Karajá language

Karajá
Native to	Brazil
Region	Araguaia River
Ethnicity	Karajá people
Native speakers	2,700 (2006)^[1]
Language family	Macro-Gê Ofaie Karajá
Dialects	Javaé Xambioá
Language codes
ISO 639-3	`kpj`
Glottolog	`kara1500`^[2]

Karajá, also known as Ynã, is spoken by the Karajá people in some thirty villages in central Brazil. Dialects are North Karaja, South Karaja, Xambioá, and Javaé. There are distinct male and female forms of speech; one of the principal differences is that men drop the sound /k/, which is pronounced by women.

Karaja is a verb-final language,^[3] with simple noun and more complex verbal morphology that includes noun incorporation. Verbs inflect for direction as well as person, mood, object, and voice.

Phonology 1
Men's and women's speech 2
Notes 3
References 4
External links 5

Phonology

Karajá has nine oral vowels, /i e ɛ, ɨ ə a, u o ɔ/, and two nasal vowels, /ə̃ õ/. /a/ is nasalized word initially and when preceded by /h/ or a voiced stop: /aθi/ → [ãθi] 'grass', /ɔha/ → [ɔhã] 'armadillo'; this in turn nasalizes a preceding /b/ or /d/: /bahadu/ → [mãhãdu] 'group', /dadi/ → [nãdi] 'my mother'.^[4]

There are only twelve consonants, eight of which are coronal:^[5]

		Labial	Dental	Postalveolar	Velar	Glottal
Stop/Affricate	Voiceless			tʃ	k
Stop/Affricate	Voiced	b	d	dʒ
Implosive			ɗ
Fricative			θ	ʃ		h
Lateral			l
Sonorant		w	ɾ

Men's and women's speech

Some examples of the differences between men's and women's speech, especially the presence or lack of /k/ (including in borrowings from Portuguese), follow:^[6]

Women	Men	Gloss
kɔɗu	ɔɗu	turtle
kɔlukɔ	ɔluɔ	labret
kaɾitʃakɾe	aɾiakɾe	I will walk*
bɛɾaku	beɾo	river
adõda	aõda	thinɡ
dõbĩku	dõbĩu	Sunday (from Portuguese domingo)

* The /itʃa/ derives historically from *ika

Notes

^ Karajá at Ethnologue (17th ed., 2013)
^ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Karajá". Glottolog 2.2. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
^ Rodrigues (1999), pp. 187-88
^ Rodrigues (1999), pp. 172-73
^ Rodgrigues (1999), pp. 176-78
^ Rodrigues (1999), pg. 177

References

Ribeiro, Eduardo Rivail. (2002) "Direction in Karajá". In Rosa María Ortiz Ciscomani, ed., Vi encuentro internacional de lingüística en el noroeste.
Ribeiro, Eduard Rivail. (2000) "[ATR] vowel harmony and palatalization in Karajá". Santa Barbara Papers in Linguistics. 10: Proceedings of wail 2000. pp. 80–89.
Rodrigues, Aryon D. (1999) "Macro-Jê". In R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (eds.), The Amazonian Languages. Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

External links

http://indian-cultures.com/Cultures/karaja.html
Alain Fabre, 2005, Diccionario etnolingüístico y guía bibliográfica de los pueblos indígenas sudamericanos: KARAJÁ[1]

Macro-Jê languages

Jê

Northern	Jaikó

Central	Acroa Xakriabá Xavante Xerente

Northwest	Apinayé Canela Kreye Mẽbengokre Panará Suyá Timbira

Kaingáng	Guayana Ingain Kaingáng São Paulo Kaingáng Xokleng

Krenák

Borôro

Kamakã

Karirí

Maxakalían

Purían

Coropó
Purí

Yabutian

Other

Italics indicate extinct languages

Categories

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Karajá language