アイヌ語の入門

Recently, I stumbled upon something interesting that I kept from my time in Akankohan, Hokkaido. During my stay, I bought a necklace carved from wood, supposedly something original from one of the local Ainu tribes (the native inhabitants of Japan's most northern Island). It was wrapped into a small paper bag. While I thought the whole carving business there was just another income for the local tourism business and had actually little to do with the Ainu, the back side of the wrap gave a short introduction into Ainu language, a アイヌ語入門 so to speak. As I am fascinated by local languages I thought I would share the words including English translations here.

Here is what the description reads:

• アイヌ語・日本語・English
• イラヤブカ・マアすてき・lovely？
• イヨマンテ・熊祭り「くままつり」・Bear festival
• イナンクル・幸せ「しあわせ」・Happiness
• イヨマップ・愛「あい」・Love
• ウタリ・仲間「なかま」・Friend
• ヌプリ・山「やま」・Mountain
• ミチ・お父さん「おとおさん」・Father
• ハホ・お母さん「おかあさん」・Mother
• クアニ・私「わたし」・I/Me
• トー・湖「みずうみ」・Lake
• エペレ・熊「くま」・Bear
• モシリ・島「しま」・Island
• チニタ・夢「ゆめ」・Dream
• エシナ・内緒「ないしょ」・Privacy
• タマサイ・首飾り「くびかざり」・Necklace
• シカレン・恋わずらい「こいわずらい」・Lovesickness
• サラニップ・手提げ「てさげ」・Handbag
• カバチップ・姫鱒「ひめます」・Type of salmon
• イヤイライケレ・有り難う「ありがとう」・Thank You
• イランカラブテ・御免下さい「ごめんください」・I'm sorry

For a more systematic approach to Ainu language, I recommend the following course for beginners. Surprisingly (and fortunately), interest in local languages threatened by extinction seems to be increasing. Although there aren't that many native Ainu speakers left alive (as far as I know), many academics nowadays have an interest of preserving this fascinating language. 

I was also positively surprised that in Mac OSX, one can change the language input method not only to Romaji/Hiragana/Katakana Japanese, but to Ainu as well: