Ca’ Foscari Japanese Studies

1 • Introductory Lesson: Generalities of the Ainu Language

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Abstract

Ainu is a language of Far East Asia historically spoken in the territories of today’s Russia and Japan that face the Southern Okhotsk Sea. Specifically, Ainu was spoken all through the Japanese island of Hokkaidō (also referred to as ‘Ezo/Yezo’ in old sources), in the southern part of Sakhalin island (called ‘Karafuto’ by Japanese people), in the Kuril Islands chain (called ‘Chishima’ by Japanese people), and in the southernmost tip of the Kamchatka peninsula. Although a number of hypotheses about Ainu’s relation to other languages have been proposed (Dougherty 2019, 100), the language is presently classified as an isolate (see Lesson 18). There exist three main varieties of the language, that take their names from the regions where the language was spoken: Hokkaidō Ainu, Sakhalin Ainu, and Kuril Ainu. Both Kuril Ainu and Sakhalin Ainu are extinct, and Hokkaidō Ainu is classified as critically endangered by UNESCO.


Open access | Peer reviewed

Pubblicato 04 Aprile 2022 | Lingua: en

Copyright © 2022 Elia Dal Corso. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-585-8/001


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