Ainu language. Endangered Languages: Ainu Language and Culture
Ainu language. Genealogical connections have not been established. In the 20th century out of use... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary
Ainu language- (Ainu) one of the languages of East Asia, the family ties of which are not clear. It was distributed over most of the Japanese Islands (Hokkaido Island and the eastern part of Honshu Island), in the southern part of Sakhalin Island, on the Kuril Islands, on... ... Linguistic encyclopedic dictionary
Ainu language. Genealogical connections have not been established. In the 20th century went out of live use. * * * AINI LANGUAGE AINI LANGUAGE, the language of the Ainu. Genealogical connections have not been established. In the 20th century out of use... encyclopedic Dictionary
The Ainu language (See Ainu), spoken mainly on the island of Hokkaido (Japan). In the 18th and 19th centuries. dialects of A. i. were also on the Kuril Islands, Kamchatka and Sakhalin Island; now only a few speakers of A. i. have survived on Sakhalin... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia
An isolated language (language isolate) is a language that is not included in any known language family. Thus, in fact, each isolated language forms a separate family, consisting only of that language. The most famous examples include... ... Wikipedia
- (language isolate) a language that is not included in any known language family. Thus, in fact, each isolated language forms a separate family, consisting only of that language. The most famous examples include Burushaski, Sumerian,... ... Wikipedia
Self-name: (Japanese: 上古日本語 jo:ko nihongo?) ... Wikipedia
AINOV LETTER
Many researchers have written about the possible presence of writing among the Ainu; petroglyphs, property signs and carvings were mainly cited as examples of writing. ikunishi.
The Ainu had peculiar signs of ownership - itokpa(sacred tamgas), which were passed down by inheritance. It was a family amulet and talisman carved on personal items. There were kamui itokpa(signs of deities), denoting the personified forces of nature - sea, mountains, birds, mountain, sun. Signs of personal property (sirosi) existed among women and men (ekasi itokpa - tamgas of the clan). For example, both ekasi itokpa and shiroshi were depicted on holding sticks.
In a word "tose" Ainu called their healing talismans. Interestingly, a similar name - tos– was in the pictograms for primitive geographical maps (information about the route) among the Upper Kolyma Yukaghirs.
There is reason to believe that the very name of the gods of Japan (kami) was borrowed from the Ainu (kamui, lit. “one who”; kanna “upper”) and the name of Japanese writing - kana(lit. divine; Japanese tradition etymologizes this word as kari-na borrowed names). In Japanese literature there is a mention of “signs of the era of the gods” - ahiru, hijin, idlzumo, anaitsi, iyo, moritsune. The ancient (primordial) writing in Japan is mentioned in the historical work Shokunihongi in the 8th century. These are the so-called Shinji (kami no moji) – “sacred signs”, jinzaimoji or kamiyo no moji"signs of the sacred period". Perhaps behind these names there are hidden pictograms, including tamgas, of the most ancient inhabitants of Japan - the Ainu (although, to tell the truth, it is naive to exclude the fact that the Japanese themselves could also have tamgas, as well as the Korean factor - writing I'm coming).
By the way, Korean numerals resemble Ainu ones: 1 - hana (Korean) - sine (Ainu); 2 — tu (du) - tu; 4 - net - ine.
It is very possible that the legendary Japanese state of Yamato is the ancient Ainu Yamatai (in Ainu, “the place where the sea cuts the land”). Samurai culture and samurai fighting techniques largely go back to Ainu fighting techniques and contain many Ainu elements, and individual samurai clans are Ainu in origin, the most famous is the Abe clan. It is assumed that words and customs such as sepukku, hara-kiri, the cult of the sword (emus) are borrowed from the Ainu culture. By the way, the wooden doll - the Russian matryoshka - has Japanese (Ainu?) roots.
The origin of the Ainu remains unclear at present. The Ainu had unusually thick hair covering their heads, wore huge beards and mustaches (holding them with special chopsticks while eating), and their facial features were similar to European ones. Hypotheses have been expressed about the Caucasian, Austronesian (Melanesian, Monic), Altai and Paleo-Asian ancestral homeland of the Ainu. They are close only to the people of the rope pottery culture of the Jomon era (literally from Japanese “mark of a rope”) on the Japanese Islands (13,000-300 BC). In historical times, the Ainu did not have their own script, although they may have had a script at the end of the Jomon era.
Graphic artifacts such as the Kibe tablet (see below) and the inscription on the back of a mask from the Nagano site are known to meet the formal criteria of writing.
Tablet from Kibe:
Inscription on a mask from Nagano:
As for the writing of Nagano, judging by the simplicity of the graphemes, it seems that this inscription was made in phonographic, or rather, even alphabetic writing. In the Ainu language, syllables can have the structure: V, CV, VC, CVC. For a language with similar phonotactics, alphabetic writing is the most convenient. Judging by the fact that all the graphemes of the Nagano writing are quite simple in style, it seems that there are very few of them, perhaps 15 - 16, which corresponds to the number of phonemes of the Ainu language, therefore, according to formal criteria, the Nagano writing may well be the Ainu writing. As for the Kibe writing, it is impossible to say anything definite about its type, since it can be either syllabic or signophonographic or signographic writing. It can be more or less confidently stated that if the Kibe writing system once served the Ainu language, then in no case can it be syllabic. Additionally, judging by the relative complexity of individual graphemes, it appears that Kibe's writing is not alphabetic, and is therefore most likely signophonographic or signographic. However, regarding the Kibe writing, it is impossible to say with certainty which language it served. Naturally, due to the small volume of both inscriptions, it is now impossible to raise the question of decipherment.
There is no reliable information that during the Jomon era there was an ancient Ainu state on the Japanese Islands. Agriculture, which is usually the basis of statehood, was apparently practiced by the ancient Ainu of Honshu only as an auxiliary industry. But, as A. Kondratenko and M. Prokofiev rightly note, the rich marine industries in the southern part of the island of Honshu could well have created the preconditions for social stratification and the formation of state formations, which in turn could have contributed to the creation of original writing.
According to A. Akulov, the ancient Ainu state could have been formed approximately in the middle of the Jomon era, i.e. somewhere 5-4 thousand years BC. and reached its peak by the middle. 1 thousand BC It is very possible that it was not a centralized state, but rather a confederation of several completely independent principalities; it is also very likely that ethnically it was not purely Ainu, but Ainu-Austronesian. As for the loss of writing by the so-called “historical Ainu,” this is not as strange as it seems at first glance. It is known that around mid. 1 thousand BC active migration of Altai-speaking ethnic groups from the territory of the Korean Peninsula to Kyushu and the southern part of Honshu begins. It was these Altai-speaking ethnic groups that acted as the main components of the Japanese ethnic group and founded the state of Yamato in the middle of the first millennium AD.
“Nowadays, an Aino, usually without a hat, barefoot and in ports tucked above the knees, meeting you on the road, curtsies to you and at the same time looks affectionately, but sadly and painfully, like a loser, and as if he wants to apologize for the beard he has grown a big one, but he still hasn’t made a career for himself,” wrote A. Chekhov in his “Sakhalin Island.”
And here’s another quote from him: “As respectable and handsome as Aino men are, their wives and mothers are so unattractive. The authors call the appearance of Ainu women ugly and even disgusting. The color is dark yellow, parchment, the eyes are narrow, the features are large; uncurly, coarse hair hangs across the face in patties, like straw on an old barn, the dress is unkempt, ugly, and for all that - unusual thinness and an senile expression. Married women paint their lips something blue, and from this face they completely lose their human image and likeness, and when I had occasion to see them and observe the seriousness, almost severity, with which they stir spoons in cauldrons. and remove the dirty foam, then it seemed to me that I was seeing real witches.”
Ainu language ( ainu itak, Japanese ainugo) is distributed mainly on the island. Hokkaido (Japan). Previously it was distributed throughout the north of the island. Honsya (during the time of the legendary Japanese state of Yamato) in the south of Sakhalin Island, on the Kuril Islands and the extreme southern tip of Kamchatka. Even earlier, Ainu languages were spoken in much of Japan. The Ainu language practically fell out of use in the 1920s. The writing uses either katakana or the Latin alphabet. Numerous oral epic works of the Ainu are known - Yukars(Ainu epic Kutune Shirka).
The Ainu language is considered isolated. J. Greenberg considered it possible to include the Ainu and Nivkh languages in the Nostratic macrofamily.
The Ainu and Japanese languages show convergences in phonological systems - predominantly open syllable type, specific alternations hu/fu, p/f, ti/tsi, s/š, dz/dž.
The names of the Kuril Islands (Tsupka - place of sunrise), Sakhalin (Sakharen-mosiri - wavy land) and the Kuril Islands (from kur 'man' or 'cloud/cloud') are Ainu: Kunashir (Kur-ne-shir - black island), Paramushir (Para-mosiri - wide island), Simushir (Si-mosir large island), Urup (salmon), Iturup (Etorofa - jellyfish), Onekotan (Onne-kotan - old village), Shumshu (Syumusyu), Ketoi (Ki-toi land overgrown with grass), Chirinkotan (Tsirin-kotan - a very small island), Ushishir (Usi-sir island with a bay), Ekarma (changing, restless), Matua (Matsuwa - peak of the mountain), Shikotan (Si-kotan - large village ), Urup (Uruppu). The Ainu name of Hokkaido is Yyaun-moshiri (local land), as well as many geographical names of Japan (the shrine of the Fuji volcano is a reinterpretation of Unji - the Ainu deity of the hearth). There are suggestions that the names in Kamchatka - Paratunka and Lopatka (Tru-o-pa-ka) - are also Ainu.
After the St. Petersburg Treaty of 1875, when all the Kuril Islands went to Japan, all the Ainu were forcibly brought from there to the island. Shikotan to the reservation, later, under pressure from the world community, the surviving 20 Ainu were taken to Hokkaido. Thus, an entire branch of the Ainu people disappeared.
In 1931, the Ainu national organization Ainu Kekai was created, renamed in 1961 to Utari (People). Japanese Upper House Member Shigeru Kayano (1926-2006) was one of the last native speakers of the Ainu language and a leading figure in the Ainu national movement in Japan.
EXAMPLES:
Text in Ainu language, written in katakana:
Sinean to ta petetok un sinotas kusu payeas awa, petetokta sine ponrupnekur nesko urai kar kusu uraikik neap kosanikkeukan punas=punas.
Translation:
One day, when I was traveling in the direction of a source (river) of water, after a walnut tree I was amazed how at the source of water a small man by himself was erecting a walnut tree board. He stood there now bent at the waist and now stood straight, again and again (From the epic tale "Kamui Yukar").
A little history
The Ainu came to the Japanese islands, as well as to the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin about 15 thousand years ago. Whether anyone lived there before them is a mystery hidden in the darkness of millennia. In one source I came across that they were the first people to settle Japan, and in another - that archaeological artifacts indicate that the Japanese islands have been inhabited by people over the past 100 thousand years (it is not a fact that the human species has existed for that long). This is such a paradox. Well, be that as it may, 15 thousand years is the age of the oldest Ainu remains found in Japan. For many millennia, they lived in harmony with nature in small, distributed groups and obtained their food by hunting, fishing and gathering. At least, no archaeological finds have been made to suspect the ancient Ainu of creating a highly developed civilization. There are no ancient ruins a la Mohenjo-Daro, no examples of writing, no signs of agriculture. Only ceramics, weapons, and so on, all kinds of small household items. Well, as usual. But then, Ainu ceramics are the oldest ceramics found in the world! And, by the way, they have the most reduced dentition of all the peoples now living on Earth - this means that they chew thermally processed food longer than anyone else.
However, around 3000 B.C. Ainu ceramics became much more whimsical and much more aesthetically pleasing than before. Have there been any changes in pottery for internal social reasons or the cultural influence of immigrants from the mainland? Or maybe it was the settlers who made it, and the Ainu only bought it? Oh yes! About immigrants. It was at this time that the Japanese islands were overwhelmed by a second wave of immigration (or intervention?), from somewhere in the southwest, that is, from southeast Asia. The aliens, apparently, were Australoids by race and rice farmers by way of life. It is no longer possible to determine how peacefully the newcomers got along with the locals.
Finally, 1,000 BC. e. The third wave of migrants arrived on the Japanese islands from Central Asia - people of the Yayoi culture, it is they who are mainly the ancestors of modern Japanese. Actually, the migration flow was divided - part of the Yayoi people turned to the Japanese islands, and part moved further to the Korean peninsula (in the future I will simply call the Yayoi who settled in Japan the Japanese). By race they were, naturally, Mongoloids, and by lifestyle, again, they were rice farmers. Initially, the Japanese occupied only the southern part of the islands and their advance to the north was long and difficult - the Ainu were by no means going to give up their positions without a fight. Until the 20th century, the Japanese practically did not meddle in Hokkaido, the northernmost of the three largest Japanese islands. And even in the first half of the 20th century, the Ainu were by no means a disappearing ethnic group. It was only during the Second World War that the Japanese managed to almost completely destroy them. The cleared territories were naturally settled by the Japanese and the few surviving Ainu were assimilated. At present, purebred Ainu, in fact, do not exist; out of several tens of thousands of citizens with Ainu origin, only a couple of hundred can speak the language of their ancestors. But the Ainu did not disappear without a trace. They left their contribution to both Japanese culture and the Japanese gene pool. Many Japanese beliefs, myths, ideas about the world, customs - festive and everyday, religious and everyday -, medieval Japanese military art, the bushido code and even the word “bushido” itself, almost all geographical names in Japan are actually of Ainu origin. In addition, almost all Japanese, more or less, have an admixture of Ainu genes...
But... to be absolutely precise, the statement that the Japanese destroyed the Ainu is not entirely true. The dividing line ran somewhat differently... It was not the Japanese who were the Ainu, but the state who were the “savages.”
Firstly, government officials in ancient, medieval and modern Japan, having spread their influence to new territories, did not at all seek to physically destroy the Ainu - no, they simply did the same thing that government officials do in any country in the world - they tried to build a “civilized” society and adapt the local population to work “for their uncle” - for themselves, that is. The Ainu resisted such “cultivation” in every possible way.
Secondly, the state was originally more Ainu than Japanese. Back in the first millennium BC. e. Chinese chronicles mention a certain state of Ya-ma-ta-i, which in the Ainu language means “land divided by the sea.” The references are few and vague, but the meaning of the name and the very fact that the name has any meaning at all in the Ainu language, with a fairly high probability indicates a geographical location... And by the way, the very word “Ya-ma-ta- and" doesn't remind you of anything? For example, "Yamato"? But this was BEFORE the arrival of the Japanese! Medieval Japan, it seems, can be considered the direct descendant of the pre-Japanese Ya-ma-ta-i; during the Middle Ages, most of the “Japanese” aristocrats, starting with the emperor, were still Ainu. And even today, the descendants of the ancient nobility show a much greater admixture of Ainu genes than is found on average - in some cases over 50%! How did it happen that the Ainu ruled the Japanese and destroyed their brothers? Well, obviously, the peace-loving settled Japanese farmers turned out to be much more convenient for the state than the freedom-loving “savages” Ainu. In addition, immigrants are always more vulnerable and, therefore, more dependent on the state than the local population - they are easier to manipulate.
Anthropology and genetics
There are exactly three hypotheses about the origin of the Ainu:
1) The Ainu descended from the ancient population of Siberia, which did not yet possess the characteristics of modern races, and thus they themselves, in fact, are a separate race.
Well, this, to one degree or another, is definitely true, since 15 thousand years of isolation is a serious period of time, quite enough to stand out as a very separate group, and whether such a group can be considered a race is a purely terminological question. But this does not prevent us from raising the question of the kinship of the Ainu with other races.
2) Ainu are Caucasians. The peculiarity of Russian national fishing anthropology is the obsessive desire to prove precisely this hypothesis. The reason for this is obvious and comical at the same time. For some reason, Russian jingoistic patriots think that if they manage to find (or falsify) evidence that the Ainu belong to the Caucasian race, this will give them grounds to lay claim, if not to the Japanese islands, then certainly to the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin. Japanese anthropology, on the contrary, is distinguished by its desire to refute this hypothesis. Apparently, jingoistic patriots are the same everywhere... This hypothesis is usually argued by the fact that the Ainu have fair skin, wavy hair and abundant facial and body hair. But this is all very frivolous. The intensity of pigmentation is just an environmental adaptation and does not reflect real kinship; wavy hair is not an exclusive feature of the Caucasian race; it is also characteristic of Australoids; The degree of hair growth is a very unstable parameter; even within the same race, it can vary greatly. In fact, there is no reliable anthropological evidence of the relationship (or lack of relationship) of the Ainu with the Caucasian race.
3) Ainu are Australoids. The Ainu have an admixture of Australoid genes - this is a fact, and it can be seen in their facial features. One can say even more precisely: they are in some way related to the Miao, Yao, etc. peoples. (Miao and Yao live in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand, and are of Australoid origin). But is this proof of the common origin of the Ainu and the Australoid race, or was the admixture simply introduced by those same settlers from Southeast Asia? Most likely the second one.
There is something else interesting. One recent study found some genetic kinship between the Ainu and... Indians. The question is whether this is speculation, because purebred Ainu simply no longer exist - they all have an admixture of Japanese blood. Well, the fact that the Japanese are related to the Indians is clear to a raccoon; accordingly, these admixed Mongoloid genes could be common between the Ainu and Indians.
Language
So what language do the Ainu speak? Imagine, in Ainu. And what language family does it belong to, and what other languages is it related to? And he doesn’t belong to anyone - he is the only one and unique. And this, in fact, is absolutely not surprising - 15 thousand years of isolation is no joke! By comparison, the Indo-European languages split about 6,000 years ago. Only. However, linguists around the world do not give up trying to prove the relationship of the Ainu language with some other language - starting, of course, with Japanese and ending with... whatever. For example, a feature of the Russian national hunt of linguistics is the obsessive desire to fit the Ainu language into a hypothetical Nostratic language macrofamily (the reason here is the same as for attempts to prove the Caucasoid origin of the Ainu), the existence of which in itself is extremely doubtful.
Meanwhile, the Japanese language itself is very special. It bears little resemblance to any other languages in the world. The reason for this is that it originates simultaneously from two ancestral languages, and the grammatical structures of both, of course, were greatly distorted during the merger. One ancestral language is obviously the ancient language spoken by the people of the Yayoi culture: Japanese shows some similarities with Korean, and both are distantly related to the Altaic language family. The second ancestral language is related to the Austro-Asiatic language family, or more precisely to the Miao-Yao language group. Where does this Austroasiatic root come from? There is only one explanation: the second wave of migrants spoke this language. It turns out that by the time the Yayoi arrived on the islands, they still retained their national identity and language, and, moreover, were strong enough to have managed to make such a contribution. It’s just not clear where they went afterwards. No, they did not assimilate. Because the Japanese do not have any significant admixture of Australoid genes. Or themselves by the first millennium BC. e. no longer existed, but there were Ainu who spoke their language?
The Ainu are a mysterious tribe living in northern Japan. The appearance of the Ainu is quite unusual: they have Caucasian features - unusually thick hair, wide eyes, light skin. Their existence seems to deny the usual ideas about the patterns of cultural development of nations.
Now there is reason to believe that not only in Japan, but also on the territory of Russia there is a part of this ancient indigenous people. According to preliminary data from the latest population census, held in October 2010, there are more than 100 Ainu people in Russia. The fact itself is unusual, because until recently it was believed that the Ainu lived only in Japan.
The friendliness, affection and sociability of the Maukin Ainu aroused in me a strong desire to get to know this interesting tribe better...
Researcher of the peoples of the Pacific region B.O. Pilsudski in his report on the business trip of 1903 -1905.
Origin of the Ainu
Scientists are still arguing about the origin of the Ainu. Some researchers believe that these people are related to the Indo-Europeans. Others are of the opinion that they came from the south, that is, they have Austronesian roots. The Japanese themselves are confident that the Ainu are related to Paleo-Asian peoples and came to the Japanese Islands from Siberia. In addition, recently there have been suggestions that they are relatives of the Miao-Yao living in Southern China.
The Ainu appeared on the Japanese Islands about 13 thousand years ago. n. e. and created the Neolithic Jomon culture. It is not known for certain where the Ainu came from to the Japanese islands, but it is known that in the Jomon era, the Ainu inhabited all the Japanese islands - from Ryukyu to Hokkaido, as well as the southern half of Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands and the southern third of Kamchatka, as evidenced by the results of archaeological excavations.
These people are meek, modest, good-natured, trusting, sociable, polite, respecting property; when hunting, he is brave and even intelligent.
A.P. Chekhov
Language and Culture
According to the official version, the Ainu language was an unwritten language (literate Ainu used Japanese). At the same time, Pilsutsky wrote down the following Ainu symbols:
The Ainu language is also a mystery (it has Latin, Slavic, Anglo-Germanic and even Sanskrit roots). Ethnographers are also grappling with the question of where in these harsh lands people wearing swinging (southern) type of clothing came from. Their national everyday clothing is robe-dresses decorated with traditional ornaments; their festive clothes are white, the material is made from nettle fibers. Russian travelers were also amazed that in the summer the Ainu wore a loincloth.
Hunters and fishermen, the Ainu created an unusual and rich culture (Jomon), which is characteristic only of peoples with a very high level of development. For example, they have wooden products with extraordinary spiral patterns and carvings of amazing beauty and inventiveness. The ancient Ainu created extraordinary pottery without a potter's wheel, decorating it with intricate rope designs. This people also amazes with their talented folklore heritage: songs, dances and stories.
Dwellings
The legends of the Ainu people testify to countless treasures, castles and fortresses. However, travelers from Europe found representatives of this tribe living in dugouts and huts, where the floor was 30-50 cm below ground level.
All or almost all of them have the shape of a circle or rectangle. The location of the pillars that supported the roof indicates that it was conical, if the base of the building was a circle, or pyramidal, when the base was a quadrangle. During the excavations, no materials were found that could cover the roof, so we can only assume that branches or reeds were used for this purpose. The hearth, as a rule, was located in the house itself (only in the early period it was outside) - near the wall or in the middle. The smoke came out through smoke holes, which were made on two opposite sides of the roof.
Beliefs
In general, the Ainu can be called animists. They spiritualized almost all natural phenomena, nature as a whole, personified them, endowing each of the fictional supernatural creatures with traits that were the same as they themselves possessed. The world created by the religious imagination of the Ainu was complex, huge and poetic. This is the world of celestials, mountain dwellers, cultural heroes, numerous masters of the landscape. The Ainu are still very religious. The traditions of animism still dominate among them, and the Ainu pantheon consists mainly of: “kamui” - the spirits of various animals, among which the bear and killer whale occupy a special place. Ioina, culture hero, creator and teacher of the Ainu.
The Ainu fed the sacrificial bear cub at the breast of a female nurse!
Unlike Japanese mythology, Ainu mythology has one supreme deity. The Supreme God is named Pase Kamuy (“creator and ruler of the sky”) or Kotan kara kamuy, Mosiri kara kamuy, Kando kara kamuy (“divine creator of worlds and lands and ruler of the sky”). He is considered the creator of the world and the gods; through the medium of good gods, his assistants, he takes care of people and helps them.
Ordinary deities (yayan kamuy - “near and distant deities”) embody individual elements and elements of the universe; they are equal and independent of each other, although they form a certain functional hierarchy of good and evil deities (see Ainu Pantheon). Good deities are predominantly of heavenly origin.
Evil deities are usually of earthly origin. The functions of the latter are clearly defined: they personify the dangers that await a person in the mountains (this is the main habitat of evil deities), and control atmospheric phenomena. Evil deities, unlike good ones, take on a certain visible appearance. Sometimes they attack good gods. For example, there is a myth about how some evil deity wanted to swallow the Sun, but Pase Kamuy saved the sun by sending a crow, which flew into the mouth of the evil god. It was believed that evil deities arose from the hoes with which Pase Kamuy created the world and then abandoned it. The evil deities are headed by the goddess of swamps and bogs Nitatunarabe. Most of the other evil deities are her descendants, and they go by the common name Toyekunra. Evil deities are more numerous than good ones, and myths about them are more widespread.
Good and evil deities do not exhaust the Ainu pantheon. Trees were considered deities, and the most ancient ones, with the help of which fire and the first man were created. Some of them (for example, alder, elm), unlike willow, seemed harmful. Tsorpok-kuru (“creatures living below”) were also represented as special deities. In myths they have the image of dwarfs and live in dugouts. It was believed that the Tsorpok-Kuru lived on earth even before the appearance of the first Ainu; it was from them that the Ainu women borrowed the custom of tattooing their faces.
The so-called “inau” served as an integral attribute of ritual actions. This name refers to a variety of objects. Sometimes it is a small stick, usually a willow one, sometimes a long pole topped with a plume of curly shavings. Sometimes it’s just weaving from shavings. Scientists consider “inau” as intermediaries that help a person communicate with the gods. Inau was placed in shellfish shells for the spirit of the road before any journey. Over time, places for inau began to appear along the roads and in especially “spiritualized” places.
The Ainu language (or Ainu so), the language of the Ainu, the indigenous inhabitants of Japan, is on the verge of extinction. Only 15-20 representatives of the older generation of Ainu speak their native language and use it in everyday life. The reason for the decline of the culture and language of this indigenous people is Japan's harsh assimilation policy.
Ainu language
Country: Japan (and also until approximately 1945 Russia, USSR)
People: Ainu (Utari)
Language: Ainu (Ainu so)
Population: 25,000
Number of carriers 15-20
Language family: isolated
Written language: no
Danger level: critical
Traces of the Ainu (like the Japanese) go back to prehistoric times - the Jomon era (10,000-300 BC). Their homeland was islands in the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan, on the northwestern edges of the Pacific Ocean. Beginning around the 12th century, most Ainu lived on Hokkaido, a large island in the north of modern Japan. There were also significant settlements in the southern part of the Russian islands - Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. The Ainu lifestyle and culture were especially closely associated with bear hunting and salmon fishing. Thanks to the fur trade in the 15th century, the first contacts were made with Japan, China and Siberia.
In 1869, Japan declared Hokkaido its colony, and the indigenous people, without further ado, became Japanese. They were forced to take up farming as well as menial jobs in the growing Japanese economy. Thus, the foundations of the Ainu culture began to be destroyed, and their language was banned. Strict assimilation was tightly intertwined with Japanese nationalism, which led to the mixing of the Ainu with the Japanese, and Japanese became the main language for all Ainu.
At the end of World War II, the Ainu were deported from the Soviet territories of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. Most of them settled in Hokkaido. The few remaining Ainu lived in great poverty. Now these indigenous people no longer exist on the Russian islands.
The Ainu language is considered isolated. Attempts by linguists to establish connections with the Altaic languages of Eurasia, the languages of the Indians, or the languages of the Australian-Asian indigenous people have not been successful.
Due to the geographical isolation of the Ainu groups, about 20 dialects of their language were formed, some of which had significant differences from the rest; the most common were on the main islands - Hokkaido, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. Many place names in Hokkaido come from Ainu, such as Sapporo, the island's capital. A special feature of the Ainu language is the richness of terminology associated with the life cycle of salmon, as well as seals, whales and other game animals.
Only in the 80s of the twentieth century did politicians and Japanese society begin to realize that the endangered Ainu culture needed support, that it needed to be saved. A written language was created for the Ainu language, which historically did not have one, thus making it possible to preserve numerous Ainu epics about gods and heroes. For this purpose, the Latin alphabet was used, as well as the Japanese (katakana) - a system of 45 syllables, with which non-Japanese words are usually transcribed in Japanese. Currently, there are several Ainu-Japanese-English dictionaries, and a newspaper is published in the Ainu language.
There are now 25,000 people living in Hokkaido who consider themselves Ainu or have Ainu roots. They have integrated into Japanese society, speak Japanese, and can at best say a few words in the language of their ancestors. Discrimination against Japanese natives is still very strong. Outwardly very different from the Japanese, the Ainu mixed with them over several generations to provide their descendants with better living conditions. However, it is more difficult for the Ainu to obtain higher education and qualified work, so many of their descendants live modestly, if not poorly. Many of them hide their origin from the authorities and do not even let their children know about it in order to relieve them of this burden. In reality, the number of Ainu or half-breeds is approximately 200,000.
Many modern young Ainu are trying to find their roots, get acquainted with their culture and revive it. There are many Ainu courses, radio broadcasts in Ainu. Thanks to the Internet, as well as music (Ainu Rebels, Oki Ainu Dub Band), Ainu youth have the opportunity to discover their language, understand their cultural identity and form an identity as the indigenous people of Japan.
Text in Ainu language:
(excerpt from the epic of the gods Kamui Yukar)
Sinean to ta petetok un sinotas kusu payeas awa, petetokta sine ponrupnekur nesko urai kar kusu uraikik neap kosanikkeukan punas=punas.
The same text written in katakana:
Translation:
One day, as I was setting out traveling toward the source of the (river"s) water, the walnut wood post was struck as at the water"s source a little man all by himself was erecting a walnut wood plank. He was standing there now bent over at the waist and now standing up straight over and over again.
One day, when I was getting ready to travel to the source of the river, I heard blows on the trunk of a walnut tree; it was at the source that a small man was building a raft from a walnut tree alone. He bent over, then straightened up - again and again.
