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50-624: The origin of Muroran's name is derived from the Ainu word "Mo Ruerani", which means "the bottom of a little slope". The little slope, in front of the former Senkai Temple in Sakimori-cho, is noted in connection with the name of Muroran. In the late 16th century, the Muroran region came under the administration of the Matsumae clan . Muroran was developed as a trading post between the Ainu and

100-801: A bill officially recognising the indigeneity of the Ainu people in 2019. On 12 July 2020, the Japanese government opened the National Ainu Museum in Shiraoi , Hokkaido . It forms one of three institutions named Upopoy (which means 'singing in a large group' in the Ainu language) alongside the National Ainu Park and a memorial site on high ground on the east side of Lake Poroto (ポロト湖) where Ainu services are held. Its director, Masahiro Nomoto, says that "One of our main objectives

150-485: A community with special collective rights . Language can also be considered as scientific knowledge in topics such as medicine, philosophy, botany, and more. It reflects a community's practices when dealing with the environment and each other. When a language is lost, this knowledge is often lost as well. In contrast, language revitalization is correlated with better health outcomes in indigenous communities. During language loss—sometimes referred to as obsolescence in

200-533: A conversation" in Ainu, 3.4% answered that they "would be able to converse a little", 44.6% answered they "could barely converse at all", and 48.1% answered that they "would not be able to converse at all". In a subsequent survey of 472 respondents in 2023, these figures had shifted to 0.8%, 8.9%, 19.3%, and 69.3% respectively. The Japanese government made a decision to recognize Ainu as an indigenous language in June 2008. The Japanese government approved and passed

250-470: A dominant position in a country. Speakers of endangered languages may themselves come to associate their language with negative values such as poverty, illiteracy and social stigma, causing them to wish to adopt the dominant language that is associated with social and economical progress and modernity . Immigrants moving into an area may lead to the endangerment of the autochthonous language. Dialects and accents have seen similar levels of endangerment during

300-433: A fraction of the world's linguistic diversity, therefore their picture of what human language is—and can be—will be limited. Some linguists consider linguistic diversity to be analogous to biological diversity, and compare language endangerment to wildlife endangerment . Linguists, members of endangered language communities, governments, nongovernmental organizations, and international organizations such as UNESCO and

350-442: A language associated with social or economic power or one spoken more widely, leading to the gradual decline and eventual death of the endangered language. The process of language shift is often influenced by factors such as globalisation, economic authorities, and the perceived prestige of certain languages. The ultimate result is the loss of linguistic diversity and cultural heritage within affected communities. The general consensus

400-409: A language is unlikely to survive another generation and will soon be extinct. The fourth stage is moribund , followed by the fifth stage extinction . Many projects are under way aimed at preventing or slowing language loss by revitalizing endangered languages and promoting education and literacy in minority languages, often involving joint projects between language communities and linguists. Across

450-655: A larger sign language or dispersal of the deaf community) can lead to the endangerment and loss of their traditional sign language. Methods are being developed to assess the vitality of sign languages. While there is no definite threshold for identifying a language as endangered, UNESCO 's 2003 document entitled Language vitality and endangerment outlines nine factors for determining language vitality: Many languages, for example some in Indonesia , have tens of thousands of speakers but are endangered because children are no longer learning them, and speakers are shifting to using

500-479: A syllable in the stem. This will typically fall on the first syllable if that is long (has a final consonant or a diphthong), and will otherwise fall on the second syllable, though there are exceptions to this generalization. Typologically , Ainu is similar in word order (and some aspects of phonology) to Japanese . Ainu has a canonical word order of subject, object, verb , and uses postpositions rather than prepositions . Nouns can cluster to modify one another;

550-441: Is potential endangerment . This is when a language faces strong external pressure, but there are still communities of speakers who pass the language to their children. The second stage is endangerment . Once a language has reached the endangerment stage, there are only a few speakers left and children are, for the most part, not learning the language. The third stage of language extinction is seriously endangered . During this stage,

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600-749: Is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a " dead language ". If no one can speak the language at all, it becomes an " extinct language ". A dead language may still be studied through recordings or writings, but it is still dead or extinct unless there are fluent speakers. Although languages have always become extinct throughout human history, they are currently dying at an accelerated rate because of globalization , mass migration , cultural replacement, imperialism , neocolonialism and linguicide (language killing). Language shift most commonly occurs when speakers switch to

650-455: Is also sometimes referred to as language revival or reversing language shift . For case studies of this process, see Anderson (2014). Applied linguistics and education are helpful in revitalizing endangered languages. Vocabulary and courses are available online for a number of endangered languages. Language maintenance refers to the support given to languages that need for their survival to be protected from outsiders who can ultimately affect

700-404: Is in fact mandatory for incorporating oblique nouns. Like incorporation, applicatives have grown less common in the modern language. Ainu has a closed class of plural verbs , and some of these are suppletive . Ainu has a system of verbal affixes (shown below) which mark agreement for person and case. The specific cases that are marked differ by person, with nominative–accusative marking for

750-400: Is that there are between 6,000 and 7,000 languages currently spoken. Some linguists estimate that between 50% and 90% of them will be severely endangered or dead by the year 2100. The 20 most common languages , each with more than 50 million speakers, are spoken by 50% of the world's population, but most languages are spoken by fewer than 10,000 people. The first step towards language death

800-549: Is to preserve and revive the language, as this is one of the most threatened elements of Ainu culture ". Announcements on some bus routes in Hokkaido can since be heard in Ainu, efforts are being undertaken to archive Ainu speech recordings by the Agency for Cultural Affairs , and there is a popular educational YouTube channel which teaches conversational Ainu. While these measures have been praised for taking steps to protect

850-500: The Cambridge Handbook of Endangered Languages , there are four main types of causes of language endangerment: Causes that put the populations that speak the languages in physical danger, such as: Causes that prevent or discourage speakers from using a language, such as: Often multiple of these causes act at the same time. Poverty, disease and disasters often affect minority groups disproportionately, for example causing

900-632: The Matsumae clan people. In 1892, the Port of Muroran was opened for the wooden bridge construction at Kaigan (former Tokikaramoi); at the same time, the main road began construction from Hakodate to Sapporo as the first step of Hokkaido Colonization Plan. An Imperial decree in July 1899 established Muroran as an open port for trading with the United States and the United Kingdom . With

950-728: The Northwest Pacific Plateau . Other hotspots are Oklahoma and the Southern Cone of South America. Almost all of the study of language endangerment has been with spoken languages. A UNESCO study of endangered languages does not mention sign languages. However, some sign languages are also endangered, such as Alipur Village Sign Language (AVSL) of India, Adamorobe Sign Language of Ghana, Ban Khor Sign Language of Thailand, and Plains Indian Sign Language . Many sign languages are used by small communities; small changes in their environment (such as contact with

1000-551: The endonym of the Ainu people , aynu ( アイヌ ), meaning "people" or "human". According to UNESCO , Ainu is an endangered language with few native speakers. Although there are estimated to be at least 30,000 Ainu people in Japan, there is a low rate of self-identification as Ainu among people with Ainu ethnic roots. Knowledge of the language was already endangered by the 1960s and has continued to decline since. In 2011 , just 304 people within Japan were reported to understand

1050-611: The national language (e.g. Indonesian ) in place of local languages. In contrast, a language with only 500 speakers might be considered very much alive if it is the primary language of a community, and is the first (or only) spoken language of all children in that community. Asserting that "Language diversity is essential to the human heritage", UNESCO's Ad Hoc Expert Group on Endangered Languages offers this definition of an endangered language: "... when its speakers cease to use it, use it in an increasingly reduced number of communicative domains, and cease to pass it on from one generation to

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1100-472: The 21st century due to similar reasons. Language endangerment affects both the languages themselves and the people that speak them. This also affects the essence of a culture. As communities lose their language, they often lose parts of their cultural traditions that are tied to that language. Examples include songs, myths, poetry, local remedies, ecological and geological knowledge, as well as language behaviors that are not easily translated. Furthermore,

1150-816: The Ainu language and culture, the museum and related government efforts have been criticised for failing to acknowledge the history of Japanese discrimination against the Ainu people, and for the government's refusal to apologise for past misdeeds against the Ainu. Ainu syllables are (C)V(C); they have an obligatory vowel, and an optional syllable onset and coda consisting of one consonant. There are few consonant clusters . There are five vowels in Ainu: Obstruents /p t ts~tʃ k/ may be voiced [b d dz~dʒ ɡ] between vowels and after nasals. /t͡s/ can be heard as [ t͡ʃ ] in free variation among speakers. Both /ti/ and /tsi/ are realized as [t͡ʃi] , and /s/ becomes [ ʃ ] before /i/ and at

1200-453: The Ainu language to some extent. As of 2016 , Ethnologue listed Ainu as "nearly extinct" (class 8b). In 2017, 671 people participated in a Hokkaido government survey on the lives of Ainu people. Participants were believed to be descendants of Ainu people or those who joined Ainu families by marriage or adoption. In response to survey questions about fluency in the Ainu language, 0.7% of participants answered that they "would be able to have

1250-678: The European Union are actively working to save and stabilize endangered languages. Once a language is determined to be endangered, there are three steps that can be taken in order to stabilize or rescue the language. The first is language documentation, the second is language revitalization and the third is language maintenance. Language documentation is the documentation in writing and audio-visual recording of grammar , vocabulary, and oral traditions (e.g. stories, songs, religious texts) of endangered languages. It entails producing descriptive grammars, collections of texts and dictionaries of

1300-529: The North East. Japan Steel Works has its global headquarters in Muroran. Muroran houses one of the most prominent Marine Biology institutes in Japan, the Institute of Algological Research of Hokkaido University . Ainu language Ainu ( アイヌ イタㇰ , aynu itak ), or more precisely Hokkaido Ainu ( Japanese : 北海道アイヌ語 ), is a language spoken by a few elderly members of the Ainu people on

1350-480: The cities or to other countries, thus dispersing the speakers. Cultural dominance occurs when literature and higher education is only accessible in the majority language. Political dominance occurs when education and political activity is carried out exclusively in a majority language. Historically, in colonies, and elsewhere where speakers of different languages have come into contact, some languages have been considered superior to others: often one language has attained

1400-526: The city's warmest month, is around 24 °C (75 °F). Muroran holds eight specific scenic sights called Muroran-Hakke ( 室蘭八景 ) . The most famous of them is the Earth Cape ( 地球岬 , chikyū misaki ) . There are five JR Hokkaido stations in Muroran, starting from Higashi Muroran and ending in downtown Muroran, which can be used to access both Hakodate to the South West, and Sapporo to

1450-575: The contributions of linguists globally. Ethnologue's 2005 count of languages in its database, excluding duplicates in different countries, was 6,912, of which 32.8% (2,269) were in Asia, and 30.3% (2,092) in Africa. This contemporary tally must be regarded as a variable number within a range. Areas with a particularly large number of languages that are nearing extinction include: Eastern Siberia , Central Siberia , Northern Australia , Central America , and

1500-461: The cycles of language death and emergence of new languages through creolization as a continuous ongoing process. A majority of linguists do consider that language loss is an ethical problem, as they consider that most communities would prefer to maintain their languages if given a real choice. They also consider it a scientific problem, because language loss on the scale currently taking place will mean that future linguists will only have access to

1550-408: The dispersal of speaker populations and decreased survival rates for those who stay behind. Among the causes of language endangerment cultural, political and economic marginalization accounts for most of the world's language endangerment. Scholars distinguish between several types of marginalization: Economic dominance negatively affects minority languages when poverty leads people to migrate towards

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1600-517: The earliest is GIDS (Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale) proposed by Joshua Fishman in 1991. In 2011 an entire issue of Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development was devoted to the study of ethnolinguistic vitality, Vol. 32.2, 2011, with several authors presenting their own tools for measuring language vitality. A number of other published works on measuring language vitality have been published, prepared by authors with varying situations and applications in mind. According to

1650-403: The end of syllables. /h/ is heard as [ ɸ ] when occurring before /u/ . /n/ is heard as [ ŋ ] when before /k/ , as well as in final position. A glottal stop [ ʔ ] is often inserted at the beginning of words, before an accented vowel, but is non-phonemic. The Ainu language also has a pitch accent system. Generally, words containing affixes have a high pitch on

1700-688: The first person singular, tripartite marking for the first person plural and indefinite (or 'fourth') person, and direct or 'neutral' marking for the second singular and plural, and third persons (i.e. the affixes do not differ by case). クイタㇰ。 Ku-itak. 1SG -speak クイタㇰ。 Ku-itak. 1SG-speak 'I spoke.' エイタㇰ。 E-itak. 2SG -speak エイタㇰ。 E-itak. 2SG-speak You (SG) spoke.' イタㇰ。 Itak. speak イタㇰ。 Itak. speak 'He spoke.' クアニ Kuani I クイタㇰ。 ku-itak. 1SG -speak クアニ クイタㇰ。 Kuani ku-itak. I 1SG-speak 'I spoke.' Moribund language An endangered language or moribund language

1750-629: The head comes at the end. Verbs, which are inherently either transitive or intransitive, accept various derivational affixes . Ainu does not have grammatical gender . Plurals are indicated by a suffix. Classical Ainu, the language of the yukar , is polysynthetic , with incorporation of nouns and adverbs; this is greatly reduced in the modern colloquial language. Applicatives may be used in Ainu to place nouns in dative , instrumental , comitative , locative , allative , or ablative roles. Besides freestanding nouns, these roles may be assigned to incorporated nouns, and such use of applicatives

1800-416: The languages, and it requires the establishment of a secure archive where the material can be stored once it is produced so that it can be accessed by future generations of speakers or scientists. Language revitalization is the process by which a language community through political, community, and educational means attempts to increase the number of active speakers of the endangered language. This process

1850-399: The linguistic literature—the language that is being lost generally undergoes changes as speakers make their language more similar to the language that they are shifting to. For example, gradually losing grammatical or phonological complexities that are not found in the dominant language. Generally the accelerated pace of language endangerment is considered to be a problem by linguists and by

1900-435: The newest American battleships in July 1945, in the closing days of World War II . Muroran was also bombed by American naval aircraft on 14 and 15 July 1945, 525 people were killed. Today, there are large cement factories, steel mills, oil refineries, and shipyards clustered around the port of Muroran. Muroran features a warm-summer humid continental climate ( Köppen climate classification Dfb — Cfb Oceanic Climate if

1950-455: The next. That is, there are no new speakers, adults or children." UNESCO operates with four levels of language endangerment between "safe" (not endangered) and "extinct" (no living speakers), based on intergenerational transfer: "vulnerable" (not spoken by children outside the home), "definitely endangered" (children not speaking), "severely endangered" (only spoken by the oldest generations), and "critically endangered" (spoken by few members of

2000-589: The northern Japanese island of Hokkaido . It is a member of the Ainu language family , itself considered a language family isolate with no academic consensus of origin. It is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger . Until the 20th century, the Ainu languages – Hokkaido Ainu and the now-extinct Kuril Ainu and Sakhalin Ainu – were spoken throughout Hokkaido,

2050-545: The number of speakers of a language. UNESCO seeks to prevent language extinction by promoting and supporting the language in education, culture, communication and information, and science. Another option is "post-vernacular maintenance": the teaching of some words and concepts of the lost language, rather than revival proper. As of June 2012 the United States has a J-1 specialist visa , which allows indigenous language experts who do not have academic training to enter

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2100-626: The oldest generation, often semi-speakers ). UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger categorises 2,473 languages by level of endangerment. Using an alternative scheme of classification, linguist Michael E. Krauss defines languages as "safe" if it is considered that children will probably be speaking them in 100 years; "endangered" if children will probably not be speaking them in 100 years (approximately 60–80% of languages fall into this category) and "moribund" if children are not speaking them now. Many scholars have devised techniques for determining whether languages are endangered. One of

2150-410: The opening of a ship route from Muroran to Mori and railroad extension to Iwamizawa , Muroran's municipality was started on August 1, 1922 as the core of the major land and sea traffic in the pioneer era of Hokkaido. Since then, Muroran has been developing as an important transportation hub and a center of the steel industry. This unfortunately earned the town's industrial plants a bombardment by some of

2200-661: The social structure of one's community is often reflected through speech and language behavior. This pattern is even more prominent in dialects. This may in turn affect the sense of identity of the individual and the community as a whole, producing a weakened social cohesion as their values and traditions are replaced with new ones. This is sometimes characterized as anomie . Losing a language may also have political consequences as some countries confer different political statuses or privileges on minority ethnic groups, often defining ethnicity in terms of language. In turn, communities that lose their language may also lose political legitimacy as

2250-474: The southern half of the island of Sakhalin and by small numbers of people in the Kuril Islands . Due to the colonization policy employed by the Japanese government, the number of Hokkaido Ainu speakers decreased through the 20th century, and it is now moribund . A very low number of elderly people still speak the language fluently, though attempts are being made to revive it. The term "Ainu" comes from

2300-502: The speakers. However, some linguists, such as the phonetician Peter Ladefoged , have argued that language death is a natural part of the process of human cultural development, and that languages die because communities stop speaking them for their own reasons. Ladefoged argued that linguists should simply document and describe languages scientifically, but not seek to interfere with the processes of language loss. A similar view has been argued at length by linguist Salikoko Mufwene , who sees

2350-457: The world is not known, and it is not well defined what constitutes a separate language as opposed to a dialect. Estimates vary depending on the extent and means of the research undertaken, and the definition of a distinct language and the current state of knowledge of remote and isolated language communities. The number of known languages varies over time as some of them become extinct and others are newly discovered. An accurate number of languages in

2400-418: The world was not yet known until the use of universal, systematic surveys in the later half of the twentieth century. The majority of linguists in the early twentieth century refrained from making estimates. Before then, estimates were frequently the product of guesswork and very low. One of the most active research agencies is SIL International , which maintains a database, Ethnologue , kept up to date by

2450-413: The world, many countries have enacted specific legislation aimed at protecting and stabilizing the language of indigenous speech communities . Recognizing that most of the world's endangered languages are unlikely to be revitalized, many linguists are also working on documenting the thousands of languages of the world about which little or nothing is known. The total number of contemporary languages in

2500-550: The −3 °C or 27 °F isotherm is used), a climate type that is very rare in Japan. Despite it being located on Hokkaido, Muroran typically does not see the very cold winters that the majority of the island is known for, yet it does experience some snowfall in the course of the year, averaging roughly 210 cm (83 in) of snow per season. Summers in Muroran are mild by Japanese standards, not nearly as hot as summers in other Japanese cities. Average high temperatures in August,

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