Wiktionary:About Ainu

Main category: Ainu language

This page deals with the specific issues of Ainu entries on Wiktionary.

Pronunciation

The template {{ain-IPA}} can be used for convenience.

Hokkaido Ainu has five vowels (a, e, i, o, u) and twelve consonants (p, t, k, s, c[t͡ʃ], n, m, r[ɾ], h, '[ʔ], y[j], w). three stops p, t, k realize as no audible release and often ,especially before nasal or between vowels, vocalize. Syllabic final r has a weak copy for before vowel. Nasal n and m neutralize as velar nasal [ŋ] before veral stop k and as [m] before bilabial sound p,m. ' appear before vowel without other consonants and between vowels to avoid hiatus, but sometimes not written in especially word initial. s and t palatalize as [ʃ] and c before i. h realize as [ɸ] before u and as [ç] like Japanese.

Accent

Some Ainu dialects still have accents, so the accent should be noted if possible.

Saru dialect has this pitch accent rule.

If a first sylable is open sylable, there are an accent. If not, there are in second sylable. Some words have irregular accents and a piece of them can be explained for its reason like first sylable contain semantically most important morpheme or affixed by non accent change affix like causative suffix -e/-te/-re or fourth person agent prefix or second person plural prefix eci=. Few words make minimal pair by accents. ex. nina vs nina, monak vs monak nisap vs nisap. Sometimes irregular accent written by accute accent.

Writing System

The Ainu language has two main writing systems, the katakana syllabary and the Latin alphabet. The current policy at Wiktionary is to represent a word's katakana spelling in the heading using the appropriate templates, while prioritising Latin entries when possible.

Part of Speech

Ainu language has 7 main parts of speech, as explained briefly below.

• Verbs (including stative verbs, which are functionally identical to adjectives)
• Nouns
• Determiners
• Adverbs
• Conjunctions
• Interjections
• Particles

Verbs

Ainu verbs do not have grammatical tenses, moods, aspects, or any kind of conjugation. All Indo-European equivalents of verb conjugation are achieved by using separate words. However, it does have a concept of plurality, which is mainly achieved by adding the suffix -pa to the respective verb, although sometimes the verb may be altered completely, as in the case of ek (“to come”), plural arki (“to come (pl.)”). The template {{ain-verb}} is sufficient for both of these situations. As an example, use the wikicode below for the plural form of rayke (“to kill”), ronnu (“to kill (pl.), to massacre”):

{{ain-verb|l|ライケ|ronnu}}

This results in:

rayke (Kana spelling ライケ, plural ronnu)

There are three basic verb types in Ainu: complete verbs (zero-arugument verb), intransitive verbs, and transitive verbs.

• Complete verbs are used to describe the weather, and almost of them start with sir (“appearance, seeming”), such as sirpirka (“it is good weather”), from sir (“appearance”) + pirka (“good, to be good”). Complete verbs cannot have any subject nor object.
• Intransitive verbs can be turned into transitive verbs with the addition of applicative prefixes e-, ko-, and o-or causative suffixes -re/-te/-e and -ka.
• Transitive verbs can be turned into intransitive verbs with the addition of prefixes such as mediopassive i-, reflexive yay-, and intransitive or reflexive si-.

Stative verbs work like adnominal adjectives when placed before a noun. This is especially common in the case of the verbs ne (“to be”) and an (“to exist”), which are used extremely frequently when compared to their English counterparts. The reason for this is that Ainu does not have relative pronouns, and thus relative clauses must be achieved through other means. For example, the English phrase "the person that is over there" translates as Toanta an kur in Ainu, literally [In that place over there] + [Exist] + [Person].

Nouns

As with verbs, Ainu nouns hardly inflect. Both subject-object and possessive relations are derived from word-order or context. However, inaliable nouns refer to body parts, some kinship and parts of something whole have distinct in conceptual form and possessive form. Possesive form has a short form and a long form but we don't know what the difference semantically. Some short form is same as conceptual form. As an example, use the wikicode below for the noun kur (“shadow”), which has the short possessive kuri (“shadows”) and long possessive kurihi (“shadows”):

In addition, differently from verbs, only a small quantity of Ainu nouns have a grammatical plural form. As such, the main purpose of the template {{ain-noun}} is to indicate a word's respective katakana spelling. As an example, use the wikicode below for the noun kur (“person”), which has the plural utar (“persons”):

{{ain-noun|l|クㇽ|utar}}

This results in:

kur (Kana spelling クㇽ, plural utar)

There are a few bound nouns that can only appear after determiners, nouns, and relative clauses. These include kur, utar, uske (he), pe/p, hi/i, hike.

Determiners

Determiners are also known as prenominals because they can only appear before a noun and theyown only can't become NP (Noun Phrases). There are three groups of these: numeral determiners, spatial (nominal) demonstratives, and anaphoric demonstratives. They can have pronoun-like function with bound noun pe/p that can be reanalyzed as nominalize suffix.

• Numeral determiners are prefixed to common nouns, things clasfier pe/p, and people clasfier -n/-iw. The former form is used after vowel (from sine (“one”) to ine (“four”)) and the other is used after consonant (from iwan (“six”) to wan (“ten”), and hotne (“twenty”)).

• Spatial demonstratives are used for deixis and not for anaphora. ex. tan (“this”), toan (“that”)

• Anaphoric demonstratives are used for only anaphora. ex.ne ("that"), nea (sg.)/nerok (pl.)

Other adnominals include counting numerals, such as sine (“one”) (although there is some room to argue that Ainu numerals are simply corrupted forms of a root word joined with the verb ne), and some locative particles, such as un (“at”) (which present the same issue). There is not yet consensus on whether to create a specific heading for Ainu adnominals.

Adverbs

Adverbs in Ainu are generally formed by adding the particle no after a noun or verb, although there are many adverbs, generally set expressions, that do not employ it. For the adverb sonno (“truly”), use the wikicode below:

{{ain-adv|l|ソンノ}}

This results in:

sonno (Kana spelling ソンノ)

Conjunctions

Use the template {{ain-conjunction}} for conjunctions.

Interjections

Use the template {{ain-intj}} for interjections.

Particles

As the Ainu language lacks any kind of conjugation or declension, particles are an important part of Ainu speech. Particles indicate aspects and clarify the relationship of words in a sentence. For these, use the template {{ain-part}}.

Dialects

The Ainu language is not standardised. Historically, the main dialects were Hokkaido Ainu, Sakhalin Ainu and Kuril Ainu. Hokkaido Ainu is the only dialect that is still actively spoken. Hokkaido Ainu is divided into several varieties:

• Southern Dialects

• Saru, or Biratori dialect, spoken roughly along the Saru River, in an area that was formerly referred to as the "Ainu capital". This dialect is characterised by numerous innovations, such as contractions and the deletion of final vowels on certain words. This is currently the most prominent form of the Ainu language, and is noticeably more likely to be featured in materials and grammars. For this reason, the Saru dialect should be given priority when dealing with dialectal differences, save for when it results in loss of linguistically significant details, such as in the case of contractions.

• The Horobetsu and Ishikari dialects, spoken further to the south-west of the Saru dialect in the areas of modern Noboribetsu and Ishikari, are characterised by the frequent voicing of intervocalic consonants and palatalisation of consonants before [i], in a fashion similar to Japanese. To add to the similarities, Horobetsu in particular is documented to have a velar allophone of [n], [ŋ], that occurs in word-final position and before velar consonants. However, admittedly, this may be due to Japanese influence.

• The Shizunai dialect, spoken near the Shizunai River, is similar to the Horobetsu dialect, but is characterised by even more frequent voicing of intervocalic consonants.

• Eastern Dialects

• The Tokachi dialect is spoken far to the east, near the Tokachi River. Due to its distance and relative obscurity compared to the southern dialects, it has much region-specific vocabulary, and may not be as well documented.

• The Sōya dialect, spoken on the very northern end of Hokkaido in the area of modern Sōya Subprefecture, was remarkably similar to the extinct Sakhalin dialect.