Knowledge base · Part II — Sources, Conventions, Glossing, and Orthography · this topic as a network
12. Katakana Orthography and the Extended Small-Kana Codas
How does the katakana orthography represent Ainu coda consonants using small kana?
The extended small-kana coda system
How are coda consonants represented in Ainu katakana using small kana characters?
Satō's (2008) orthography represents syllable codas using small kana for the consonants p, t, k, s, m, y, w, and r, while writing coda n with regular full-size ン (Satō 2008: 16). Katakana orthographies that employ small-kana codas are able to distinguish heterorganic coronal clusters, written with ッ, from geminate consonants, which are written with specific small coda kana such as ㇷ゚ and ㇰ (Nakagawa 2024: 68).
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Glide codas /w/ and /y/
How are coda glides /w/ and /y/ written in Ainu katakana?
In Chiri Mashiho's Bunrui Ainu-go jiten: shokubutsu-hen (1953), syllable-final consonants -y and -w are represented by small ィ and ゥ respectively, distinguished from the full-size vowel kana イ (i) and ウ (u) (Nakagawa 2024: 63).
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Historical development
How did the katakana orthography for Ainu develop historically?
In Nagata Hōsei's (1891) orthography, small kana placed to the right or below a syllable indicate the loss of the vowel in coda consonants, with p written as ㇷ゚, t as ッ, k as ㇰ, m as ㇺ, and s as ㇱュ (Nakagawa 2024: 61). In that system, small ッ represents only the coda consonant t and is not used for geminate consonants (Nakagawa 2024: 62). In the Taiden section of Kindaichi's Ainu seiten (1923), syllable-final consonants are instead written with full-size kana: p = プ, t = ツ, k = ク, m = ム, s = シ, and r = ラ, リ, ル, レ, or ロ (Nakagawa 2024: 62), with the choice among the ra-row kana for coda -r determined by vowel harmony with the preceding vowel (Nakagawa 2024: 62). As in Nagata's system, small ッ in Kindaichi (1923) represents only coda t, and geminate consonants are written with full-size kana rather than ッ (Nakagawa 2024: 62). In Chiri's Ningen-hen (1954), by contrast, syllable-final -r is uniformly written with ル regardless of the preceding vowel (Nakagawa 2024: 63), differing from the vowel-harmonic practice of Kindaichi (1923) (Nakagawa 2024: 62, 63). The representation of the Ainu syllable tu shows a varied historical trajectory: early Japanese sources and Moshihogusa used ヅ or ド, Nagata (1891) used ド, and Edo-period writers developed the special han-dakuten characters ト° and ツ° for this syllable (Nakagawa 2024: 66, Ōno 2022: 12.8), before Haginaka (1973) explicitly proposed トゥ (Nakagawa 2024: 66). In the 2005 revised edition of Kayano Shigeru's Uepeker shūtaisei, the spelling of tu was systematically changed from トゥ back to ド (Nakagawa 2024: 66). The Akor Itak katakana orthography writes tu as トゥ and represents codas -p, -t, -k, -s, -m, -n, -r, -y, and -w with プ, ッ, ク, シ, ム, ン, vowel-harmonic ra-row kana, イ, and ウ respectively (Nakagawa 2024: 68), with geminate sequences -pp-, -tt-, -kk-, and -ss- uniformly written with the sokuon mark ッ (Nakagawa 2024: 68). Because this system uses ッ for geminates, it cannot graphically distinguish coronal coda sequences such as -tp-, -tk-, and -ts- from true geminates such as -pp-, -kk-, and -ss- (Nakagawa 2024: 68). Tamura (1997) addresses this by transcribing coda -t with ト instead of ッ, thereby clearly distinguishing coronal coda sequences from geminates (reported in Nakagawa 2024: 69), in contrast to the Akor Itak system (Nakagawa 2024: 68; reported in Nakagawa 2024: 69). In Chiri Mashiho's orthography, syllable-final -x (-h) is differentiated into ハ, ヒ, フ, ヘ, or ホ depending on the immediately preceding vowel (Nakagawa 2024: 64). In Chiri (1953), accent location is marked by mixing katakana and hiragana, as in turep written as ドれプ and surku as すルク (Nakagawa 2024: 63). Kura Sunazawa generally did not use yōon kana in her katakana orthography for Ainu (Kirikae 1997: 5); in her system, ʔe is written as エ, while we and ye are assigned ヱ (Kirikae 1997: 6). Yamamoto Tasuke proposed a unique 'Ainu script' in the journal Ainu Mosiri, assigning single characters to two-kana syllables such as cha, chu, che, cho, sha, shu, she, sho, tu, ye, we, and wo, creating novel characters for all of these except ヱ (we) and ヲ (wo) (Nakagawa 2024: 64).
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