Ainu languages

The Ainu languages are a small language family originally spoken on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, the southern half of the island of Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands, an island chain that stretches from Hokkaido to the southern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula. They are alternately considered a group of closely related languages, or as divergent dialects of a single language isolate. The only surviving member is the Hokkaido Ainu, which is considered critically endangered by UNESCO.