ON LANGUAGE NAMES /// RE: Results of Duplicate Busters Survey#2//Ainu, Aynu, Ajnu

[Doug Ewell]

Mark Crispin <markrcrispin at live dot com> wrote:

> According to Wikipedia (a dubious source, but...)

Neither yes nor no.

> there are about 1000 native speakers in Hokkaido; and in Nibuntani, 
> there are 100 speakers, of which 15 used the language daily in the 
> late 1980s.

All right, I take back the Ethnologue quote about 15 speakers.  But this 
additional information reveals evidence only of more speakers in Japan, 
not in Russia (though the Wikipedia article repeats the "spoken in 
Russia" claim from Ethnologue), so the notion of tagging "ain-RU" 
distinctly from "ain-JP" gains no traction here.

And my main point still stands, that region subtags have nothing to do 
with distinguishing 'ain' from 'aib'.

--
Doug Ewell  *  Thornton, Colorado, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14
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