This page contains links to free Ainu language resources currently available on the net. At the moment these resources are rather scarce and are often in Japanese.

In the past, the books of John Batchelor (a scholar of Ainu working around the start of the 20th century) were available online from Google but unfortunately this seems to no longer be the case.

Word lists / Dictionaries

The Saman Ainu Dictionary(浦河アイヌ語辞典)

This large word list (in Japanese) is broken up by topic rather than alphabetically, which can make finding words a challenge. It's intended for use in education.

The Japanese Wikipedia Wordlist

Japanese Wikipedia has this word list which is very small but might eventually grow.

The Ainu Adventure Dictionary

This Japanese page apparrently belongs to a cartoon mouse called 'Skippy' who has adventures in north-eastern Hokkaido. It lists quite a lot of Ainu words in katakana, although the selection of dictionary forms can be inconsistent.

ShiraAynu's Ainu Wordlist (白老のアイヌ語単語集)

This large word list is grouped by topic and often contains detailed explanations of interesting words.

Ainu Grammar

A Grammar Of The Ainu Language by John Batchelor (1905)

This book, long out of print, has kindly been scanned and posted to the Internet. It's extremely dated in terminology and general approach but still a highly effective guide to a reading comprehension of Ainu. One of the best free resources available.

A Beginner's Guide to Ainu Grammar(初心者のためのアイヌ語文法解説)

This Japanese guide (on the 'Otarunay Records' website) is extremely terse but contains some good information.

Sound Samples

The Arabia Times sound samples

The Arabia times has a small number of Ainu language .wav files at this location.

Ramat Ram's Ainu World sound samples

This excellent page has many Ainu phrases in the form of sound samples with accompanying glossaries.

Works In the Ainu Language

The Book of Common Prayer in Ainu, translated by John Batchelor

This is one of the longest texts in Ainu available on the web at the moment -- although this digitalization is incomplete.

Sites related to Ainu Language

The Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Ainu in Saman (様似アイヌ言語文化研究所)

This is a large site containing various Ainu language resources in Japanese. The more useful items include the sizeable word list mentioned above. Unfortunately much of the site is now incomplete or broken.

Wikipedia entry for 'Ainu Language'

This entry contains a useful guide to how Ainu is represented in katakana, among other information.

Kumanesir's Ainu Page

This page contains various articles about Ainu and an Ainu-language related BBS.

The Ainutak Links Page

This page contains links to various Japanese Ainu language pages.