Sanapaná language
Language in Paraguay
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sanapana (sanapana payvoma[2]) is a Mascoian language of the Paraguayan Chaco, spoken by the Sanapaná people. The language is not critically endangered, as children are still learning it.
- Sanapaná
Status
Sanapana is spoken by around half of all Sanapana people, who call themselves nenlhet,[3][2] and is still being transmitted to children in the two largest communities, La Esperanza and Anaconda, who grow up monolingual in Sanapana before they go to school, where they learn Spanish. The language is also reported to be in everyday use, including in religious contexts.[4]: 5
Classification
Sanapana is classified as a member of the Mascoian (Enlhet-Enenlhet) languages, distributed in the Gran Chaco region.[5][2] They are considered to have evolved from a dialect continuum.[4]: 4
Phonology and orthography
Sanapana has three vowels and 13 consonants.[4]: 29
Vowels
The two mid vowels can be raised in certain phonetic environments, but no minimal pairs, words differing in only one phoneme, are known to contrast getween high and mid vowels. The status of vowel length is uncertain, as no minimal pairs exist for this contrast, although certain words have consistently lengthened vowels (e.g. pesaːsep 'night'), and others consistently without (e.g. kelasma 'fish'). Vowels are written as in Spanish.[4]: 29
Consonants
Orthographical equivalents are written in ⟨angle brackets⟩.
Long phonemes are written doubled. The sequence /kh/ is "often" written as ⟨h⟩.[4]: 30–31 Gomes (2013) analyzes /ŋ/ as an allophone of /n/ before a velar phoneme, and posits /ɲ/ as a phoneme, rather than as a sequence of /n/ followed by /j/.[6]: 82