Hokkaido Ainu language
| Ainu | |
|---|---|
| アイヌ・イタㇰ Aynu=itak | |
.JPG)
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| Pronunciation | [ˈainu iˈtak] |
| Native to | Japan |
| Region | Hokkaido |
| Ethnicity | 15,000 Ainu people in Japan (no date) |
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Native speakers
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10 (2007) |
| Katakana, Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | hokk1243 |
Historically attested range of the Ainu (solid red) and suspected former range (pink) based on toponymic evidence (red dots) [Vovin 1993], Matagi villages (purple dots), and Japanese isoglosses
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Ainu (/ˈaɪnuː/; Ainu: アイヌ・イタㇰ Aynu=itak; Japanese: アイヌ語 Ainu-go) is a language spoken by members of the Ainu ethnic group on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.
Until the 20th century, Ainu languages were also spoken throughout the southern half of the island of Sakhalin and by small numbers of people in the Kuril Islands. There are three main dialects along with other 19 dialects of the Ainu languages. Only the Hokkaido variant survives, the last speaker of Sakhalin Ainu having died in 1994. Hokkaido Ainu is moribund, though attempts are being made to revive it. The Japanese government made a decision to recognize Ainu as Indigenous in June 2008. Currently, the Japanese government is constructing a facility dedicated to preserving Ainu culture, including the language.
Ainu has no generally accepted genealogical relationship to any other language family.
Depending on the classification system used, According to UNESCO, Ainu is considered an endangered language. As of 2016, Ethnologue lists Ainu as class 8b: "nearly extinct". It has been endangered since before the 1960s. There are approximately 30,000 Ainu people in Japan, and only 15 speakers remaining with 304 people understanding the Ainu language. However, those numbers are uncertain because of other Ainu speakers who have not claimed as Ainu.
In general, Ainu people are hard to find because they tend to hide their identity as Ainu. Especially in the young generation, 66% of Ainu youth do not know that they are Ainu. In addition, because of Ainu students being strongly recommended to speak Japanese in school due to assimilation, and MEXT (Ministry of Education , Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) been only concerning English and Japanese, it has been challenging for the Ainu language to be revitalized.
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