characters are used to write final consonants and sounds that cannot be expressed using conventional katakana. The extended katakana are based on regular katakana and either are smaller in size or have a handakuten. As few fonts yet support these extensions, workarounds exist for many of the characters, such as using a smaller font with the regular katakana to produce ク to represent the separate small katakana glyph used as in (). This is a list of special katakana used in transcribing the Ainu language. Most of the characters are of the extended set of katakana, though a few have been used historically in Japanese, and thus are part of the main set of katakana. A number of previously proposed characters have not been added to Unicode as they can be represented as a sequence of two existing codepoints. Basic syllables Diphthongs Final is spelled y in Latin, small ィ in katakana. Final is spelled w in Latin, small ゥ in katakana. Large イ and ウ are used if there is a morpheme boundary with イ and ウ at the morpheme head. is spelled ae, アエ or アェ. Example with initial k: Since the above rule is used systematically, some katakana combinations have different sounds from conventional Japanese. Oral literature The Ainu have a rich oral tradition of hero-sagas called , which retain a number of grammatical and lexical archaisms. were memorized and told at get-togethers and ceremonies that often lasted hours or even days. The Ainu also have another form of narrative often used called , which was used in the same contexts. A native written form of the Ainu language has never existed; therefore, the Ainu people traditionally relied on memorization and oral communication to pass down their literature to the next generation. Ainu literature includes nonfiction, such as their history and "hunting adventures," and fiction such as stories about spiritual avatars, magic, myths, and heroes. Research on oral literature The oral literature of the Ainu languages has been studied mainly by Japanese and European researchers; thus, Ainu literature has been transcribed using writing systems such as Japanese katakana (commonly used for foreign-language text) and the Latin alphabet, and documented in the languages of the researchers themselves. One prominent researcher of the Ainu languages is Bronisław Piłsudski, a Polish anthropologist who lived in Sakhalin from 1886 to 1905, and who published "Materials for the Study of the Ainu