Page:An Ainu-English-Japanese dictionary (including a grammar of the Ainu language).djvu/22

Rh kana. Still, for the sake of my friends request, I have waved my scruples on this point and fallen in with the wish. But it must be remembered that the Roman is the text and not the kana.

Wherever it has been found necessary to employ a word of Chinese or Japanese origin through lack of an Ainu equivalent such word has been given. But where this is the case it has for the most part been marked, and where it has not those who know Japanese will of course be able to see which is Ainu and which Japanese. E.g. Umma “a horse;” hitsuji “sheep;” ishan-tono “a doctor.” It is more than possible also that some of the Japanese translation may not quite fit the English, but here again I would remind the reader that the text is Ainu–English, and not Ainu–Japanese. Like the kana writing, so also the Japanese was an after-thought it being the compiler’s original intention to write the work in Ainu–English only.