The Ainu languages are a small language family originally spoken on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaidō, the southern half of the island of Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, and 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 Hokkaidō Ainu, which is considered critically endangered by UNESCO.