Ainu, also known as Hokkaido Ainu (), is a language native to the Ainu people of the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. It is a member of the Ainu language family, considered to be an independent language family with no academic consensus regarding its origin. Until the 20th century, the three Ainu languages – Hokkaido Ainu, Kuril Ainu, and Sakhalin Ainu – were spoken throughout Hokkaido, the southern half of the island of Sakhalin and by small communities in the Kuril Islands, up to the southern tip of Kamchatka.
Following the colonization of Hokkaido, the number of Hokkaido Ainu speakers declined steadily throughout the 20th century, eventually becoming critically endangered. By 2008, only two native speakers of Ainu remained, both elderly. By 2017, Ainu was reportedly dormant. Hokkaido Ainu is now a heritage language with some native semi-speakers.
The term Ainu comes from the endonym of the Ainu people, (), meaning 'person' or 'human'.
Speakers
Although there are estimated to be at least 30,000 Ainu people in Japan, there is a low rate of self-identification as Ainu among people with Ainu ethnic roots. The Ainu language was already endangered by the 1960s and has continued to decline since. , a total of 304 people within Japan were reported to understand the Ainu language to some extent.
In 2017, linguistics researcher Thomas Dougherty stated that "Ainu is a dormant language isolate previously spoken on the northernmost Japanese island of Hokkaidō," and on his website he repeats that the language is "dormant".
In 2019, it was reported that "there remain only a few speakers in Hokkaido, who learned vocabularies from their parents or grandparents and who can use simple sentences in Ainu."Mika Fukazawa, 'Ainu language and Ainu speakers', in Patrick Heinrich & Yumiko Ohara, eds. (2019) Routledge Handbook of Japanese Sociolinguistics
In 2022, in the Handbook of the Ainu Language, it was said that Ainu "is more or less extinct, or 'dormant', as a living medium [but] has still a few native semi-speakers, as well as a growing number of neo-speakers" (who include some non-Ainu) but no generational transmission of the language.
, the Endangered Languages Project (citing personal communication) reports two native speakers with 80% certainty.Endangered Languages Project: Ainu (Japan). No date.
Vitality In 2017, 671 people aged 15 or above from 291 randomly selected households participated in a Hokkaido government survey on the lives of Ainu people. Participants were believed to be descendants of Ainu people or those who joined Ainu families by marriage or adoption. In response to survey questions about fluency in the Ainu language, 0.7% of participants answered that they "would be able to have a conversation" in Ainu, 3.4% answered that they "would be able to converse a little", 44.6% answered that they "couldn't speak but had some knowledge about Ainu language", and 48.1% answered that they "couldn't speak at all".
In a subsequent survey of 472 respondents in 2023, 0.8% of respondents answered that they "would be able to have a conversation" in Ainu, 8.9% answered that they "would be able to converse a little", 19.3% answered that they "could barely converse at all", and 69.3% answered that they "would not be able to converse at all". + Ainu language usage amongst Ainu people in Hokkaido, surveys 1993–2023 Ainu language level 1993 1999 2006 2013 2017 2023 Can hold a conversation (%) 0.8 0.8 0.7 0.9 0.7 0.8 Can speak a little (%) 5.4 4.5 3.9 6.3 3.4 8.9 Cannot speak but have some knowledge (%) 37.1 38.3 32.4 44.2 44.6 Neither speak nor understand (%) 54.8 51.6 61.2 46.2 48.1 Unknown (%) 1.9 4.8 1.7 2.4 3.1 1.7 Sample size (# of Respondents) 642 715 712 586 671 472
Recent history Many of the speakers of Ainu lost the language with the advent of Japanese colonization, which formally began with the establishment of the Hokkaido Colonization Office in 1869. Japanese officials viewed the assimilation of Ainu a critical component of the Hokkaido colonization project, and developed policies designed to discourage or eliminate the use of the Ainu language, cultural practices, and traditional lifeways. The assimilation included the exploitation of Ainu land, the commodification of their culture, and the placing of Ainu children in schools where they learned only Japanese.
More recently, the Japanese government has acknowledged the Ainu people as an indigenous population. As of 1997 they were given indigenous rights under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) to their culture, heritage, and language.
The Ainu Cultural Promotion Act in 1997 appointed the Foundation for Research and Promotion of Ainu Culture (FRPAC). This foundation is tasked with language education, where they promote Ainu language learning through training instructors, advanced language classes and creation and development of language materials.
Revitalization In general, Ainu people are hard to find because they tend to hide their identity as Ainu, especially in the young generation. Two-thirds of Ainu youth do not know that they are Ainu. In addition, because Ainu students were strongly discouraged from speaking their language at school, it has been challenging for the Ainu language to be revitalized.
Despite this, there is an active movement to revitalize the language, mainly in Hokkaido but also elsewhere such as Kanto. Ainu oral literature has been documented both in hopes of safeguarding it for future generations, as well as using it as a teaching tool for language learners. Beginning in 1987, the Ainu Association of Hokkaido, with approximately 500 members, began hosting 14 Ainu language classes, Ainu language instructors training courses and Family Ainu Learning Initiative and have released instructional materials on the language, including a textbook. Also, Yamato linguists teach Ainu and train students to become Ainu instructors in university. In spite of these efforts, the Ainu language was not yet taught as a subject in any secondary school in Japan.
Due to the Ainu Cultural Promotion Act of 1997, Ainu dictionaries transformed and became tools for improving communication and preserving records of the Ainu language in order to revitalize the language and promote the culture. This act had aims to promote, disseminate, and advocate on behalf of Ainu cultural traditions. The main issue with this act however, was that not a single Ainu person was included in the "Expert" meetings prior to the law's passage, and as a result of this there was no mention of language education and how it should be carried out. The focus at this point was on Ainu culture revitalization rather than Ainu language revitalization.
As of 2011, there has been an increasing number of second-language learners, especially in Hokkaido, in large part due to the pioneering efforts of the late Ainu folklorist, activist and former Diet member Shigeru Kayano, himself a native speaker, who first opened an Ainu language school in 1987 funded by Ainu Kyokai. The Ainu Association of Hokkaido is the main supporter of Ainu culture in Hokkaido. Ainu language classes have been conducted in some areas in Japan and small numbers of young people are learning Ainu. Efforts have also been made to produce web-accessible materials for conversational Ainu because most documentation of the Ainu language focused on the recording of folktales. The Ainu language has been in media as well; the first Ainu radio program was called FM Pipaushi, which has run since 2001 along with 15-minute radio Ainu language lessons funded by FRPAC, and newspaper The Ainu Times has been established since 1997. In 2016, a radio course was broadcast by the STVradio Broadcasting to introduce Ainu language. The course put extensive efforts in promoting the language, creating four textbooks in each season throughout the year.
In addition, the Ainu language has been seen in public domains such as the outlet shopping complex's name, , which means 'wind', in the Minami Chitose area and the name , meaning 'young', at a shopping centre in the Chitose area. There is also a basketball team in Sapporo founded under the name , after 'god of the wind' (its current name is Levanga Hokkaido). The well-known Japanese fashion magazine's name means 'flower' in Ainu.
Another Ainu language revitalization program is Urespa, a university program to educate high-level persons on the language of the Ainu. The effort is a collaborative and cooperative program for individuals wishing to learn about Ainu languages. This includes performances which focus on the Ainu and their language, instead of using the dominant Japanese language.
Another form of Ainu language revitalization is an annual national competition, which is Ainu language-themed. People of many differing demographics are often encouraged to take part in the contest. Since 2017, the popularity of the contest has increased.
On 15 February 2019, Japan approved a bill to recognize the Ainu language for the first time and enacted the law on 19 April 2019.
Outside of Japan, there have also been efforts to revive the Ainu culture and language in other countries, including Australia and Russia.
In 2019, researchers working together from both the Society for Academic Research of Ainu (SARC), representatives from Hokkaido University, and with the assistance of linguists spanning multiple universities and countries assisted in the creation of AI Pirika, an AI created with the goal of assisting with speech recognition and serving as a conversation partner.
Official recognition
The Japanese government made a decision to recognize Ainu as an indigenous language in June 2008. The Japanese government approved and passed a bill officially recognising the Ainu as an indigenous people in 2019.
On 12 July 2020, the Japanese government opened the National Ainu Museum in Shiraoi, Hokkaido. It forms one of three institutions named Upopoy ( in Ainu), alongside the National Ainu Park and a memorial site on high ground on the east side of where Ainu services are held. Its director, Masahiro Nomoto, says that "One of our main objectives is to preserve and revive the language, as this is one of the most threatened elements of Ainu culture".
Announcements on some bus routes in Hokkaido can since be heard in Ainu, efforts are being undertaken to archive Ainu speech recordings by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, and there is a popular educational YouTube channel which teaches conversational Ainu.
While these measures have been praised for taking steps to protect the Ainu language and culture, the museum and related government efforts have been criticised for failing to acknowledge the history of Japanese discrimination against the Ainu people, and for the government's refusal to apologise for past misdeeds against the Ainu.
Phonology Ainu syllables are (C)V(C); they have an obligatory vowel, and an optional syllable onset and coda consisting of one consonant. There are few consonant clusters.
Vowels There are five vowels in Ainu:
Front Central Back Close Mid Open
Consonants BilabialAlveolarPalatalVelarGlottalNasalPlosive AffricateFricativeFlapSemivowel
Obstruents may be voiced between vowels and after nasals. can be heard as in free variation among speakers. Both and are realized as , and becomes before and at the end of syllables. is heard as when occurring before . is heard as when before , as well as in final position. A glottal stop is often inserted at the beginning of words, before an accented vowel, but is non-phonemic.
The Ainu language also has a pitch accent system. Generally, words containing affixes have a high pitch on a syllable in the stem. This will typically fall on the first syllable if that is long (has a final consonant or a diphthong), and will otherwise fall on the second syllable, though there are exceptions to this generalization.
Grammar