Knowledge base · Part II — Sources, Conventions, Glossing, and Orthography · this topic as a network
14. Historical Orthographies and the Batchelor Tradition
How were pre-phonemic Latin orthographies used for Hokkaido Ainu, and how are texts in them read and converted today?
The Hepburn-derived tradition
What is the Hepburn-derived tradition of writing Hokkaido Ainu?
Prior to the introduction of Batchelor's romanization system, written Ainu in Japan was recorded, if at all, using the Japanese kana syllabary (Refsing 1986: 18, 19).
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Digraphs, voiced letters, and spurious vowels
How are digraphs, voiced letters, and spurious vowels used in Batchelor's orthography?
In Batchelor's romanization system, Ainu ci [tʃi] is written as chi, and palatalized s is written as sh (Kirikae 1997: 10). Batchelor, Kindaichi, and Chiri Yukie all made use of voiced stop letters b, d, and g in addition to voiceless p, t, and k in their romanized orthographies (Nakagawa 2024: 55). In Chiri (1942), syllable-initial h and syllable-final x were analyzed as two distinct consonant phonemes within a twelve-consonant inventory (reported in Nakagawa 2024: 56).
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Echo vowels and syllable-final r
How are echo vowels and syllable-final /r/ written in Batchelor's orthography?
Ainu phonemically has words without final vowels, including after -r-, although Batchelor often erroneously recorded final vowels on them (Refsing 1986: 56). Whereas Chiri Yukie's orthography, established in Ainu Shin'yōshū (1923), distinguishes syllable-final -r from r followed by a vowel — a distinction Nakagawa (2024) identifies as the first clear such separation and as the basis of standard orthographic practice — Batchelor's orthography writes all instances as r followed by a vowel, for example nukara for nukar and pirika for pirka (Nakagawa 2024: 30, 55).
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Person marking and word division
How are person marking and word division handled in Batchelor's orthography?
Dialect mixture
How does dialect mixture appear in Batchelor's texts?
Forms in older records of the Tokachi dialect transcribed as ruwe sitapan are proposed by Nakagawa (2024) to be analyzed as ru estap an (proposed in Nakagawa 2024: 403).
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Reading Batchelor materials today
How are Batchelor-orthography materials read and converted today?
Refsing (1986) asserts that Batchelor's dictionary and the grammar preceding it are extremely inaccurate and cannot be relied upon as primary sources for the study of Ainu, though they contain usable material when approached critically (Refsing 1986: 18). In a number of instances in Batchelor's dictionary, the English glosses are much closer to the actual meaning than the Japanese translations, which are totally misleading (Refsing 1986: 19).
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