Page:An Ainu-English-Japanese dictionary (including a grammar of the Ainu language).djvu/619

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 § VI. YEZO AND SAGHALIEN AINU.

No one with the least knowledge of the subject would for a moment doubt that the Yezo and Saghallen Ainu are one and the same race. It is perfectly true that the Yezo Ainu sometimes speak as though the language of the two peoples waswere [sic] different, even going so far as to use the words, “different language.” But when questioned on the matter it turns out that this , “different language,” simply means, for the most part, , “different way of pronouncing words.” There are numbers of exact analogies to this loose way of speaking among the Ainu of Yezo, for the people inhabiting the various districts of this island speak of one another’s speech under the same terms. Thus the Usu Ainu of the Saru; the Saru of the Tokapchi; the Tokapchi of the Apashiri, and so on. A good illustration of this point is found in the following incident which happened to myself some years ago. I was then in the north of Yezo and had just finished addressing a large concourse of people in Ainu. At the conclusion of the lecture a Japanese who was present said to an Ainu standing by,—“Did you understand what was said”? [sic] “Yes,” replied the man in Japanese—Ano hito wa Saru no yama no oku no Ainu da—“that man is an Ainu from behind the Saru mountalns”; and then added in Ainu,, “it was a different language, but it was the speech of the Saru Ainu.” He meant to say that I spoke the Saru dialect. As a matter of fact I had lately come from Piratori, the ancient capital of Saru.

Though the Ainu language is, as a whole, spoken with