Ainu resources

A directory of places to learn, hear, and study the Ainu language. Links open in a new tab.

Sister projects

Other tools in the aynu.org ecosystem.

tu itak re itak — learn Ainu ja/en
A gamified, Duolingo-style Ainu course: lessons, streaks, and spaced repetition.
Itak-uoeroskip — Ainu glossary ain
A collaborative glossary of Ainu terminology for modern concepts.
Kampisos — Ainu corpus ain
A searchable corpus of attested Ainu texts, dialect-tagged and source-cited.
Aynuwiki ain
A wiki written in the Ainu language.
Aynu.org en
The hub for these and other Ainu-language tools and projects.

Upopoy — National Ainu Museum and Park ja/en
Japan’s national centre for Ainu culture: a museum and outdoor park with daily Ainu-language and cultural programmes.
The Foundation for Ainu Culture (FF-Ainu) ja/en
The public foundation promoting Ainu culture, language revitalization, and research.
Ainu Association of Hokkaido ja/en
The principal Ainu representative organization, preserving and transmitting Ainu culture.
Hokkaido University — Center for Ainu and Indigenous Studies ja/en
University research centre studying Ainu and other indigenous peoples across linguistics, history, and law.
Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum ja/en
Biratori-town museum of the Saru-river Ainu, holding artifacts and recordings of yukar epics.
Hokkaido Museum ja/en
Prefectural museum in Sapporo with a permanent Ainu culture and history exhibition.
Agency for Cultural Affairs — Ainu culture ja/en
Government agency page on national policy and programmes for Ainu culture.

National Ainu Museum — Ainu Language Archive ja
Museum archive bundling several searchable dictionaries (Kayano, Tamura’s Saru dialect, and more) plus hundreds of hours of native-speaker audio and video.
A Topical Dictionary of Conversational Ainu (NINJAL) en/ja
3,467 conversational headwords with transcription, English translations, morpheme breakdowns, and native-speaker audio.
A Glossed Audio Corpus of Ainu Folklore (NINJAL) en/ja
A fully glossed, audio-aligned corpus of Ainu folktales and divine epics with morpheme-by-morpheme analysis.
STV Radio — Ainu Language Radio Course ja
A weekly broadcast lesson series running since 1987, with free downloadable PDF texts and audio.
ILCAA — Ainu Language Materials (Tamura recordings) ja
Suzuko Tamura’s field recordings: folktale audio synced to transcription with Japanese translation and full-text search.
Ainu Language Portal Site (FF-Ainu) ja
The Foundation’s hub of learning materials: courses, textbooks, games, oral-literature media, and dictionary links.
aynuitak.org — Ainu language resources en
An English grammar guide with a curated, annotated list of dictionaries, corpora, and archives.
Glosbe — English–Ainu dictionary en
A free community English–Ainu dictionary with examples and audio.
TUYTAH — Sakhalin Ainu oral literature ja
Kyōko Murasaki’s documentation of Sakhalin Ainu storytelling recorded from Take Asai.

STV Radio — Ainu course podcast archive ja
Downloadable MP3 archive of STV’s weekly Ainu-language radio course.
Nibutani — Ainu oral literature archive ja
Yukar and uwepeker recordings with MP3 audio, commentary, and PDF transcripts.
MAREWREW en/ja
The female Ainu vocal group reviving traditional upopo round-singing.
OKI DUB AINU BAND en/ja
OKI’s band fusing the Sakhalin-Ainu tonkori with dub and rock.

Documentation of the Saru dialect of Ainu (ELAR) en
Bugaeva & Nakagawa’s ELAR deposit: a folktale corpus, last-speaker recordings, and a time-aligned talking dictionary.
Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) en
The digital repository hosting the Ainu Saru-dialect collection among worldwide deposits.
Hokkaido Digital Museum — Ainu oral literature en/ja
An overview of Ainu oral-literature genres (yukar, kamuy yukar, uepeker) with source references.
Józef Piłsudski Museum — Bronisław Piłsudski Ainu materials en/pl
The museum portal for Piłsudski’s early-1900s Ainu fieldwork: wax-cylinder recordings, photographs, and records.

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