Talk:Ainu language
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[edit] Nyland theory
I'm not sure who added all the stuff about Nyland's rather strange theory. Perhaps it deserves a place on the Ainu Language page, but the whole page should not have been deleted in favour of the Nyland theory. I have revert to the original. If anyone wants to debate the relevence of of the Basque, etc. connect, this would be the place. --unixslug 05:34, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
Most information available on Ainu is in Japanese, which unfortunately I don't know very well. I'll try to dig Languages of Japan (ISBN 0521369185), which dedicates a nice thick section to Ainu, out of the library again and get some more details in here.
Also, I've stumbled across a brief introductory Ainu grammar in Esperanto, of all things... --Brion 02:40 Aug 14, 2002 (PDT)
What do CV and CVC mean? We have a short article on SOV, do these deserve their own? --rmhermen
- Hmm, that probably should be explained in phonology or syllable. Consonant-vowel, consonant-vowel-consonant. I wouldn't give each one its own article, since then we'd have to deal with any combination of consonants and vowels! --Brion
- Syllable already tries to explain it without the abbreviations, so maybe there. --rmhermen
If interested please get hold of this book :
- My uni library seems to have a copy, I'll look for it. Thanks! --Brion
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- If we based our hypothesis only on the relationship of Y haplogroups, the Ainu language may be very, very distantly related to Niger-Congo and Afro-Asiatic languages. 82.100.61.114 18:58, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Ainu Wikipedia
User talk:KIZU From Meta, a wiki about Wikimedia
Hi Kizu. You can already start translating the list into other languages, even if it is a work in progress. Hopefully we will get 1,000 articles in every Wikipedia language (including a bunch of new languages--how is your Ainu?). Danny 20:13, 29 May 2004 (UTC)
Danny left me the message above, I can't speak Ainu regretfully, but agree it will be nice if we have the Ainu Wikipedia or Wiktionary. Is there anyone interesting to join to the Ainu Wikipedia? If so, contact Danny. KIZU 20:41, 29 May 2004 (UTC)
- I think there are quite a few people who would be happy to participate: most native speakers of Ainu, for example, would probably be happy to have the opportunity to create an encyclopedia in their language. (hint: contact Shigeru Kayano and FM Pipaus and Hokkaido Utari Kyokai)
[edit] Dialects
One major issue not treated here:
Are the different dialects of Ainu only dialects, or are they separate languages? Some people claim there is a 4-way division in Ainu (this only applies to dialects known to have existed at least until 1850, there were probably Ainu speakers in the Amur valley, the K. Penninsula, etc before then): Sakhalin Ainu, Kurile Ainu, Hokkaido Ainu, and Honshu Ainu (or "Tohoku Ainu"). Sometimes these are called in Japanese "karafutogo", "chishimago", "ezogo", and "tohoku ainugo". Individual words do not appear to be wildly different although there are significant sound changes, however if you look at a sentence translated into all 4 varieties, it is easy to see that in both grammar and vocabulary, they are too different to not warrant a consideration of separate status.
Considering many Korean linguists accord language status to the speech of Jeju, considering the similarities and dissimilarities between the four varieties of Ainu they are basically separate languages even without question.
Another important observation is that each of these varities has dialects, and each of the dialects have subdialects and even subsubdialects that are generally spoken in single villages.
For example in Wakkanay (1), they speak Hokkaido Ainu. Wakkanay is in what in old times was part of the Northwestern (iirc) District (of Aynu Mosir), and thus they speak the Northwestern dialect. They are in ??? district, so they speak the dialect of that district. And finally they are in Wakkanay, so they speak a vernacular slightly different from the speech of other villages in the same district.
Unfortunately with the dwindling number of Ainu speakers, important dialect distinctions are being lost as most learners of the language learn a single dialect and don't know the others exist, or they learn a mishmash as if it were a single vernacular.
--Node
- Loss of dialect distinctions is unfortunate from an academic perspective, but the process itself is likely not new for Ainu, which most likely has been splitting and merging through the ages, like all languages.
- Taiwanese, for example, is a merging variety based on two major Southern Min dialects. Dialects within Taiwanese reflect different degrees of this merging, with the outliers more closely resembling the Southern Min dialects.
- For Ainu, what is truly unfortunate is not knowing how the pre-modern Ainu themselves classified their own language(s), so we end up getting just the analytical constructs of outsider linguists.
- A-giau 00:25, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
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- Dialectal distinctions in Ainu are fairly well-documented, there's even a popularly published (ie, non-Academic) dictionary called "ainugo hogen ziten" (however I believe it only covers Hokkaido dialects). A brief outline (× means there are no extant records of the variety available):
- Ainu
- Amur Ainu × (According to some accounts, still exists)
- Kamchatka Ainu × (According to some accounts, still exists)
- American and/or Aleutian Ainu (postulated variety, probably never existed) ×
- Sakhalin Ainu
- Chishima (Kuril) Ainu
- Japanese Mainland Ainu
- Hokkaido Ainu
- West
- Northeastern West
- Northwestern West (eg Wakkanai)
- Central West (eg Masike, Isikari)
- Southwestern (eg Sirifuka, Simakomaki, Setanai...)
- East
- Northeastern Hokkaido (eg Akkesi, Kusiro, etc...)
- Central East (eg Siranuka)
- Southern
- Saru district (eg Nibutani, Biratori, etc...)
- Bay (eg Etomo, Kunnui)
- Straits
- Southern Hokkaido (eg Hakodate, Matumae, Kumaisi, Esan, etc...)
- Tsugaru region of Tohoku (eg Tanabe, Utetsu), spoken on the penninsulas which jut out from Honshu towards Hokkaido
- West
- Tohoku Ainu - the variety spoken by the descendants of relatively recent immigrants from Hokkaido (Ainu people once inhabited the area before in much older times; this refers to the more recent population though which lasted as late as perhaps the 1930s when it was [supposedly?] completely wiped out by diseases introduced by the Sisam [Japanese])
- Hokkaido Ainu
Now the most important division between the extant varieties is: Tohoku/Hokkaido-Kuriles-Sakhalin. The vocabulary differences between them, I can't say much about, but I know there are some regular sound changes, and that there are different idioms and significant grammatical differences. Some people think they are 3 different languages, others think they are simply 3 dialects of the same language.
--Node 21:57, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Native speaker figure (in context)
...there are perhaps 1000 native speakers not younger than 30...
- My source (published 2001) gives much smaller numbers. It cites one report that puts the number at 30, notes some (presumably "experts") think the figure is even lower, and puts fewer than 100 as a safe estimate. Of course, the operational definition of "native" varies and indeed complex. There are, for examples, native speakers who have not spoken Ainu for years; native speakers who remember hearing relatives speaking Ainu, have some passive understanding, and may have spoken a little bit themselves. There are also second-language learners who speak more Ainu than native speakers. Ainu themselves are said to not care about the actual number, given the historical use of such "facts" to "predict" the "inevitable demise of backward Ainu". In any case it seems 1000 is as much a guess as 100 or 10. A-giau 14:26, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
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- Some sources cite 15 or something near that, that is based on a figure of how many people use Ainu more than they do Japanese on a daily basis.
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- Some sources cite 200, this is based on those speakers in Nibutani (I believe).
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- 1000 accounts for all native speakers in Hokkaido, including perhaps 100 or 200 who are known to be "elders" but do not advertise the fact that they are native-fluent speakers.
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- If one includes all those native speakers who can not be considered fully fluent, the figure would perhaps be 1500 or 2000, for example:
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- There's one woman who can speak quite fluently, but only to talk about her childhood. She cannot discuss anything that has happened since, or if she can she does not wish to. Instead, she switches to Japanese to discuss other topics, even when prompted to speak Ainu.
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- There's another woman who can casually speak Ainu "baby talk" (ie oversimplified grammar) but cannot say things which are even slightly complex, but supposedly with the help of a native-fluent speaker she has partially reclaimed the ability to speak the language "properly" and to say more complex things.
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- Then there are the people who can only understand Ainu but cannot speak it, or who can speak it natively but only to certain people (ie, a woman might be able to speak it only with her sister)
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- Finally, there are those who were once fluent but now can only produce short sentences in broken Ainu, and who find comprehension difficult.
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- --Node 22:13, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
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- Reading what I wrote, I reckon that the Ainu language could really benifit from the work of a good hypnotist ;) --Node 22:15, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
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[edit] Article of the Week candidate
This article is currently being considered for Article of the Week translation. One of the objections raised was the article is "too long". So please consider consolidating redundant info in some of the paragraphs. A-giau 19:54, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The guy's crazy. This article is way too short - it should look more like Gbe languages or Laal language. - Mustafaa 20:00, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Oh. For translation... Never mind. I thought "Article of the Week". - Mustafaa 20:00, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Linguistic typology relations
Hi there Mustafaa --
Thanks for your pointer about linguistic typology. :) I'd actually already read that when I made my addition that Ainu superficially resembles Japanese. My main contention here is that Ainu exhibits (or rather has exhibited, in the classical form) a greater degree of synthesis than Japanese, to the extent that nouns and adverbs may be incorporated directly into the verb. This is quite different from any historical form of Japanese, and deserves pointing out somewhere lest the casual reader be mistakenly convinced that the two languages are close cousins. What are your thoughts on the matter, in light of incorporation? Cheers, --- Eiríkr Útlendi 17:53, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
- Ah. I see your point about this being potentially misleading; is the new wording I just tried inserting more acceptable? - Mustafaa 06:17, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Looks great, Mustafaa, well put. Thanks for the edit. :) --- Eiríkr Útlendi 02:19, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
[edit] [No Title]
I suspect that there are no postposition for subject and object, which makes the language quite different from Japanese. According to Refsing's (1986) description on Shizunai dialect, and Kindaichi's description on Karafuto dialect, subjects and objects are not marked by postposition. For other postpositions, a number of them are grammaticalised form of verbs or nominals, for instance, the postpostiion for "with" is indeed the verb "to be with". Chaakming 13:05, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
- "No Title" is undesirable, isn't it? To be "Postposition for subject and object" or "Typology and grammar."
- "There are no postposition for subject and object." - I think so.
- Modern Ainu script uses anak or anakne as the postposition for subject, but native Ainu (classical or colloquial) speaking not. Originally, anak(ne) is used to emphasize or to stop the prior phrase, and is used for both nominative and accusative. It can be said that the postposition for subject of modern Ainu script is a result of the word-for-word translation from modern Japanese script. In other words, it is the modern Japanized Ainu language.
- On the other hand, the Ainu language has transitive verbs in distinction from intransitive verbs. The transitive verb does not need a postposition for object. Also intransitive verb does not need a postposition but need natively a prefix to the verb for a complementary word or phrase. Only in this case, the prefix to the verb can be substituted by postposition at the same position of the sentence.
- "Which makes the language quite different from Japanese" - I do not think so.
- The traditional Japanese language does not need postposition for subject and object. Only modern written/polite Japanese needs it. And the Japanese language has only semantical subject, does not have grammatical subject natively.
- I think the section needs to revise. thanks.--Midville 16:20, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Glottal stops in orthography
"ʔ is written either as an equals sign (=) for glottal stops between vowels (such as in a=sapte), or as a t before or a doubling of the following consonant (such as in cotca or hoyuppa, much as in romanized Japanese). Other phonemes use the same character as the given IPA transcription above."
There are several problems there. First, 'a=sapte' doesn't seem to show a glottal stop between vowels. Second, the "doubling of the following consonant ... much as in romanized Japanese" is misleading; the Japanese phonemes represented by doubled Roman letters are not necessarily glottal stop+other consonant (although there is a LOT of discussion of this matter over in the Talk section of Japanese language). Finally, in what cases would one write a 't' before the consonant? I was under the impression that 'Satporo' was indeed /satporo/. Since the example given was 'cotca', perhaps the 't' only occurs before c (cf. usual Japanese romanization, which shows geminate 'chi' as 'tchi')?
(Sorry, I forgot to sign the above when I wrote it.) 24.159.255.29 23:43, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Godfrey --
For context first, the immediately preceding sentence post-edit reads:
- In the Latin orthography, /ts/ is spelt c and /j/ as y; ʔ is written either as an equals sign (=) for glottal stops between vowels (such as in a=sapte), or as a t before or a doubling of the following consonant (such as in cotca or hoyuppa.
You noted in your recent edit note, Japanese doubled consonants don't have glottal stops with them, and in your edit itself, While this is similar to romanized Japanese, what the doubled consonant represents is very different in the two languages).
Could you provide any examples? The current text does not really clarify much, and also there seems to be some debate as to whether "doubled" (i.e. geminate) consonants in Japanese include a glottal stop. As I learned the language in Morioka, Iwate Prefecture, there does seem to be such a stop. If so, this would seem to be the same thing the initial quote above is describing for "doubled" consonants in Ainu...? Any further detail / explication you can supply would be most welcome. Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 16:26, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
- Hi, Eiríkr,
- Thanks for inviting me over. Just a little about my background: I have a Ph.D. in linguistics, and I specialize in historical and modern Japanese (I currently teach Japanese at the university level). While I don't know that much about Ainu, I did translate a scholarly monograph on it from Japanese to English, so have picked up a little information about it.
- First, for Japanese. It is commonly believed that the Japanese geminate consonants have glottalization associated with them. This belief is demonstrably false in the case of /ss/, /ssh/, /hh/, and /ff/, e.g., /assari/ 'lightly,' /issho ni/ 'together,' /bahha/ 'Bach,' and /waffuru/ 'waffle.' It is less obviously false in the case of the geminate stops and affricates, namely /pp/, /tt/, /kk/, /tch/, and /tts/. However, work by Tsutomu Akamatsu (cited on an archived Japanese talk page) has shown that there is no glottalization, much less a glottal stop, associated with Japanese geminates. In fact, the glottis expands during the production of Japanese geminates. An expanded glottis is about as far away from a closed glottis (i.e., glottal stop) as you can get!
- Now, for the connection to Ainu: if any symbol represents a glottal stop in an Ainu word, then its use is, by definition, different from that in Romanized Japanese.
- However, I'm not sure about the description given for Ainu orthography. Ainu allows many more syllable- and word-final consonants than Japanese. So, if you have two (hypothetical) Ainu words, "cip" and "pit," and they are compounded to form "cippit," how is this distinguished from a separate word "ci?pit"? (where the question mark in "ci?pit" represents a glottal stop)
- As for our anonymous friend, Sapporo was originally, as I recall, sar-por-pet. The -pet (shows up as -betsu in Hokkaido place names and means 'river,' I think) was dropped, and the consonant cluster assimilated in the Japanese fashion to the second of the pair. I don't remember what "sar" and "por" mean, and my etymology could be off--I'm recalling what I learned when I lived in Sapporo 18 years ago.
- Hope this helps. Godfrey Daniel 21:05, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
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- Thanks for the links and references, Godfrey, I'll have to track some of that down (time allowing :) ).
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- After reading the Akamatsu quote you linked towards, I'm left a touch confused. Listening to the native Japanese speakers around me, and contrasting with the native English speakers, I hear that the double "p" in kappatsu is a stronger sound, if you will, than the sort-of double "p" in cheap potatoes. I also hear a substantial stoppage in the flow of air for kappatsu, more pronounced than in the English, indicating the 'laryngeal closure' or 'holding one's breath' descriptions that Akamatsu disagrees with. This leads me to wonder if there might be differences in dialect enough to account for Akamatsu possibly physically hearing something other than what I do (and what Nomura and Yoshida heard) – i.e., his pool of speakers might have been pronouncing the words differently from the primarily Saitama and Tokyo natives around me right now. I'll have to find his book to be sure.
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- Then again, this might just be different authors talking past each other while attempting to describe the same thing. To more fully flesh out my own description of what I hear, I don't hear the [kaʔppaʦɯ̥] that Akamatsu rightly disagrees with, where the glottal "ʔ" is distinct before the "p", but rather some sort of combination of a breath stoppage that is similar to "ʔ", together with the mouth simultaneously forming the shape of the indicated consonant. Breath does seem to halt for the length of the silent mora signified by the small kana つ (for stops, not for fricatives).
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- Regarding Ainu orthography, I think that whole paragraph needs to be rewritten by someone much more knowledgable than I. For instance, ʔ is written ... as an equals sign (=) for glottal stops between vowels (such as in a=sapte) is confusing as the example word does not show what the text says it will. Since when was "s" a vowel? That aside, my understanding was that there would be no word spelt "ciʔpit", as the "ʔ" before a consonant would be represented as a t before or a doubling of the following consonant (such as in cotca or hoyuppa). If this is the case, the distinction in your example would seem to fall through. Again, the paragraph is poorly written, and as you note there is some debate about whether geminate stops in Japanese are glottal or otherwise. Assuming for sake of argument that the geminate stops in Japanese and Ainu are even vaguely similar, the orthographical convention in Ainu of adding a t before or a doubling of the following consonant (such as in cotca or hoyuppa) to represent such stops would indeed be similar to romaji usage, which I think is what the statement in the article was trying to say...? Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 17:42, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
- I think the reason you hear a difference in the /p/s in kappatsu and cheap potatoes is that Japanese is a mora-timed language and English is not, so the first /p/ of kappatsu, assigned its own mora, is more prominent than the first /p/ in the English phrase. Just because the /p/ sound is longer doesn't mean there's glottalization associated with it, though.
- As for the method of breath stoppage, in Japanese, it's a purely oral closure. However, in many dialects of English (including my own), coda voiceless stops are glottalized, i.e., are co-articulated with a glottal stop. In some dialects (particularly in England), th oral closure has been lost, and only the glottal stop remains. (What's the situation for Icelandic?)
- As for Ainu, well, I would just have to go with what it says in the literature. My point all along has been that if Ainu doubled consonants represent a glottal stop plus whatever following consonant, then this is different from what doubled consonants represent in Romanized Japanese, especially in light of the fact that glottal stop is phonemic in Ainu but not Japanese. Godfrey Daniel 19:35, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
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- Hmm, definitely food for thought, I'll have to chew on this a while, and possibly lurk around the cubes of my Japanese colleagues with my ears wide open. :) For Ainu then, if I read you correctly, though "cip pit" as a compound word and "ciʔpit" as a single word would be spelled the same in Latin letters as "cippit", they would be pronounced differently, thus producing different words. If so, I begin to have an idea how to fix our problem paragraph. Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 20:21, 22 March 2006 (UTC) --- PS - my Icelandic is minimal and purely from book learning, so I'm afraid I really couldn't tell you much about glottals there.
This is the truth. In Ainu language, glottal stop occurs only in front of a initial vowel that has accent. Ainu double consonants represent a unreleased stop plus whatever following consonant. The unreleased stop is usually not the glottal stop but only /kk/ sounds like a glottal stop plus k.
A equal sign (=) represents a personal prefix (ie. in front of "=" is a kind of I, you, he, and so on) and is not for glottal stop. A sign that looks like the question mark without dot [ʔ] is not usually written in ordinary Ainu script (neather in Latin nor in Katakana).
The word "aynu" has a glottal stop and to be pronounced [ʔáınu]. The word "kakkok" has a unreleased stop like a glottal stop and to be pronounced [kak̚kok̚]. So revision of the article is required. Thanks--Midville 13:21, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
- Midville: so there is no glottal stop initially before unaccented vowels? The article currently says that all syllables must have an onset, which is contradicted by that. Also, by "that has accent" do you mean high tone? Or do you mean the syllable of a word which has the rise in pitch (in the same way as you can think of the syllable in Japanese with a drop in pitch as the accented syllable)? 24.159.255.29 00:32, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Katakana
Does anyone have any info on Ainu-specific katakana usage? As a student of Japanese, I find the word-ending small katakana [ㇰㇱㇲㇳㇴㇵㇶㇷㇸㇹㇺㇻㇼㇽㇾㇿ] and the semi-voiced ト/カ [ト゚/ト゜and カ゚/カ゜] VERY intriguing. I'd like to at least know how to pronounce them! lampi 07:41, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
- Have a look at the Ainu Times, they've got some material that might be of interest. Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 16:05, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
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- Hi, Lampi. the semi-voiced ト [ト゚/ト゜] is to be pronounced "tu", normally spelled トゥ in Japanese. semi-voiced ツ(tsu) [ツ゚/ツ゜] is also "tu". Only Ainus and scholars of Ainu use the script.
- And the semi-voiced カ [カ゚/カ゜] to be nga [ŋa] normally ガ. In Japanese, the script ガ(ga) in middle or end of a word or a phrase is to be pronounced nga. ギグゲゴ also to be ngi ngu nge ngo. Only TV/radio announcers or newscasters and actors use the script.
- About the word-ending small katakana, ク is -k, シ is -s or -sh, ス is perhaps -s, ト is -t, ヌ is perhaps -n, ハヒフヘホ are -(a)h -(i)h -(u)h -(e)h -(o)h (for the Sakhalin dialect) or to indicate concrete(real) form, ム is -m, ラリルレロ are -(a)r -(i)r -(u)r -(e)r -(o)r.
- What is the form in Ainu language?: the Ainu noun word have abstract(concept) form and concrete(real) form.
- ex. Abstract(concept) form "mat" (the woman, the wife) with the possessive case becomes concrete(real) form "a-matihi" (my wife) /amachihi/.
- I suppose that the ordinary Japanese person can not read those special katakana.
- BTW, let me introduce myself. I am (was?) an Ainu speaker but not native. I learned and studied Ainu language at University with prof. Tamura Suzuko who is an acknowledged authority in the field of Ainu language and who wrote the term "Ainu language" in The Encyclopedia Britanica. I transcribed a tape of native Ainu speaking, singing any number of times. Finally, I jointly sponsored Ainu matsuri (festival), wrote a sctipt in Ainu language, and played a grumbling Ainu old lady. And I am (was?) a member of 北方言語研究会 (society for the study of northern languages). thanks. Midville 02:18, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
The information on katakana usage outside of Japanese and Ainu is very interesting, but its scope is too broad for this article. Let's keep the information on kana used for Ainu, and move the rest somewhere else. I don't know where would be appropriate, though. 71.82.214.160 23:10, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Link cleanup
The "Ethnologue report" link on this page doesn't seem to be of much use. Is it OK to remove it? --Sakurambo 16:21, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Phonology, Trill → Tap
The Ainu phoneme /r/ is not trill but tap. It is the alveolar tap [ɾ] like "tt" of "latter" in North America. So we need to revise it. Thanks--Midville 13:32, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Phonology, /x/ and [ç]
There is some variation among dialects; in the Sakhalin dialect, syllable-final /p, t, k, r/ lenited and merged into /h/.
The real is that syllable-final /p, t, k, r/ lenited and merged into /x/ and becomes [ç] after /i/. In addition, /x/ is restored back to /p, t, k, r/ before vowels for liaison. So, the table "The consonants of Ainu" requires Velar-Fricative "x" and Palatal-Fricative "ç", too. Thanks--Midville 14:01, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
- I'm assuming that these syllable-final consonants are still spelled with the small katakana, as in 「アイヌ・イタク」? So this then would be pronounced more like /ainu itax/? Curious, Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 17:55, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
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- Thank you for your good curiosity. Those are spelled with small katakana as Unicode:「ㇵㇶㇷㇸㇹ」 like 「ハヒフヘホ」 that are also included by JIS X 0213:2004. "Aynu-ytax" is spelled as 「アィヌィタㇵ」 like 「アィヌィタハ」. If you can not read the former special small katakanas, you should install appropriate font, e.g. Y.Oz_N'04 font. it's free of charge but has product-level good quality.--Midville 10:51, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
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- Thanks Midville, I had no idea what font to even look for, so I've used the workaround of either <small> or <sub> tags. For online web pages, I wonder if the tags might be a better idea? They're certainly more accessible...
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- Thanks too for the explanation. Is this a dialect phenomenon, or is the syllable-final lenition pretty consistent among Ainu speakers? And do you have any idea how recent this is? Presumably, these syllable-final consonants must not have become lenited too long ago, or the word itak would never have been spelled with the k in roman letters. Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 16:30, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
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- Eirikr, that lenition only describes the Sakhalin dialect as far as I know. Midville: Is final /ix/ always pronounced [iç]? I'm reading Vovin, and he seems to be saying that /ix/ can be pronounced [is]. Also, are you sure -r lenites to /x/? Vovin says that final -r in most dialects usually corresponds to -rV in Sakhalin. (On the other hand, I read an anthropology book by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney that gave a lot of Sakhalin words, and I seem to remember seeing "nis kur." But I might be misremembering.) 24.159.255.29 00:12, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
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[edit] Standard Ainu
Upon seeing that there are so many dialects of Ainu, I started wondering: is there some dialect set as standard? Siúnrá 22:01, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Ainu, an Altaic language?
there is some serious research about Ainu language in Europe, some people consider this language as an Altaic language, and there are also many connection between ainu and Altaic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.174.21.72 (talk) 06:21, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
