On this page, you can find common Ainu phrases. If you want to learn about Ainu grammar and Ainu sentence structure in general, take a look at Ainu language grammar lessons.
Many people might find it strange, but Ainu doesn't have a greeting corresponding to English 'hello' or 'hi'.
If you google 'how to say hello in Ainu', the first search result probably says that the phrase you are looking for is irankarapte. The phrase is probably the most widely known Ainu word, and the Irankarapte campaign launched in 2013 is one of the reasons for that. However, it's more complicated than this: Not all Ainu used this phrase or their local variant of it, and not all Ainu accept the way the phrase is used today. Irankarapte was originally a phrase that was used by Ainu men as a formal greeting and some people think it should stay so. There are also forms inankarapte (Tokachi region) and irankarahte (Sakhalin Ainu). On the other hand, there are many Ainu who routinely use this phrase in its modern meaning. I write this just that you know to be careful to use this phrase; using it as a casual greeting might have the adverse effect you intended.
In the sphere where Saru variety is spoken, a more widely accepted old way to say 'hello' is to use a word for family relations that matches the person you are talking to and attach the question particle he? after it: xxx he?. For example, you can greet your granny with huci he? or your big brother with ku-yupo he? The words of family relations can be extended also to persons that are not actually your relatives: you can all elder women who are about the same age as you grandmother huci or men who are slightly older than you yupo. The people who are around your parents age are unarpe 'aunt' or acapo 'uncle'. This greeting can only be used for the people who you already know well, not with strangers.
In eastern Hidaka region (Shizunai, Urakawa) the phrase ikatay is used when you meet a person for a long time. So, it's something like 'long time, no see'. In the Kushiro region, the phrase issorore(y) is used as a formal and polite greeting.
One more expression that might match with English 'hello' in some cases, is a-nu a-nu? or its informal version e-nu e-nu? Literally both of them mean 'do you hear, do you hear?' This is the expression you might want to say when you call someone on phone or if you want to get the attention of the waiter in a cafe or restaurant. So, it's not 'hello' as a greeting, but more like 'excuse me' or 'hello' on a phone conversation.
So, unfortunately I have to disappoint you and say that there is not one simple fit-all phrase for 'hello' in Ainu. It can be that Ainu will come up with some general greeting at some point of their language revitalization process but at the moment there is not such a phrase that fits all situations easily.
There are many ways to say 'thank you' in Ainu but the most common is probably iyayraykere. That is a polite way to thank. Another more informal way is to say hioy'oy. This is used mostly by women.
The formal phrase of saying 'I don't know' in Ainu is k-erampewtek. In Ainu, some verbs have so-called lexicalized negations, which means that there is a different word for negative version of the verb. 'To know' and 'not to know' are one of these pairs. 'I know' is k-eraman.
There is also a more casual way to say 'I don't know'. This word is not a phrase but an interjection: uwa!
Traditionally, Ainu had only four colors: retar 'to be white', kunne 'to be black', hure 'to be red; to be orange', and siwnin 'to be blue; to be green; to be yellow' (if you are wondering why I translate all the colors in English with 'to be' attached, see the explanation in the Lesson 2, in the part about descriptive verbs).
So, how about green or yellow or orange? There are some locally used words that can divide the colors in more refined categories. In Obihiro region, the word for 'yellow' is sikerpepeus (Lit. the color of the liquid of the berries of Amur cork tree). The word sometimes used for 'green' in the Saru region is hukinatomne (Lit. to be of the hue of fresh leaves). The word toyne (Lit. to be (like) dirt) can be found in some documentation in the meaning of 'pale' but some people have adapted toyne to mean 'brown'. Then there are newly coined words homane 'orange' (Lit. to be (like) salmon roe) and surkune 'purple; violet' (Lit. to be (like) aconite/wolfsbane (flowers)). Pink and gray/grey can be formed by adding ru- 'slightly' in front of hure and retar/kunne, so ruhure 'pink' and ruretar '(pale) gray/grey' and rukunne '(dark) gray/grey'.
There are two phrases: Apunno oka yan (literally 'stay safely' or 'be safe') and apunno paye yan (literally 'go safely'). The first one is said to a person who stays in the place where you say goodbye. For example, if you are visiting your friend's house, you will say apunno oka yan ,'be safe', to your friend when you leave. Your friend will say to you apunno paye yan 'go safely'. If you both leave the place where you met, let's say a cafe, then you both say apunno paye yan.
'Good night in Ainu is apunno sini yan, 'rest peacefully'. That might sound kind of morbid to English speakers, but instead, if you say, apunno mokor yan 'sleep peacefully', it has the same meaning as 'rest in peace' in English. So, be careful when you say this phrase!
'See you later' in Ainu is suy unukar-an ro!
You can say for example e-rehe makanak an? (lit. 'How is your name?') to ask for the person's name in Ainu.
'My name is xxx' in Ainu is for example xxx sekor ku-rehe an. Or you can just simply say xxx ku-ne, 'I am xxx'.
Traditionally, Ainu did not have a phrase corresponding to 'nice to meet you'. Now some speakers use the phrase tanepo unukar-an na, 'We meet each other the first time'.
'Welcome' in Ainu is eci-kopuntek, literally 'I am happy to welcome you'. This works for both one person or many people.
One way to say 'I'm sorry' in Ainu is ku-yayapapu, 'I apologize'. Another, maybe a bit newer expression is ku-wen na, which means literally 'I'm bad' but can be translated to something like 'my bad (so please forgive)' in English.
You can say for example pirka wa 'it's fine'.
Ainu doesn't have a phrase that matches the English 'please'. If you want to ask someone to do something, you can just say <the verb (plural form)> + yan, for example rok yan 'please have a seat' or ahup yan 'please come in'. One way to ask someone to give you something is to say xxx en-kore yan, 'please give me xxx'. Now, you can combine this expression with an action you want the other person to do: <verb (plural form)> + wa + en-kore yan. You can say for example pekotope hok wa en-kore yan 'please buy me some milk' (more literally 'please do me the favor of buying milk') or arki wa en-kore yan 'please come' (more literally 'please give me the favor of coming'). This is pattern has come to Ainu probably because of the influence from a similar pattern in the Japanese language.
If you want to say 'how are you?' in Ainu, you can use the phrase e-iwanke ya? The reply is ku-iwanke wa, 'I'm fine' or 'I'm good'. If you want to ask the person back if they are fine, you can say ku-iwanke wa. eani he?, 'I'm fine. How about you?' The reply to this can be the same as before, ku-iwanke wa, 'I'm fine', or kani ka ku-iwanke wa, 'Me too, I'm fine.'
Pirka is one of the most known words of the Ainu language. It means 'to be good; beautiful; pretty; desirable; fine' and many more similar things depending on the context. It can be also used as a kind of interjection, pirka! 'great!'
The word appears in many building, facility and product names in Hokkaido. There are several buildings in Sapporo alone that have the word pirka in their names. The Japanese address system doesn't rely on street names but rather on number of blocks and plots within a city ward. However, the numbers of plots are not linear within the block but rather decided by the order the buildings were originally built, so it's sometimes a bit difficult to navigate to the right place because plot no 2 is not necessarily located between plots no 1 and no 3. To make the navigation easier, most of the buildings have a name that's written on the side of the building, so that's why the building names are a) abundant, and b) very visible in the cityscape. This long explanation about the address system is just to clarify why there are several buildings with the word pirka in their name. For example, when I still lived in Sapporo, there was a building called Pirka Hokudai mae (ピリカ北大前) really close to my place. Pirka is often used in company names, too. In Sapporo only, you can find Pirka kita 25 jo pharmacy, dog salon Pirka, Pirka style (nail and eyelash studio), and hair salon Pirka. The word is often found in product names, too. How about rice variety called Yume pirka (yume is Japanese and means 'dream'), or beer called pirka wakka 'good water', or bottled water called Hada pirka sui 'beautiful skin water' (hada and sui are again Japanese and stand for 'skin' and 'water' respectively)?
Another famous and well-known Ainu word is nispa. The Ainu word nispa means 'a gentleman; a rich man' but it also has a meaning that the person is above the speaker in social hierarchy ('master'). That's why it's also used as a honorific title for men in general. The corresponding word for women is katkemat, 'a lady; a rich woman; a woman in a high position (mistress)'. Wives often refer to their husbands as nispa or ku-kor nispa 'my husband' (pronounced as /kukon nispa/) .
The word nispa has probably become famous because it has been used frequently in Ainu stories and it easily catches even the ear of people who don't understand Ainu. In old times, Ainu would refer to Wajin (non-Ainu Japanese) in many cases as nispa because they were more affluent than Ainu and Wajin also assumed a higher societal position to that of Ainu. Even now some people use nispa as a polite means of addressing men. In Japanese, you need to attach a polite suffix, such as san, after a person's name when you speak to them or about them, if you don't know the person really well or don't want to appear rude. In Ainu, there is not really a similar system but some people have started to use nispa for men and katkemat for women in the same style as san is used in Japanese: attached to people's names. So, you would call Mark and Lily in this system Mark nispa and Lily katkemat. This is a new kind of use for the words and there are many Ainu who don't recognize and endorse this new type of use. Some might even get angry and tell you that 'I'm not a nispa, I'm a poor person!'. So, if you want to adopt this use, be careful to find out first what your partner thinks about being called a nispa!
Nispa also often appears in the media. NHK broadcasted a drama called Eien no nispa 〜 Hokkaido to nazuketa otoko Matsuura Takeshiro〜 (永遠のニㇱパ 〜北海道と名付けた男 松浦武四郎〜) 'Immortal nispa — The man who gave Hokkaido its name: Matsuura Takeshiro' as part of the 150-year anniversary celebrations of Hokkaido. Popular manga series Golden Kamuy (ゴールデンカムイ) (turned into anime and live-action movies, too) has also contributed to the renown of the word.
Nispa is also used in product names and such, maybe when the company producing it wants give the product Ainu/Hokkaido feeling. So, there is for example a tomato variety called Nispa's lover (Nispa no koibito/ニシパの恋人 in Japanese) and tomato juice made of these tomatoes that uses this word.
You can sometimes see the word inankur (or in katakana イナンクㇽ) carved/written in carved wooden souvenirs, like small statues or keychains or so, sold in Hokkaido. The same goes with inankur pirka (or in katakana イナンクㇽ ピㇼカ). If you ask the sellers, they will probably tell you that it means 'girlfriend/boyfriend/sweetheart' or something along those lines (and sometimes they add these items bring you good luck in love).
The problem is, that's not true, at least the part about the meaning of these words (I don't know about their effectiveness as love amulets, though).
The Ainu word inankur means 'which person; which one of these people' and the phrase inankur pirka is a question meaning 'which person is good/pretty'.
So, why there is this kind of weird mix-up? Why would anyone make such bizarre claims? Well, there is a children's song from 1950s that goes
pirka, pirka
tanto sirpirka
inankur pirka
numke kusune, numke kusune
In English this means
Beautiful, beautiful
Today the weather is beautiful
Which person is beautiful
Make your choice, make your choice
The last two verses (inankur pirka numke kusune 'which person is beautiful, make your choice') are often translated into Japanese as 'choose your sweetheart', in which the 'choose' part is numke kusune, so what is left for the assumed 'your sweetheart' part is inankur pirka. So, the people saying inankur (pirka) means 'sweetheart' probably just looked at the translation of this song without knowing anything about Ainu language.
By the way, this is not a traditional Ainu song and not made by Ainu themselves, but composed by a Wajin (that is, a non-Ainu Japanese) school principle in Shiraoi, Hokkaido in the 1950s.
You can listen the song below (very retro vibes!).
Created on 2023/2/14, Latest update on 2024/11/11