I studied Japanese in college for three years, and in fact I had hoped to major in it, but that didn’t happen due to my health struggles. But I loved the language, and the more I learned about Japan, the more often the Ainu were mentioned.
You can’t have Japan without Ainu, and I love learning about them.
I have wanted to learn Ainu for years, but the online resources are few and far in between. And mostly in Japanese which, I’m sorry, my skills are not up to that.
And then Tribalingual became a thing. Look, an Ainu class! This is SO COOL. And they have a variety of endangered languages you can study, so on top of being cool they’re actually needed. Double points for that. Classes have an exploratory 4 week session, and a more in depth 10 week session. They try to have native speakers teach, although I’ll admit Ainu has a 2nd language speaker.
Are you interested in a rare or endangered language? Maybe you should take a peek!
I envy your language abilities. I think if I had those talents, I would also want to learn. As long as you get to travel to Japan and get to practice?!
Traveling to Japan is on my husband and my wishlists, but I admit I’d have to brush up quite a bit to be comfortable speaking. My family and my husband’s family are semi fluent in German… my mother speaks German, some Russian, some Finnish, and my father speaks German. My husband and father in law speak German as well, and I did take some German, but I learned quickly that studying two languages concurrently is a nightmare!
Thank you for the comment! You made my morning. *smile*