Kuril Ainu language

Kuril Ainu, or Kuril, is an extinct and poorly attested Ainu language of the Kuril Islands, now part of Russia. The main inhabited islands were Kunashir, Iturup and Urup in the south, and Shumshu in the north. Other islands either had small populations (such as Paramushir) or were visited for fishing or hunting. There may have been a small mixed Kuril–Kamchadal population at the southern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula.

The Ainu of Kurils appear to have been a relatively recent expansion from Hokkaido, displacing an indigenous Okhotsk culture, which may have been or been related to the modern Kamchadal. When the Kuril Islands passed to Japanese control in 1875, many of the northern Kuril evacuated to Ust-Bolsheretsky District in Kamchatka, where about 100 still live. In the decades after the islands passed to Soviet control in 1945, most of the remaining southern Kuril evacuated to Hokkaido, where they have since been assimilated.

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