External Relationships
No genealogical relationship between Ainu and any other language family has been demonstrated, despite numerous attempts. That is, it is a language isolate. Ainu is sometimes grouped with the Paleosiberian languages, but this is merely a geographic blanket term for several unrelated language families that were present in Siberia prior to the advances of Turkic and Tungusic languages there. The most frequent proposals for relatives of Ainu are given below.
Read more about this topic: Ainu Languages
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“Language disguises the thought; so that from the external form of the clothes one cannot infer the form of the thought they clothe, because the external form of the clothes is constructed with quite another object than to let the form of the body be recognized.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)