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Before you head to the actual Ainu lessons, there are a few things that are good to know before you start learning the grammar of Ainu.
First, I want you to know that I have tried my best to make this site as easy to approach as possible but I have a tendency to get a bit technical sometimes. I'm a linguist, so the terms I use on this site are normal to me, but can "be total Greek" to you. I review the pages regularly and try to make them more readable for you non-linguists out there, too.
On this page you can find information about Ainu varieties (also called Ainu dialects), about writing Ainu and which orthography to use, and also how to pronounce Ainu.
The Ainu varieties and the variety used on this site
There are several Ainu varieties, of which you can read more on the about the Ainu language page. The language can be divided roughly in three large varieties: Hokkaido Ainu, Sakhalin Ainu, and Kuril Ainu, which can again be divided in even smaller and more local varieties.
The variety (or dialect, if you wish to call it so) used on this site is the Saru variety spoken along the Saru river in southeastern Hokkaido. The Saru variety is probably the best documented of all the Ainu varieties, so it is useful to use it as a base for the page. The varieties differ mostly in phonology, prosody (word accent etc.), vocabulary, and word-formation, and sometimes in grammar, too. All the Hokkaido varieties are in general mutually intelligible but it might be difficult to understand Sakhalin varieties if you are a Hokkaido Ainu speaker and the other way around.
If you have studied Ainu before, for example using virtually the only modern source available online, the Unilang Ainu for beginners, you might notice some differences in the vocabulary between that material and this site. Unilang course is about Ainu Samani variety.
Ainu orthography and writing Ainu
Ainu is not a standardized language in anyway; it does not have just one version that everyone learns and speaks but the speakers decide themselves which varieties they want to use. Also, there is not a consensus of what kind of writing system should be used when writing Ainu and how that writing system should be used. The language has been written down with Japanese katakana and hiragana characters by Japanese, Cyril alphabet by Russians and other Slavs, and with Latin alphabet by Europeans and Americans and other people as well. The Ainu themselves use today mainly the modified katakana script and the Latin alphabet, often both side by side.
This site is for English speakers, who don't know how to read Japanese, so I only use the Latin alphabet here to write Ainu. There is no need for an English speaker to learn the Ainu katakana writing. Latin alphabet is also my personal preference for writing Ainu, because it is much more logical in describing the different sounds of the language (compared to the modified katakana syllabary). Katakana is after all developed to describe the sound system of Japanese, not any other language. You can read more about the pros and cons of different Ainu writing systems on the About the Ainu language page.
The double hyphen (⹀) or equal sign (=) in Ainu orthography
If you have seen written Ainu before, you might have noticed that equal signs (=) are sprinkled here and there in the text. What does it mean? Well, at some point people thought that it would be a good idea to make a clear difference in writing between the person marker and the word the person marker is attached to. To do this, a double hyphen (⹀) was used. Double hyphens have several usages depending on the language, but one of the most common uses is to put them in between an affix and a freestanding word to mark the word boundary and to tell that the other part of the compound is not an independent word. In Ainu, double hyphen has been used to mark the boundary between the person marker and the word it is attached to, for example, ku⹀hosipi. (ku- 'I', hosipi 'to go home'). The double hyphen has no phonetic value and the word is pronounced as one word (eg. kuhosipi).
However, it's very difficult to type double hyphens on a computer keyboard (or with a smartphone), so most of the people just simply replace the double hyphen with an equal sign, eg. ku=hosipi. (If you look carefully, you can see that the length of the lines is different: equal sign (=) has longer lines than a double hyphen (⹀). Also, double hyphen sits more tightly between the person marker and the verb. The differences are more obvious depending on the font.)
I personally find using the equal sign a bit distracting; I always stop for a second to think how I should process the character. Even though I know what it means, my brain always reads it first as 'ku equals hosipi' and I get confused. That's why I prefer using a single hyphen instead when I write Ainu: ku-hosipi. In other words, I prefer function over form. It is perfectly fine to write Ainu in both ways and in some older texts you can't find any hyphens—single or double—or equal signs at all: kuhosipi. I think any method is fine but I prefer to keep the equal sign off my writing also because it might confuse not only human readers of my texts but also computers. Maybe we'll someday get a unified guidelines how to write Ainu and this problem will also be solved.
Ainu phonology and pronunciation
The sound inventory of Ainu is quite small. There are five vowels /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ and 11 consonants /ch/, /h/, /j/, /k/, /m/, /n/, /p/, /r/, /s/, /t/, and /w/.
/a/ is pronounced as [a] in 'father'.
/e/ is pronounced as [eɪ] in 'play'.
/i/ is pronounced as [iː] in 'keep'.
/o/ is pronounced as [oʊ] in 'go'.
/u/ is pronounced approximately as [uː] in 'tool'.
/ch/ is pronounced as [ts] in 'tsunami' except before /i/ it's pronounced as [tʃ] in 'church'. In writing, it's written as 'c'.
/h/ is pronounced as [h] in 'high', except before /u/ it becomes more like [ɸ] (a kind of /f/ sound).
/j/ is pronounced as [j] in 'you'. It's also written the same way as in English: 'y'
/k/ is pronounced as [k] in 'cat'. At the end of the syllable/word its pronunciation is unreleased (there is no air flowing out when pronounced). This unreleased sound is difficult for an English speaker to hear, and most people don't even realize there is a sound there.
/m/ is pronounced as [m] in 'mat'.
/n/ is pronounced as [n] in 'nod'.
/p/ is pronounced as [p] in 'pepper'. At the end of the syllable/word its pronunciation is unreleased (there is no air flowing out when pronounced). This unreleased sound is difficult for an English speaker to hear, and most people don't even realize there is a sound there.
/ɾ/ is a flap, like in the Spanish word 'pero' or Japanese word 'karate'. It's written as 'r'.
/s/ is pronounced as [s] in 'sit'. It becomes /sh/ [ʃ] before /i/ and at the end of a syllable, but it's always written as 's' only (not as 'sh').
/t/ is pronounced as [t] in 'matter'. At the end of the syllable/word its pronunciation is unreleased (there is no air flowing out when pronounced). This unreleased sound is difficult for an English speaker to hear, and most people don't even realize there is a sound there.
/w/ is pronounced as [w] in 'we'.
Ainu makes no difference between voiced and unvoiced stops, so /k/ can be /g/, /p/ can be /b/ and /t/ can be /d/. Unvoiced pronunciation seems to be more common among today's Ainu speakers. Also /s/ can be pronounced as /z/ or /ʃ/ and /c/ can be pronounced as /tʃ/.
When /ɾ/ sound is at the end of the word, some speakers have a habit of copying the preceding vowel after the /ɾ/. For example, ker 'shoes' might be pronounced as /keɾ/ or /keɾe/ or /keɾə/ depending on the speaker.
Syllable structure
Ainu has two kinds of syllables: CV (consonant-vowel) and CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) syllables.
Examples of CV syllables
pa (N) — yearsa (N) — older sisterma (VI) — to swimExamples of CVC syllables
yuk (N) — deerhaw (N) — voicerir (N) — waveSo, you might wonder how the words that appear in the name of this website—aynu and itak—are then possible? Well, it is thought that the first syllables of those words have a CV structure because there is a glottal stop in front of the vowels. Some researchers, like Suzuko Tamura in her earlier writings, marked the glottal stop with /'/. So, aynu and itak would be then:
'ay.nu (N) — (1) Ainu (2) human being; person'i.tak (N) — language; speech; wordsI don't mark the glottal stop like that in general on this site, only when needed.
Word accent
The accent of Ainu words are on the first syllable if the syllable is a closed syllable, and on the second syllable is the syllable is an open syllable. There are also some words with irregular accents.
Examples of words starting with a closed syllable (accented syllable marked with acute accent mark /´/)
téy.ne (VI) — to be wetkór.ka (CONJ) — buttán.to (ADV/N) — todayExamples of words starting with an open syllable
ka.rús (N) — mushroompa.ték (PRT) — only; nothing butmi.mús (VI) — to be fatExamples of words with irregular accent
ré.ra (N) — windnú.pe (N) — tearshú.re (VI) — to be rednú.man (ADV/N) — yesterdayAssimilation
Some of the sounds assimilate to the sound coming after them. Watch out especially for words ending with -r or -n.
r + n→ n + n ex. ku-kor nonno (my flower) → /kukon nonno/
r + t → t + t ex. ku-kor tasiro (my machete) → /kukot tashiro/
r + c→ t + c ex. ku-kor cise (my house) → /kukot chise/
r + r → n + r ex. ku-mokor rusuy (I want to sleep) → /kumokon rusuy/
n + s → y + s ex. pon seta (a small dog; puppy) → /poy seta/
n + w → m + m ex. an wa (it is (there)!) → /am ma/
Now that you know approximately how to interpret and pronounce the words you see on the Ainu language lessons of this site, you are ready to go to the first lesson!
Created on 2023/2/10, Latest update on 2023/9/27