Talk:Hokkaidō Ainu

message: 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)
replies: text: 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
*** 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])
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)
thread_title:  Dialects 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Article of the Week candidate 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title: Linguistic typology relations

message: 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)
thread_title:  Link cleanup 

message: The Ainu phoneme /r/ is not trill but tap. It is the alveolar tap  like "tt" of "latter" in North America. So we need to revise it. Thanks--Midville 13:32, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Phonology, Trill → Tap 

message: 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)
replies: text: I suppose the standard dialect would have to be whichever dialect the ten remaining speakers speak. Jimp 11:24, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Standard Ainu

message: 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)
replies: text: There is still no agreement on this. Roy Anderson (? sorry, I can't think of his name at the moment) is one of the strongest proponents of this theory, but there doesn't seem to be much agreement James Who (talk) 13:38, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ainu, an Altaic language? 

message: For example, the -betu common to many northern Japanese place names is believed to derive from the Ainu word pet "river".
--Filll (talk | wpc) 14:31, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: many northern Japanese place names have -betu in them. this is though to come from the Ainu word pet "river". kwami (talk) 18:57, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  What does this sentence mean? 

message: Why is there katakana all over the page?? Ainu language is a language isolate; it is no way similar to Japanese. Having Japanese kana on a page about Ainu language is just as ridiculous as having Japanese kana on Goidelc or Chinese.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.230.105.26 (talk) 04:47, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Then we should remove all kanji from Japanese pages, because Japanese is in no way similar to Chinese. kwami (talk) 06:06, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Then we should remove all Roman letters from English pages because English isn't derived from Latin.  Isn't katakana the the script adopted by the Ainu to write their language (just as we've adopted the Latin alphabet for English)? Even if it isn't, though, it would still be an important transliteration. Jimp 10:31, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Itak & Japanese 

message: n.b. I am including this here as well as on the Ainu languages page, if only because this one seems to get more traffic.
:Shibatani (1990) speaks of "Ainu languages".
In the source cited, the Languages of Japan, Shibatani makes no mention of anything other than dialects of Ainu.
Hattori and various contributors, whom Shibatani cites in talking about dialects, only speak of dialects in Ainugo Hōgen Jiten ("Ainu Dialect Dictionary").  Vovin, in Proto-Ainu, also speaks only of dialects.
As a linguistics student interested in the language, nothing I have ever read nor anyone I have ever spoken with have even mentioned "Ainu languages".
This is a very serious error, and I would say, calls into question the need for the Ainu languages page. --Limetom 08:48, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: (let's respond at Ainu languages) kwami (talk) 09:15, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Languages"? 

message: Recently 「アイヌ」 and 「イタク」 in the lead and infobox were replaced with 「アィヌ」 and 「イタㇰ」.  While there is no standard spelling convention for Ainu -though this mainly applies to whether one uses Ainu katakana or Roman Ainu (and in the past Cyrllic Ainu)- the overwhelming majority of sources I can find use  「アイヌ」 versus 「アィヌ」, and "regular"-sized katakana for all vowel-vowel digraphs.  「イタㇰ」 however is correct and  「イタク」 was incorrect.  This can easily be seen if one romanizes the words: 「アイヌ」 is ainu or aynu; 「アィヌ」 is the same, and I believe most people feel redundantly so; 「イタㇰ」 is itak; and 「イタク」 is itaku, which is incorrect.
I was going to say as much in my edit summary, but accidentally hit the enter key and submitted the changes without a full summary; figured leaving a note on the talk page would be more than sufficient. --Limetom 07:42, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll be bold and change the kana spelling accordingly.  ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 16:50, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spelling conventions 

message: FYI for potential editors with more time than me. Material from this recent discovery may be worth incorporating into this article: アイヌ語：日本語の対訳を記録した古文書　福井で発見. Bendono (talk) 11:04, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: There is an English version as well:  Oldest Ainu-Japanese dictionary found at temple.  Apparently, the head priest found it while looking up records on the monk, Kunen.  It's unclear what's going to happen to it at present.  For now, it's the oldest Japanese-Ainu dictionary that we have a certain date for; it really deserves nothing more than a sentence, I'd say.  --Limetom 07:44, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Potential reference 

message: Ainu English Japanese dictionary
https://archive.org/details/ainuenglishjapan00batcuoft
http://library.uoregon.edu/ec/e-asia/read/ainueng.pdf
Vocabulaire Chinois-Coréen-Aino : expliqué en français et précédé d'une introduction sur les écritures de la Chine, de la Corée et de Yéso
https://archive.org/details/vocabulairechino00rosn
Chikoro utarapa ne Yesu Kiristo ashiri aeuitaknup oma kambi=the New Testament of our lord and saviour Jesus Christ in Ainu
https://archive.org/details/chikoroutarapane00batc
Ainu grammar and culture
https://archive.org/details/languagemytholo00batcgoog
In Japanese
Kokugogaku Ainugo to kokugo
https://archive.org/details/kokugogakuainugo00kind
Gengo kenkyu
https://archive.org/details/gengokenkyu00kind
Ainu goh gaisetsu
https://archive.org/details/ainugohgaisetsu00kind
Ainu compared to northwestern Native American languages
Wörter-sammlungen aus den sprachen einiger völker des östlichen Asiens und der nordwest-küste von Amerika
https://archive.org/details/wrtersammlungena00kruz
https://archive.org/details/cihm_18342
https://archive.org/details/wrtersammlungena01kruz
Rajmaan (talk) 09:07, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Ainu language materials

message: What the heck does the "Appearance" column mean, in the 1st and 2nd tables in the "Special katakana for the Ainu language" section? It looks like a copy of the first column displayed (mostly) using a Japanese typeface... what's the point? (If it's there for a reason, i don't have any objection to it, but it just seems to be redundant and typographically inelegant...) I'll be bold and remove it in a bit i guess unless i hear objections :) Goldenshimmer (talk) 22:31, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Went ahead and did it; please revert me if it was serving a purpose :) Goldenshimmer (talk) 18:43, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Appearance column?? 

message:  comes out pretty hideous-looking (using Chrome at least): .  Perhaps  would be more legible: . Jimp 10:37, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  {{lang|ain|ㇷ゚}} 

message: I would just like to mention that there will be edits made to this page as a part of my Final Project at Rutgers University. I hope to add any new and useful information I have found. If it is not suited for the page or the editing/citing is done incorrectly please let me know and I will try to fix it. Feel free to edit it and revert, but please refrain from doing so until after the 5th of May. My apologies for any inconvenience. Ilr19 (talk) 22:37, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Temporary edits for class project 

message: I'm going to put some work into expanding and revising the revitalization section. It needs some work. It's currently tagged as not having any sources, and could be expanded significantly to include more information on the revitalization efforts that have arisen since the Ainu cultural movement that began around the 1980s-1990s. Any criticism or help on this section would be greatly appreciated. Modern, English-language academic articles on the Ainu people and language have proven difficult to find.
YesPretense (talk) 19:28, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Expanding revitalization section 

message: Currently, the symbol is explained as so:
:ッ is final t at the end of a word (e.g. pet=ペッ=ペㇳ). In the middle of a polysyllabic word, it is a final consonant preceding the initial with a same value (e.g. orta /otta/=オッタ; オㇿタ is not preferred)
Unfortunately, the second sentence is really hard to understand. Are we saying that, word-medially, ッ signals that the following consonant is geminated? Are we saying that, when a morpheme that ends in a final consonant (e.g. or) is combined with a morpheme that starts with a consonant (e.g. ta), the result of the two adjacent consonants is a geminate (e.g. tt)? Why does the article spell orta and place /otta/ in slashes (as if to mark the IPA pronunciation), when all the external links at the bottom use the spelling otta? What happens with other words? For example, エコッポカ ekotpoka. Is it still a "t" followed by "p"? Or is it supposed to be "pp"? Or is the spelling always "t", while the pronunciation is a geminate?
I'd very much appreciate if someone more knowledgeable could rewrite that bit! — Io Katai ᵀᵃˡᵏ 20:32, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clarification on the usage of ッ 

message: The article states that "Ainu syllables are CV(C), that is, they have an obligatory syllable onset and an optional syllable coda" and "A glottal stop [ʔ] is often inserted at the beginning of words, before an accented vowel, but is non-phonemic." This, however, fails to explain words such as "acápo", "ekási" and "eáni", which would have V syllables according to the above rule. 
Kirsten Refsing acknowledges the following syllable types: V, CV, VC and CVC. This goes against the CV(C) claim that this article makes.
On the other hand, Tamura Suzuko claims that V and VC syllables are in fact all ʔVs and ʔVCs, which would go against the second quote.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jassummisko (talk • contribs) 14:55, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contradiction concerning Ainu's obligatory syllable onset 

message: :Ainu language → Hokkaido Ainu language – Ainu language(s) is a family name. This article deals with a subdivision of Hokkaido.--ABCEdit (talk) 01:25, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: *I should clarify that I'm not sure Wikipedia says such a thing; I was simply working under the sort of definition that I now see is in the article on dialect: "The most common, and most purely linguistic, criterion is that of mutual intelligibility: two varieties are said to be dialects of the same language if being a speaker of one variety confers sufficient knowledge to understand and be understood by a speaker of the other; otherwise, they are said to be different languages" and was speaking under the presumption that everyone shared that perspective. To the best of my recollection I haven't edited any of these articles, so if there's original research involved, it's someone else's. Hopefully the argument that the variants are languages is sufficiently sourced. I agree that merging these is a reasonable possibility. Perhaps "Historical Ainu languages" could be a subheading here, and Sakhalin Ainu language and Kuril Ainu language could be merged as well. Dekimasuよ! 06:53, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

text: Anthony Appleyard, I'm not sure why this was put through as a technical request. The discussion here from a year ago is pretty clear evidence that the request is not just technical in nature (I, for one, objected to it at the time), and the newer discussion (which doesn't to me appear to show consensus) was initiated only a few days ago. Dekimasuよ! 12:04, 24 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested move 16 February 2018 

message: Y-ran-qar-a-h(p)-te-e ! Greetings ! I try to write a quasi- mix of Sakhalin , Kuriles Ainu and with no explanations -hyphens I believe are grammatical particles and brackets that indicate spelling variations Disclaimer : I live in Sendai and study Ainu in writing no speaking practice , though I have 2 Japanese students I volunteer to teach Ainu from Various books ‘Ainu Express ,using Katakana and Romaji Uko-y-so-ytak kids Ainu Japanese , with English and Japanese . I am copying Kanazawa’s original book  アイヌ Aynw 語 =go=ytah (會)=qa-y 会 話=wa=wqo-y-so-ytah-  (字)=jy 辞 典= Ten= qan-py-(qa-ta)-(w-we-to-re-)-sos  , see search=a-nw-qar yan rw-we wa ..ainutopic.ninjal.ac.jp and comparing ainutopic Old Kanji and Aynw phrases also I am trying make a Phrase book for Ainu language researchers in y-say-qa=easy Aynw ytah=an(r)y , (=equals ,means=yq-qe-we ,as in ‘ qw= an-aq-ne-(e) a-yay-qy-qar=make my self Aynw ytah w-qo-,= each other c(h)a-ran-qe-e-ye-qar=discussion debate all words phrases used by beginner and academics to learn and teach Ainu before researching and talking about Aynw in Aynw ytah an(r)y (Aynw ytah-qa-tw-mondwn-y-ren-qa) (my coined word)=Linguastics Grammar wa chy-my-chy-my wa w-yn-qar-qy= an=find , search a-ye wa w-qo-c(h)a-ran-qe-( w-p=a(n)-o-re) yn-qar hosh-qy-no Aynw ytah an(r)y rw-we ne-e pyr-qa-no =an , however reading most posts we need to give examples of Aynw phases=qan-py-pon-(qa-ta) a-nw-ye-qar qy rw-we-ne-yan-e=an wa ! and if you use Ainu in Roman or=ya Qa-ta-qa-na=katakana language words you will find so many PDF sites Blogs all manner of material in Ainu some very old scanned be careful w-sa-w-sa-q=an ma-nw rw-we-e-e qor-o-qa see my VK Andrew Waddington A-nw-qar yan-roq-ne-e. Aynw-Wqowpasqowma (talk) 06:10, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ainu talk contributions  

message: Be careful Aynw has a,e,i,o,u, or= A I U E O as many 10 or more grammatical particles added to front middle back of words Greetings y-ran=( ram-w=heart ) qar=make -a-=a(n) p ( h sakhalin Aynw ) te-e  or y=one -yay=-self ray=- bow q-e ( make qy do ) - re  paasive like られ=ra-re Japanese=thank you, qor e, qor-o-qa, qor-a-chy , y-qy w-qo ,w-w-e-to-re so when I write with hyphen I try to learn the particles of the words see Greenlandiq Inuit 
and many grammar functions as in English are 
expressed like in Arabic Noun and verbs , and many one letter two letter particle words that must be joined like Latin (in-accurate) pre-fix su-f fix a-f fix es , Japanese Syllabilic 五 go 十 Jww 音 on 順 jwn AIUEO are just for Aynw adapted to Japanese system and confusingly applies to Aynw that have many VC as well as CV and look like CV VC clusters but are particles  Aynw-Wqowpasqowma (talk) 06:44, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Itak ytah itaku y-(e) ta-k ye=ytah= itak. 

message: And new “ Tanabe”  Abe is a name that I have heard or read has connections and Watanabe also “ U-te-tsu “ of Tsugaru I heard that in Tsu-ga-ru the Tu, To Too-ru=go a way through To-Hoku Hok -= nor-th (Nor-way)🇳🇴  Kai= sea  do=way , Do-san-ko  道産娘 born in Hokkaido ,cross north or Tu -cross ga=on ru= way,road   Dialect is so different from standard Japanese and contains many words that could be Ainu but have been distorted by time by Kanji and the Hiragana rule , example my father in-law Tsu-ji 辻 but secretly 逵 crossroads !  ( what a name ! Not even a Mon Sho mei  crest name  is pronounced as Tu-dji ,ji=sign kan-ji To=10, ten  ji cross + road we can see distorted Kanji with names are confused Many words in many languages have been confused by accident and misinformation and or ignorance Jordenthorpe Norton=North town ,hilly place I grew up  Jord en thorpe earth and (Mamtor Tor-hill Pre English )Thorpe= Torp Danish hamlet most people do not know the history and even place names have been changed moved set up again after war or disaster in a safer place so we depend on historical writings that have been distorted to suit political gains. 森 Mori is a Forest Jp Mori 盛-pile up Oka 岡、oka 丘 a hill 2 Kanji 
Outside Sendai 仙台 nanatsu 7 Mori 森 7 forests they are 7 hills with forests and in Aynw Mori is a hill Covered with trees, Marumori round forest or round hill south Miyagi,
Aynw-Wqowpasqowma (talk) 09:10, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tohoku Ainu- Ebysw Emeshi Matagi... place names ... 

message: It is not plausible for Ainu to be genetically linked to only a few of the Quechuan languages, as this would imply that the Ainu people arose from within the proto-Quechua people and then migrated to their current habitat in Japan while the remaining Quechua ended up in S America.  As Quechua is a close knit family, we would expect Ainu to be firmly Quechuan in character and even readable by the speakers of these languages, since they can to a limited extent already understand each other.  Perhaps the author meant to write that Ainu is genetically linked to Quechua as a whole? —Soap— 17:56, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd remove mention of Quechua altogether: I've had a look at the paper and far from proposing any genetic link, it simply states that the two languages are "phonostatistically" close. This appears to be based on a count of phonemes of a given type in an example text. At most, this could point to some typological similarity, but I wouldn't include it in the article without some interpretation and contextualisation supplied by a secondary source. – Uanfala (talk) 18:15, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quechua 

message: ​​​​​​​I want to reintroduce the possibility of re-merging the four articles back in to one, because I don't like the names we're using, and I'm not getting my way.The struck line was added unsigned by User:Kwamikagami  The sum content of all four articles is not particularly great, and this would allow the differences of opinion here to be politely swept under the rug.  (See previous discussion of a merge here and in the previous RM above.)  —  AjaxSmack  18:14, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Re-merge instead?

message: In the course of the RM discussion and related discussions above, as well as previous discussions, the possibility of merging the  with the  article was broached (by myself among others).  Following the close of previous discussion, one user has been merging the former into the latter.  Despite my support of this, I feel it should be discussed first, so here's the place.  Pinging previous participants.  —  AjaxSmack  01:59, 24 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Remerge redux 

message: There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Ainu languages which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you.  —RMCD bot 03:47, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move discussion in progress