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What’s with this “Wren” thing?
The oldest extant version of the fable
we
are presenting here appeared in 1913 in the first volume of a two-volume anthology
of Low
Saxon folktales (Plattdeutsche
Volksmärchen “Low German Folktales”)
collected by Wilhelm Wisser (1843–1935). Read
more ...
Ainu
Will
Ainu language and culture survive beyond
performances for tourists?
Language information:
Ainu is the traditional language of the Ainu (Aynu) people of Hokkaidō (Ainu
Mosir) Island in Northern Japan, the Kurile Islands, much of Sakhalin and the southern
tip
of Kamchatka in the far-eastern region of Siberia, Russia.
Under Japanese and Russian power, including periods of native language prohibition,
much of original Ainu populations assimilated to Japanese, Siberian and Russian
communities and lost their language in the process. Even most people that still
consider themselves ethnic Ainu (also known as Utari)
are
no longer
able
to
use their ancestral language. The last Ainu speaker of
Sakhalin passed away in 1994. However, there is now a revival movement of Ainu
language and culture in Hokkaidō, and some, including the translator and the
facilitator of this translation, strive toward Ainu Internet representation.
So far, Ainu has
no official script. Usually, either the Roman alphabet or a modified version
of the
Japanese
syllable
writing
called Katakana is
used to write it.
Since the Ainu language
appears to be genealogically isolated, much speculation has been surrounding
the Ainu people’s origin and genealogical relationships. Modern genetics have recently shown
that they are closely related to other Northeast Asian communities, such as
the Nivkh, the Itelmen, the Chukchi, the Koryak and the Aleut. This, however,
ought not be taken as proof that the Ainu language is related to the languages
of said communities.
N.B.: This language
is unrelated to the heavily Iranized Eastern Turkic language of Eastern
Turkestan
(Xinjiang, China) used by the Aynu community (derogatorily referred to as Abdal “beggar”).
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