are not Ainu at all but perhaps Tartar, Oroko, Chuckchi, Yakut, Ziliyak, Aleutean, or some kindered tongue. A full list of the Authors referred to by Dobrotvorsky will be found in the preface to his Slovar.
From the appearance of this work till the year 1883 there is a further gap; but in that year Prof. J. M. Dixon, then of the Tokyo Engineering College, published a small sketch of Ainu Grammar founded on earlier European notices and his own short studies carried on chiefly among the Ainu of Tsuishkari; who, by the by, had a few years before come down from Saghalien. This sketch appeared in a Magazine then published in Yokohama and named The Chrysanthemum. After careful perusaI of those articles I once more fully agree with Prof. Chamberlain who says:—
“Unfortunately, the results obtained by this conscientious worker were impaired to some extent by the want of that intimate acquaintance with Japanese, which, in the absence of a thorough practical knowledge of Ainu itself, is the first condition to the successful investigation of any subject connected with the Island of Yezo.”[1]
The next work to appear on this subject was my own Grammar which is included in the Memoirs referred to above. It will be found introduced by Mr. Chamberlain's excellent brochure on the Language, Mythology, and Geographical Nomenclature of Japan viewed in the light of Ainu[2] studies. The present Grammar is a thorough revision of that and also of the one which appeared next as an introduction to my Ainu–English Japanese Dictionary published by the Hokkaidō-cho in 1889.
That, gramatically speaking, the Ainu language has no general affinity with present Japanese has already been conclusively
- ↑ Memoirs page 2.
- ↑ See footnote 2 on page 2.
