Whatever may be thought to the contrary, on account of the remoteness of the subject from ordinary topics, no sooner does one take up the study of Ainu in real earnest than he finds that the collection of words and arranging them in the form of vocabulary has by no means been neglected. For, to say nothing of those tabulated by Japanese (the Moshiogusa to wit), since the year 1730, when Philipp Johann von Strachlenberg of Stockholm published his Der Word- und Destliche Theil von Europa und Asia, quite a number of lists of words have appeared. Yet amid all the present writer has seen he does not feel that he can do better than refer the student to M. M. Dobrotvorsky’s Ainsko–Russkiŭ Slovar (1875). This is undoubtedly a good work but by no means in every case safe. A steady perusal of the book has proved to the present Author that there are several matters to be particularly guarded against in it. Such as, for example, the following.
(1.) Dobrotvorsky has introduced many foreign words unnoted into his slovar which examination proves cannot be traced to any known Ainu root. While on the other hand he has wrongly defined the word under examination. Note, for examples, some of the foreign words brought in. Dobrotvorsky gives jo, “lock.” But this is pure Chinese or Japanese, the Ainu having no native locks or keys. He also gives enu, соба́ка, but this is clearly the Japanese word inu (イヌ) “dog.” Why he should have put it in one is at a loss to know for the Ainu have two words of their own for “dog,” viz. seta and reyep. Again, he has given Chapan, “earthenware:” but this is evidently the Japanese
