Enxet language
Mascoian language spoken in Paraguay
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Enxet, also known as Enxet Sur or Southern Lengua, is a language spoken by the Indigenous southern Enxet people of Presidente Hayes Department, Paraguay. It is one of twenty languages spoken by the wider Gran Chaco Amerindians of South America.[3] Once considered a dialect of a broader language, known as Vowak or Powok, Enxet (Southern Lengua) and Enlhet (Northern Lengua) diverged as extensive differences between the two were realized.[4]
Classification
Enxet belongs to the Enlhet-Enenlhet (aka Mascoian) language family, a small family of languages spoken in the Paraguayan region of the South American Gran Chaco.[4] Enxet is most closely related to its sister language Enlhet, based on some preliminary analysis, but a substantial historical analysis of the Enlhet-Enenlhet family has not yet been published.
History
Language contents and structure
Enxet contains only three phonemic vowel qualities /e,a,o/, each requiring a certain length such to maximize distinction. Bilingual speakers of Spanish and Enxet purportedly utilize shorter spacing between vowels when speaking Enxet compared to Spanish.[6]
Phonology
Vowels
| Phoneme | Allophone |
|---|---|
| /e/ | [e], [i], [ɛ] |
| /o/ | [o], [ʊ], [ɔ] |
Consonants
/cʲ/ can also be heard as a regular palatal stop [c] or a palatalized velar stop [kʲ] in free variation.[7]
