Ainu (Ainu: , aynu
itak; Japanese:
ainu-go; Cyrillic
alphabet: ) is an Ainu language
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.
However, use of the language is on the rise. 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.
There are five
vowels:
Consonants:
The glottal stop only occurs at the beginning of words, before an
accented vowel. The sequence is realized as , and becomes before
and at the end of syllables. The affricate has voiced and
post-alveolar variants.
There is some variation among dialects; in
the Sakhalin dialect,
syllable-final , , , lenited and merged
into . After an , this is pronounced .
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
[10979],
[10980] 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 feature a
handakuten. As few fonts yet support these
extensions, workarounds exist for many of the characters, such as
the small katakana
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.
| 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 it's pronounced rather than
normal . 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) |
| Rejected characters (Unicode
represents them 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゜ and ト゜ are interchangeable. |
|
30C8 + 309A |
|
Katakana Letter To With Semi-Voiced Sound Mark |
tu. ツ゜ and ト゜ are interchangeable. |
|
Basic syllables
|
a
|
i
|
u
|
e
|
o
|
|
a ア
|
i イ
|
u ウ
|
e エ
|
o オ
|
k
1 |
ka カ
|
ki キ
|
ku ク
|
ke ケ
|
ko コ
|
-k ク
|
s
~ |
sa シャ/サ 2
~ |
si シ
|
su シュ/ス 2
~ |
se シェ/セ 2
~ |
so ショ/ソ 2
~ |
-s シ/ス
2
|
t
1 |
ta タ
|
ci チ
|
tu ト゜/ツ゜ 2
|
te テ
|
to ト
|
-t ト/ッ 3
|
c
~ 1 |
ca チャ
~ |
ci チ
|
cu チュ
~ |
ce チェ
~ |
co チョ
~ |
n
|
na ナ
|
ni ニ
|
nu ヌ
|
ne ネ
|
no ノ
|
-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
|
p
1 |
pa パ
|
pi ピ
|
pu プ
|
pe ペ
|
po ポ
|
-p プ
|
m
|
ma マ
|
mi ミ
|
mu ム
|
me メ
|
mo モ
|
-m ム
|
y
[j]}} |
ya ヤ
|
|
yu ユ
|
ye イェ
|
yo ヨ
|
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
|
-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 spelt
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.
See also
References and further reading
External links
Japanese
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