Page:An Ainu-English-Japanese dictionary (including a grammar of the Ainu language).djvu/19

Rh is StickœsStichœus [sic], sp. But perhaps the most important thing about the book is that Dobrotvorsky suspects the Ainu language of being an inflected one, while the grammar following this dictionary clearly proves it now to be so and in some cases shows how it has become so.

Passing by many smaller vocabularies the largest to appear previous to my own Ainu–English–Japanese Dictionary (1889) (of which the present volume is a much enlarged and thoroughly revised edition) is that published (unread) by the Rev. J. Summers in Vol. XIV. Part II. page 186 et seq., of the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan 1886. It is a great pity Mr. Summers had not a better working knowledge of the Ainu language, his vocabulary being admittedly founded on the efforts of others. As, for example, Dixon; Dening; Klaproth; Scheube; Siebold; Batchelor; Dobrotvorsky; Pfizmaier; Davidoff; and such works as the Yezo Gosen and the Matsumai Mss. This collation and quotation of Authors has not made the work any more valuable for, alas, many of their oversights and mistakes have also been copied. Summer’s vocabulary has some 3,000 words in it, while at the end are found 63 sentences (by no means exact) in the Saru dialect.

It appears to be supposed that the present writer is the first independent British worker in this line. But such is not the case. The Author cannot allow this work to go to press without mentioning the fact that Mr. W. Dening, formerly of the Church Missionary Society at Hakodate, was the first Englishman to really take up the work of studying Ainu in thorough earnest. Mr. Dening’s vocubularyvocabulary [sic], containing some 925 words and 38 phrases, will be found in vol. I. of The Chrysanthemum (now defunct). Though published in 1881 the words were collected five years previously. My own first efforts in Ainu studies commenced in 1877. Would