Language Contact
| For a list of words relating to Japanese borrowings from Ainu, see the ja:Ainu derivations category of words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
The Ainu appear to have experienced intensive contact with the Nivkhs during the course of their history. It is not known to what extent this has affected the language. Some linguists believe the shared vocabulary between Ainu and Nivkh (spoken in the northern half of Sakhalin and on the Asian mainland facing it) is due to borrowing.
There are also a great number of loanwords from the Japanese language in various stages of its development to HokkaidÅ Ainu and a smaller number of loanwords from Ainu to Japanese (particularly animal names, such as rakko "sea otter", Ainu rakko; tonakai "reindeer", Ainu tunakkay; and shishamo "sp. smelt", Ainu susam, from *susu+ham).
Read more about this topic: Ainu Languages
Famous quotes containing the words language and/or contact:
“To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words.... Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“It is only when men lose their contact with this eternal life-flame, and become merely personal, things in themselves, instead of things kindled in the flame, that the fight between man and woman begins.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)