Lastest update 2025/2/17! Lesson 11 on relative clauses is out now.
Welcome! eci-kopuntek na! This webpage is for learning the basics of Ainu—the language of indigenous Ainu people, now mostly living in Japan. Ainu language is deemed as critically endangered with no fluent speakers left but there are several initiatives to reclaim the language.
There is not much practical Ainu learning material available for English speakers, but this site tries to fill that gap. And you can use it for free! So, if you were looking for free online Ainu lessons, free Ainu grammar guide, and free Ainu learning material, you've arrived to the right place.
If you have absolutely no idea about the Ainu language, head first to the Start here! page.
You can find the Ainu language lessons in the menu under the Basic Ainu Lessons menu or go to the index of all Basic Ainu Lessons.
There are also vocabulary lists for the lessons but you can use them also as a small Ainu-English-Ainu dictionary when you want to look up an Ainu word in English or an English word in Ainu. The word lists go both ways, Ainu-English and English-Ainu.
What does nispa mean? How do you say 'hello' in Ainu? If you just want to know some Ainu phrases or meaning of common words, you can check out the Common Ainu phrases page.
There is also a small list of resources for studying and learning Ainu language legends and old stories.
So, I hope this site is useful for both the people who want to learn Ainu grammar and the structure of the Ainu language and also for people who just want to learn some Ainu words.
If you want to know more about the Ainu language in general, look at the About the Ainu language page in the About section. You can learn more about this page in the same section, under About this site.
Created on 2023/2/10, Latest update on 2024/10/9