Hokkaidō Ainu

The Ainu language (Ainu Itak) is spoken by the Ainu ethnic group in northern Japan and Sakhalin. Although typologically similar in some respects to Japanese, Ainu is a language isolate with no known relation to other languages.

(There is also an unrelated Turkic language spoken in western China known as Ainu, variously spelled Aynu or Aini.)

Speakers

Ainu is a moribund language, with a small and rapidly dwindling number of speakers; a 1996 estimate lists only 15 active speakers out of some 15,000 ethnic Ainu (Ethnologue). Most Ainu in Japan speak only Japanese.

Phonology

Syllables are CV or CVC, there are few consonant clusters.

Vowels: /i, e, a, o, u/

Consonants: /p t k ' tS s h r m n j w/

There is some variation among dialects.

Typology and grammar

Ainu is SOV, with postpositions. Subject and object are generally not marked. 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.

Writing

No formal orthography exists for writing Ainu; Latin-based scripts devised by linguists, as well as the Japanese katakana syllabary are variously used.

Oral literature

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

Research of Ainu language and culture

An extensive research on Ainu language and the culture of Ainu was performed by a Polish antropologist Bronislaw Pilsudski.