A Kuril Ainu Glossary by Captain V. M. Golovnin (1811)

Abstract

This paper presents a newly discovered glossary (230 items) of Northern and Southern Kuril Ainu recorded by the captain Vasily Mikhaylovich Golovnin in 1811 and stored at the Russian National Archive of the Navy in St. Petersburg. Based on this new document we argue that Southern Kuril has a much closer lexical resemblance to Northeastern Hokkaido Ainu than Northern Kuril. On the other hand, we reaffirm that both Southern and Northern Kuril Ainu constitute a really separate Kuril group because they show a number of lexical, phonological and grammatical features, which are different from Hokkaido Ainu.