"日本にはアイヌの人たちがいます。"
Translation:There are Ainu people in Japan.
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474
Except that Okinawans still don't consider themselves Japanese or that they are apart of Japan.
1084
In fact DNA testing has surprisingly shown that there is some genetic relationship between Ainu and Rykyuan peoples that is not shared with Yamato.
1402
You're very right, was wanting to say the same. I think more Okinawans abroad (e.g., in Hawaii) consider themselves exclusively Okinawan and not Japanese.
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2020.5.19 One of my native Japanese friends said that going to Okinawa felt more like traveling to a foreign country than another part of Japan
1084
I believe the majority ethnicity of Japan is currently referred to as "Yamato", but this is not a commonly known term for English speakers.
2142
I dont know where to begin... One study says only 5% of japanese have pure japanese dna They actually look very different if you look carefully . Their period of closed borders came late and while phenomenal was relatively brief in the grand scheme.
Ainu are sort of japanese russian mix with their own way of life they wouldnt give up and they lost their homeland of northern japan to mainstream japanese who needed it for strategic purposes
Anyway, just keep asking the good questions like that
2112
@dsiap They only lived in the north of japan and some islands that are now part of Russia
The great question about the Ainu language, since it is traditionally only a spoken language, is whether to use cyrillic or katakana to adapt its written form. Cyrillic is phonetically a better fit, but most people know only the Hokkaido Ainu, who are probably the more active group at least online, so maybe katakana should be preferred? Hmm...
1084
All the Ainu language materials I've seen use Katakana with some special adaptations for sounds not in Japanese. The Ainu are not an officially recognized "living ethnic group" in Russia and these days only about 100 people in Russia identify as Ainu. This is according to Wikipedia. That's not to say there are no Russian books on Ainu using Cyrillic. I've wanted to go to Sakhalin for years but never managed it.
1033
I've never seen it written in Cyrillic either, except as a phonetic transcription in otherwise Russian text, but Japanese Wikipedia mentions one person writing Ainu in Cyrillic in the past. Nowadays it's usually either in extended Katakana or using Latin alphabet which seems about as common as Katakana. It's not just a romanization, but an equally valid Latin-based orthography competing with the Katakana-based one.
"There are Ainu in Japan" was accepted for me.
If you see the word カナダ人 (kanadajin), most people would most naturally translate it as "Canadian" rather than "Canadian person", whereas if you have 日本人 (nihonjin) we'd say "Japanese person" because Japanese is used more as an adjective than a noun. Since Ainu is a noun, I think the former is preferable to the latter, though you could say either.
I knew I was going to get this one wrong, but I didn't think I'd be off by just one letter. I said "Ainu peoples", but I guess that's wrong if they're all considered to be of a single ethnicity/cultural background. Can anyone speak to that? Are the Ainu one people or do they comprise multiple peoples?
I think the Ainu are usually considered a single people, but you can find references online referring to "Ainu peoples", like from the Ainu Association of Hokkaido:
"Wajin" (Japanese) in Honshu acknowledge great difference among regional groups of the Ainu. In other words, the Ekotoba indicates that three groups of Ainu peoples, "Hinomoto," "Karako" and "Watarito," live on the island of Ezo-ga-Chishima(present day Hokkaido) and describes the details of each group.
The Wikipedia article describes the different subgroups of Ainu based on their location, such as Hokkaido Ainu, Sakhalin Ainu, Northern and Southern Kuril Ainu, etc.
I know nothing about anthropology, so I don't know if these distinctions count as separate "peoples" or not.
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I'm a little upset that "Ainu people live in Japan" wasn't accepted, but I'm assuming that's because my translation is bad.