Kashinawa language

Kashinawa (also spelled Kaxinawá, Kashinawa, Kaxynawa, Caxinawa, Caxinawá, and Cashinahua), or Hantxa Kuin (Hãtxa Kuĩ), is an indigenous American language of western South America which belongs to the Panoan language family. It is spoken by about 1,600 Kaxinawá in Peru, along the Curanja and the Purus Rivers, and in Brazil by 400 Kaxinawá in the state of Acre.

Kashinawa
Kashinawa of the Ibuaçu River
Native toPeru, Brazil
EthnicityKaxinawá people
Native speakers
1,200 (2003–2007)[1]
Panoan
  • Mainline Panoan
    • Nawa
      • Headwaters
        • Kashinawa
Language codes
ISO 639-3cbs
Glottologcash1254
ELPCashinahua

About five to ten percent of speakers have some Spanish language proficiency,[2] while forty percent are literate and twenty to thirty percent are literate in Spanish as a second language.

Dialects are Brazilian Kashinawa, Peruvian Kashinawa, and the extinct Juruá Kapanawa (Capanahua of the Juruá River) and Paranawa.

Phonology

Vowels

Front Central Back
Close oral i i ɨ e u~ʊ~o u
nasal ĩ ĩ ɨ̃ ũ~õ ũ
Open oral a a
nasal ã ã
  • In final syllables, /a, ã/ are heard as [ə, ə̃].
  • /ɨ, ɨ̃/ can also be heard as mid-back [ɤ, ɤ̃].
  • Although nasalization is generally marked by placing a tilde over the vowel, some authors choose to mark it with a following n to denote that the previous vowel or contiguous vowels are nasalised.

Consonants

Labial Alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal m m n n
Plosive voiceless p p t t k k ʔ
voiced b b d d
Fricative s s ʂ x/shr ʃ x/sh h j/h
Affricate t͡s ts t͡ʃ ch
Approximant w~β v/w j y

Dictionary

A dictionary has been compiled and published since 1980.

Orthography

The Roman alphabet is used. There is an interrogative punctuation mark different from the question mark.

Morphology

Articles and adjectives are placed after nouns. There are seven prefixes and five suffixes.

References

  1. Kashinawa at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. "Kashinawa." Ethnologue. Retrieved 8 Dec 2011.
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