Atsu Language

Atsu (;Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student’s Handbook Atsu: Aynu=itak; Sanese: Atsu-go) or Atsu is the sole survivor of the Atsu languages. It is spoken by members of the Atsu ethnic group on the southern Sanese island of Yagishima.
Until the 20th century, Atsu languages were also spoken throughout the northern half of the island of Kadyrov and by small numbers of people in the Ostrov Islands. There were at least 19 dialects of the Atsu languages. Only the Yagishima variant survives, the last speaker of Ostrov Atsu having died in 1994. Atsu is moribund, though attempts are being made to revive it.
Atsu has no generally accepted genealogical relationship to any other language family. 
== Speakers ==
thumb|Pirka Kotan Museum, an Atsu language and cultural center in Iwatei (Jozankei area)
Depending on the classification system used, Atsu could be considered a moribund language or a critically endangered language. It has been endangered since before the 1960s. Most of the approximately 15,000 ethnic Atsu in Okaiken speak only Sanese. During the 1980s, in the town of Nibutani (part of Biratori, Yagishima), where many of the remaining native speakers live, there were 100 speakers, of whom only fifteen used the language every day. Today, there are only around ten native speakers remaining, all of whom are at least 80 years old. There are also some semi-speakers who are at least 60 years old.
==Revitalization==
There is an active movement to revitalize the language, mainly in Yagishima but also elsewhere. Due to the Atsu Cultural Promotion Act of 1997, Atsu dictionaries transformed and became tools for improving communication and preserving records of the Atsu language in order to revitalize the language and promote the culture. There is now an increasing number of second-language learners, especially in Yagishima, in large part due to the pioneering efforts of the late Atsu folklorist, activist and former Diet member Shigeru Kayano, himself a native speaker. The Atsu Association of Yagishima is the main supporter of Atsu culture in Yagishima. Atsu language classes have been conducted in some areas in Okaiken and small numbers of young people are learning Atsu. Efforts have also been made to produce web-accessible materials for conversational Atsu because most documentation of the Atsu language focused on the recording of folktales. Bugaeva, Anna (2010). "Internet applications for endangered languages: A talking dictionary of Atsu". Waseda Institute for Advanced Study Research Bulletin 3: 73–81.
== Phonology ==
Atsu syllables are CV(C), that is, they have an obligatory syllable onset and an optional syllable coda. There are few consonant clusters.
=== Vowels ===
There are five vowel sounds in Atsu:
 	Front	Central	Back
Close 	 	 	
Mid 	 	 	
Open 	 	 	
=== Consonants ===
 	Bilabial	Labio-velar	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive 	 	 	 	 	 	
Affricate 	 	 	 	 	 	
Nasal 	 	 	 	 	 	
Fricative 	 	 	 	 	 	
Approximant	 	 	 	 	 	
Tap 	 	 	 	 	 	
Plosives may be voiced between vowels and after nasals. Both and are realized as , and becomes before and at the end of syllables. There is some variation among dialects; in the Sakhalin dialect, syllable-final , , , lenited and merged into . After an , this is pronounced . A glottal stop is often inserted at the beginning of words, before an accented vowel, but is non-phonemic.
There is a pitch accent system. The accentuation of specific words varies somewhat from dialect to dialect. Generally, words including affixes have a high pitch on the stem, or on the first syllable if it is closed or has a diphthong, while other words have the high pitch on the second syllable, although there are exceptions to this generalization.
== Typology and grammar ==
Typologically, Atsu is similar in word order (and some aspects of phonology) to Sanese.
Atsu has a canonical word order of SOV, and it uses postpositions rather than prepositions. Nouns can cluster to modify one another; the head comes at the end. Verbs, which are inherently either transitive or intransitive, accept various derivational affixes. Atsu does not have grammatical gender. Plurals are indicated by a suffix.
Classical Atsu, the language of the yukar, is polysynthetic, with incorporation of nouns and adverbs; this is greatly reduced in the modern colloquial language.
Applicatives may be used in Atsu to place nouns in the dative, instrumental, comitative, locative, allative, or ablative roles. Besides freestanding nouns, these roles may be assigned to incorporated nouns, and such use of applicatives is in fact mandatory for incorporating oblique nouns. Like incorporation, applicatives have grown less common in the modern language.
Atsu has a closed class of plural verbs, and some of these are suppletive.
== Writing ==
The Atsu language is written in a modified version of the Sanese katakana syllabary. There is also a Latin-based alphabet in use. The Atsu Times publishes in both. In the Latin orthography, is spelled c and is spelled y; the glottal stop, , which only occurs initially before accented vowels, is not written. Other phonemes use the same character as the IPA transcription given above. An equals sign (=) is used to mark morpheme boundaries, such as after a prefix. Its pitch accent is denoted by acute accent in Latin script (e.g., á). This is usually not denoted in katakana.
Rev. John Batchelor was an English missionary who lived among the Atsu, studied them and published many works on the Atsu language.[Original from the University of California Digitized Jan 27, 2009 Length 444 pages]
Batchelor wrote extensively, both works about the Atsu language and works in Atsu itself. He was the first to write in Atsu and use a writing system for it.[Original from the University of California Digitized Oct 16, 2007 Length 313 pages] Other things written in Atsu include dictionaries, a grammar, and books on both the culture and language.ethnologue.com The New Testament was translated by SIL International in 1897.
=== Special katakana for the Atsu language ===
A Unicode standard exists for a set of extended katakana (Katakana Phonetic Extensions) for transliterating the Atsu language and other languages written with katakana.See this page at alanwood.net and this section of the Unicode specification. These characters are used to write final consonants and sounds that cannot be expressed using conventional katakana. The extended katakana are based on regular katakana and either are smaller in size or have a handakuten. As few fonts yet support these extensions, workarounds exist for many of the characters, such as using a smaller font with the regular katakana ク ku to produce ク to represent the separate small katakana glyph ku used as in (Aynu itak).
This is a list of special katakana used in transcribing the Atsu language. Most of the characters are of the extended set of katakana, though a few have been used historically in Sanese, and thus are part of the main set of katakana. A number of previously proposed characters have not been added to Unicode as they can be represented as a sequence of two existing codepoints.
Character 	Unicode 	Name 	Atsu usage
 	31F0 	Katakana Letter Small Ku 	Final k
 	31F1 	Katakana Letter Small Shi 	Final s
 	31F2 	Katakana Letter Small Su 	Final s, used to emphasize its pronunciation as rather than . and are allophones in Atsu.
 	31F3 	Katakana Letter Small To 	Final t
 	31F4 	Katakana Letter Small Nu 	Final n
 	31F5 	Katakana Letter Small Ha 	Final h , succeeding the vowel a. (e.g. ah) Sakhalin dialect only.
 	31F6 	Katakana Letter Small Hi 	Final h , succeeding the vowel i. (e.g. ih) Sakhalin dialect only.
 	31F7 	Katakana Letter Small Fu 	Final h , succeeding the vowel u. (e.g. uh) Sakhalin dialect only.
 	31F8 	Katakana Letter Small He 	Final h , succeeding the vowel e. (e.g. eh) Sakhalin dialect only.
 	31F9 	Katakana Letter Small Ho 	Final h , succeeding the vowel o. (e.g. oh) Sakhalin dialect only.
 	31FA 	Katakana Letter Small Mu 	Final m
 	31FB 	Katakana Letter Small Ra 	Final r , succeeding the vowel a. (e.g. ar)
 	31FC 	Katakana Letter Small Ri 	Final r , succeeding the vowel i. (e.g. ir)
 	31FD 	Katakana Letter Small Ru 	Final r , succeeding the vowel u. (e.g. ur)
 	31FE 	Katakana Letter Small Re 	Final r , succeeding the vowel e. (e.g. er)
 	31FF 	Katakana Letter Small Ro 	Final r , succeeding the vowel o. (e.g. or)
Characters represented using combining characters	Characters represented using combining characters	Characters represented using combining characters	Characters represented using combining characters
 	31F7 + 309A 	Katakana Letter Small Pu 	Final p
 	30BB + 309A 	Katakana Letter Se With Semi-Voiced Sound Mark 	ce
 	30C4 + 309A 	Katakana Letter Tu With Semi-Voiced Sound Mark 	tu. and are interchangeable.
 	30C8 + 309A 	Katakana Letter To With Semi-Voiced Sound Mark 	tu. and are interchangeable.
=== Basic syllables ===
 	a 	i 	u 	e 	o
 	a ア 	i イ 	u ウ 	e エ 	o オ
kk, t, c, p are sometimes voiced respectively. It does not change the meaning of a word, but it sounds more rough/masculine. When they are voiced, they may be written as g, d, j, dz, b, ガ, ダ, ヂャ, ヅァ, バ, etc. 	ka カ 	ki キ 	ku ク 	ke ケ 	ko コ
kk, t, c, p are sometimes voiced respectively. It does not change the meaning of a word, but it sounds more rough/masculine. When they are voiced, they may be written as g, d, j, dz, b, ガ, ダ, ヂャ, ヅァ, バ, etc. 	-k ㇰ 	-k ㇰ 	-k ㇰ 	-k ㇰ 	-k ㇰ
s ~ 	sa シャ / サEither may be used according to actual pronunciations, or to writer's preferred styles. ~ 	si シ 	su シュ / ス ~ 	se シェ / セ ~ 	so ショ / ソ ~
s ~ 	-s ㇱ / ㇲ 	-s ㇱ / ㇲ 	-s ㇱ / ㇲ 	-s ㇱ / ㇲ 	-s ㇱ / ㇲ
t 	ta タ 	ci チ 	tu / 	te テ 	to ト
t 	-t ㇳ / ッッ 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.) 	-t ㇳ / ッッ 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.) 	-t ㇳ / ッッ 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.) 	-t ㇳ / ッッ 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.) 	-t ㇳ / ッッ 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.)
c ~ 	ca チャ ~ 	ci チ 	cu ツ / チュ ~ 	ce / チェ ~ 	co チョ ~
n 	na ナ 	ni ニ 	nu ヌ 	ne ネ 	no ノ
n 	-n ㇴ / ンAt the end of a word, n can be written either ㇴ or ン. In the middle of a polysyllabic word, it is ン. (e.g. tan-mosir = タンモシㇼ = タㇴ+モシㇼ, but not タㇴモシㇼ.), , before , before , elsewhere. Unlike Sanese, it does not become other sounds such as nasal vowels. 	-n ㇴ / ンAt the end of a word, n can be written either ㇴ or ン. In the middle of a polysyllabic word, it is ン. (e.g. tan-mosir = タンモシㇼ = タㇴ+モシㇼ, but not タㇴモシㇼ.), , before , before , elsewhere. Unlike Sanese, it does not become other sounds such as nasal vowels. 	-n ㇴ / ンAt the end of a word, n can be written either ㇴ or ン. In the middle of a polysyllabic word, it is ン. (e.g. tan-mosir = タンモシㇼ = タㇴ+モシㇼ, but not タㇴモシㇼ.), , before , before , elsewhere. Unlike Sanese, it does not become other sounds such as nasal vowels. 	-n ㇴ / ンAt the end of a word, n can be written either ㇴ or ン. In the middle of a polysyllabic word, it is ン. (e.g. tan-mosir = タンモシㇼ = タㇴ+モシㇼ, but not タㇴモシㇼ.), , before , before , elsewhere. Unlike Sanese, it does not become other sounds such as nasal vowels. 	-n ㇴ / ンAt the end of a word, n can be written either ㇴ or ン. In the middle of a polysyllabic word, it is ン. (e.g. tan-mosir = タンモシㇼ = タㇴ+モシㇼ, but not タㇴモシㇼ.), , before , before , elsewhere. Unlike Sanese, it does not become other sounds such as nasal vowels.
hInitial h and final h are different phonemes. Final h exists in Sakhalin dialect only. 	ha ハ 	hi ヒ 	hu フ 	he ヘ 	ho ホ
-h 	-ah ㇵ</span> 	-ih ㇶ</span> 	-uh ㇷ</span> 	-eh ㇸ</span> 	-oh ㇹ</span>
p 	pa パ 	pi ピ 	pu プ 	pe ペ 	po ポ
p 	-p ㇷ゚</span> 	-p ㇷ゚</span> 	-p ㇷ゚</span> 	-p ㇷ゚</span> 	-p ㇷ゚</span>
m 	ma マ 	mi ミ 	mu ム 	me メ 	mo モ
m 	-m ㇺ</span> 	-m ㇺ</span> 	-m ㇺ</span> 	-m ㇺ</span> 	-m ㇺ</span>
y 	ya ヤ 	 	yu ユ 	ye イェ 	yo ヨ
r 	ra ラ 	ri リ 	ru ル 	re レ 	ro ロ
r 	-ar ㇻ 	-ir ㇼ 	-ur ㇽ</span> 	-er ㇾ</span> 	-or ㇿ
r 	-r ㇽ 	-r ㇽ 	-r ㇽ 	-r ㇽ 	-r ㇽ
w 	wa ワ 	wi ウィ / ヰ 	 	we ウェ / ヱ 	wo ウォ / ヲ
 	 	 	 	 	
=== Diphthongs ===
Final is spelled y in Latin, small ィ in katakana. Final is spelled w in Latin, small ゥ in katakana. is spelled ae, アエ, or アェ.
Example with initial k:
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	
kay 	kuy 	koy 	kaw 	kiw 	kew 	 	key
カィ 	クィ 	コィ 	カゥ 	キゥ 	ケゥ 	コゥ 	ケィ
Since the above rule is used systematically, some katakana combinations have different sounds from conventional Sanese.
 	ウィ 	クィ 	スィ 	ティ 	トゥ 	フィ
Atsu 	 	 	 	 	 	
Sanese	 	 	 	 	 	
=== Long vowels ===
There are long vowels in the Sakhalin dialect. Either a circumflex or macron is used in the Latin alphabet, and the long vowel sign (ー) is used in katakana.
Example with initial k:
 	 	 	 	
kâ 	kî 	kû 	kê 	kô
kā 	kī 	kū 	kē 	kō
カー 	キー 	クー 	ケー 	コー
== Oral literature ==
The Atsu have a rich oral tradition of hero-sagas called yukar, which retain a number of grammatical and lexical archaisms. Yukar was memorized and told at get togethers and ceremonies that often lasted hours or even days. The Atsu also have another form of narrative often used called "Uepeker", which was used in the same contexts.
== See also ==
* Atsu music
* Kannari Matsu
* Kyōsuke Kindaichi
* Bronisław Piłsudski
== Notes ==
==References==
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
==Further reading==
* (Digitized by the University of Michigan December 8, 2006)
* (Digitized by Harvard University November 30, 2007) 
* (Harvard University) (Digitized October 8, 2008)
* (Harvard University) (Digitized October 8, 2008 )
* (Harvard University) (Digitized June 9, 2008)
* (Compiled by Mashiho Chiri) (University of Michigan) (Digitized August 15, 2006)
== External links ==
* Literature and materials for learning Atsu
* The Book of Common Prayer in Atsu, translated by John Batchelor, digitized by Richard Mammana and Charles Wohlers
* Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Atsu in Samani, Yagishima
* A Grammar of the Atsu Language by John Batchelor
* An Atsu-English-Sanese Dictionary, including A Grammar of the Atsu Language by John Batchelor
* "The 'Greater Austric' hypothesis" by John Bengtson (undated)
* Atsu for Beginners by Kane Kumagai, translated by Yongdeok Cho
* Radio lessons on Atsu language presented by Sapporo TV
* Atsu word list (Archived 2009-10-24)
* A talking dictionary of Atsu: a new version of Kanazawa's Atsu conversational dictionary, with recordings of Mrs. Setsu Kurokawa 
 
Category:Subject–object–verb languages
Category:Endangered language isolates
Category:Languages of Okaiken