AINU AR)
ㇼ 31FC リ (small katakana ri) KATAKANA LETTER SMALL RI (AINU IR)
ㇽ 31FD ル (small katakana ru) KATAKANA LETTER SMALL RU (AINU UR)
ㇾ 31FE レ (small katakana re) KATAKANA LETTER SMALL RE (AINU ER)
ㇿ 31FF ロ (small katakana ro) KATAKANA LETTER SMALL RO (AINU OR)
Rejected characters (UNICODE represents substitute sequences)
N/A 31F7 + 309A プ (small katakana pu) KATAKANA LETTER SMALL PU (AINU P)
N/A 30AB + 309A カ゜ (katakana ka with dakuten) KATAKANA LETTER KA WITH SEMI-VOICED SOUND MARK (AINU NGA)
N/A 30AD + 309A キ゜ (katakana ki with dakuten) KATAKANA LETTER KI WITH SEMI-VOICED SOUND MARK (AINU NGI)
N/A 30AF + 309A ク゜ (katakana ku with dakuten) KATAKANA LETTER KU WITH SEMI-VOICED SOUND MARK (AINU NGU)
N/A 30B1 + 309A ケ゜ (katakana ke with dakuten) KATAKANA LETTER KE WITH SEMI-VOICED SOUND MARK (AINU NGE)
N/A 30B3 + 309A コ゜ (katakana ko with dakuten) KATAKANA LETTER KO WITH SEMI-VOICED SOUND MARK (AINU NGO)
N/A 30BB + 309A セ゜ (katakana se with dakuten) KATAKANA LETTER SE WITH SEMI-VOICED SOUND MARK (AINU CE)
N/A 30C4 + 309A ツ゜ (katakana tsu with dakuten) KATAKANA LETTER TU WITH SEMI-VOICED SOUND MARK (AINU TU)
N/A 30C8 + 309A ト゜ (katakana to with dakuten) KATAKANA LETTER TO WITH SEMI-VOICED SOUND MARK (AINU TO)
Other special characters
ヷ 30F7 Not extended katakana KATAKANA LETTER VA
ヸ 30F8 Not extended katakana KATAKANA LETTER VI
ヹ 30F9 Not extended katakana KATAKANA LETTER VE
ヺ 30FA Not extended katakana KATAKANA LETTER VO

[edit] Oral literature

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

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ SIL Ethnologue, 15th edition (2005)
  2. ^ ISO 639-2/RA Change Notice - Codes for the representation of names of languages (Library of Congress). Retrieved on November 15, 2005.
  3. ^ Katakana Phonetic Extensions - Test for Unicode support in Web browsers. Retrieved on December 14, 2005.
  4. ^ The Unicode Standard, 4.1. Retrieved on December 14, 2006.

[edit] References

  • Patrie, James (1982). The Genetic Relationship of the Ainu Language. Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii. ISBN 0-8248-0724-3.
  • Tamura, Suzuko (2000). The Ainu Language. Tokyo: Sanseido. ISBN 4-385-35976-8.
  • Vovin, Alexander (1993). A Reconstruction of Proto-Ainu. Leiden: E. J. Brill. ISBN 90-04-09905-0.
  • Shibatani, Masayoshi (1990). The Languages of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-36918-5.
  • Greenberg, Joseph H. (2000-2002). Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-3812-2, ISBN 0-8047-4624-9.

[edit] External links

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