Ainu Dictionaries

Ainu is a moribund language, and has been endangered for at least the past few decades. Most of the 150,000 self-proclaimed ethnic Ainu in Japan (many additional Ainu are not aware of their origins or are secretive for fear of discrimination)[citation needed] speak only Japanese. In the town of Nibutani (part of Biratori, Hokkaido) where many of the remaining native speakers live, there are 100 speakers, out of which only 15 used the language every day in the late 1980s. The number of speakers today (by whatever definition one may use) is not known with any certainty. In all of Hokkaidō, it is estimated that there are perhaps 1,000 native speakers, almost all older than 30.[citation needed] Among Ainu speakers (broadly defined), second-language learners presently outnumber native ones.

However, use of the language is on the rise. There is currently an active revitalization movement — mainly in Hokkaidō but also elsewhere — to reverse the centuries-long decline in the number of speakers. This has led to an increasing number of second-language learners, especially in Hokkaidō, in large part due to the pioneering efforts of the late Ainu folklorist, activist and former Diet member Shigeru Kayano, himself a native speaker.
 An Ainu-English index-dictionary to B. PiÅ?sudski's Materials for the study of the Ainu language and folklore of 1912 (Seria Jezykoznawstwo)
An Ainu dialect dictionary;: With Ainu, Japanese and English indexes,

The Ainu Language - Hattori Shiro, who completed an Ainu dialect dictionary, illustrates the possible genetic relation between Ainu and the Altaic family. ...
http://linguistics.byu.edu/classes/ling450ch/reports/ainu.htm

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