Arabela language
Encyclopedia
Arabela is an indigenous
American language
of the Zaparoan family spoken in two Peru
vian villages in tropical forest along the Napo tributary of the Arabela river.
Also known as Chiripuno and Chiripunu, it is spoken by about 50 people out of an ethnic population of about 500
Since there are so few speakers of Arabela left, its speakers speak either Spanish
or Quechua as a second language
. The literacy rate for Arabela as a first language
is about 10–30%, and about 50–75% for a second language
. It uses a SVO word order, just as the majority of the world's languages.
Like all native languages in Peru
, it has an official
status in areas where it is spoken.
family of languages. Zaparoan tongues were once widely spoken in the rain forest of north-eastern Peru
, but Zaparoan-speaking people have been decimated by diseases, wars with neighboring native groups, and by quasi-enslavement during the rubber boom
. Most Zaparoan communities have shifted
to Lamas Quechua
or Spanish
, while others have been incorporated into Shuar groups. The few surviving Zaparoan languages are all severely endangered. Among those, Arabela is most closely related to Zaparo (the only one still spoken), Andoa and Conambo.
and Spanish
, and they are both widely spoken by Arabelas. Kichwa has been the default language for native communities in the area since the rubber boom era, and has spread through trade mixed marriages. It is, however, losing ground to Spanish in the younger generations. The use of Arabela is restricted to a small elderly fraction of the population. The language is official per the Constitution of Peru
, but this did not stop its decline. There is no written literature in Arabela, but the language has been used in education by the Peruvian government, which has issued some school material in it. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
has been translated into Arabela in 1988.
and a vowel inventory of five vowel
s common within the family.
but for a few words, mostly describing persons, the sex can be specified by adding a suffix :
Arabela has two grammatical number
s, singular and plural. The plural is generally added by adding a suffix to the singular, the nature of this suffix varying according the pluralized word.
In a few cases, however, the plural can be formed through suffix substitution, or by using a different root altogether.
A numbers of other word form their plural by removing a singular specific suffix
and distinguishes between active and passive personal pronouns. Active pronouns act as subjects in independent clause and as objects in dependent ones.
. It can also mark the subject of a subordinate sentence when it refers to the object of the main sentence.
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
American language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
of the Zaparoan family spoken in two Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
vian villages in tropical forest along the Napo tributary of the Arabela river.
Also known as Chiripuno and Chiripunu, it is spoken by about 50 people out of an ethnic population of about 500
Since there are so few speakers of Arabela left, its speakers speak either Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
or Quechua as a second language
Second language
A second language or L2 is any language learned after the first language or mother tongue. Some languages, often called auxiliary languages, are used primarily as second languages or lingua francas ....
. The literacy rate for Arabela as a first language
First language
A first language is the language a person has learned from birth or within the critical period, or that a person speaks the best and so is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity...
is about 10–30%, and about 50–75% for a second language
Second language
A second language or L2 is any language learned after the first language or mother tongue. Some languages, often called auxiliary languages, are used primarily as second languages or lingua francas ....
. It uses a SVO word order, just as the majority of the world's languages.
Like all native languages in Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
, it has an official
Official language
An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a...
status in areas where it is spoken.
The language and its speakers
Arabela is a language of the ZaparoanZaparoan languages
Zaparoan is an endangered language family of Peru and Ecuador with fewer than 100 speakers...
family of languages. Zaparoan tongues were once widely spoken in the rain forest of north-eastern Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
, but Zaparoan-speaking people have been decimated by diseases, wars with neighboring native groups, and by quasi-enslavement during the rubber boom
Rubber boom
The rubber boom was an important part of the economic and social history of Brazil and Amazonian regions of neighboring countries, being related with the extraction and commercialization of rubber...
. Most Zaparoan communities have shifted
Language shift
Language shift, sometimes referred to as language transfer or language replacement or assimilation, is the progressive process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language. The rate of assimilation is the percentage of individuals with a given mother tongue who speak...
to Lamas Quechua
Lamas Quechua
Lamas Quechua is a variety of Quechua spoken in the provinces of Lamas in the Peruvian region of San Martin and in some villages on the river Huallaga in the region of Ucayali....
or Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, while others have been incorporated into Shuar groups. The few surviving Zaparoan languages are all severely endangered. Among those, Arabela is most closely related to Zaparo (the only one still spoken), Andoa and Conambo.
Current situation
The dominant languages of the area are KichwaKichwa
Kichwa is a Quechuan language, and includes all Quechua varieties spoken in Ecuador and Colombia by approximately 2,500,000 people...
and Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, and they are both widely spoken by Arabelas. Kichwa has been the default language for native communities in the area since the rubber boom era, and has spread through trade mixed marriages. It is, however, losing ground to Spanish in the younger generations. The use of Arabela is restricted to a small elderly fraction of the population. The language is official per the Constitution of Peru
Constitution of Peru
The Constitution of Peru is the supreme law of Peru. The current constitution, enacted on December 31, 1993, is Peru's fifth in the 20th century and replaced the 1979 Constitution....
, but this did not stop its decline. There is no written literature in Arabela, but the language has been used in education by the Peruvian government, which has issued some school material in it. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly . The Declaration arose directly from the experience of the Second World War and represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled...
has been translated into Arabela in 1988.
Dialectal divisions
There is no dialectal division among known Arabela speakers. A small group, called Pananuyuri, separated from other Arabelas roughly a century ago. Their fate is unknown but they may have survived, in which case their dialect is likely to have somewhat diverged from the other speakers'.Phonology
The Arabela phonemic inventory is quite typical for a Zaparoan language. It has five places of articulationPlace of articulation
In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation of a consonant is the point of contact where an obstruction occurs in the vocal tract between an articulatory gesture, an active articulator , and a passive location...
and a vowel inventory of five vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
s common within the family.
Vowels
| Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also... |
Near-front Near-front vowel A near-front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a near-front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as in a front vowel, but slightly further back in the mouth. The near-front vowels identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:*... |
Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark... |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the... |
i | ɪ | u |
| Near-close Near-close vowel A near-close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a near-close vowel is that the tongue is positioned similarly to a close vowel, but slightly less constricted. Near-close vowels are sometimes described as lax variants of the fully close vowels... |
o | ||
| Open Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue... |
a |
Consonants
| Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:... |
Dental / Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
Postalveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &... |
[p] | [t] | [k] | ||
| Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or... |
[s] | [ʃ] | [ɦ] | ||
| Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
[m] | [n] | |||
| Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no... |
[w] | [j] | |||
| Trill Trill consonant In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr> as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular.... |
[r] |
The noun
Arabela has no grammatical genderGrammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
but for a few words, mostly describing persons, the sex can be specified by adding a suffix :
- Cua niya-nu : my son
- Cua niya-tu : my daughter
Arabela has two grammatical number
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
s, singular and plural. The plural is generally added by adding a suffix to the singular, the nature of this suffix varying according the pluralized word.
- tia : house yields tiaca : houses
- maaji : woman, yields maajipohua : women
- niyacoo : unmarried girl yields niyacoojori : unmarried girls.
In a few cases, however, the plural can be formed through suffix substitution, or by using a different root altogether.
- caya : man yields canuu
- maanu : group yields maapue
- nucua : mother yields nuhuocuaca
A numbers of other word form their plural by removing a singular specific suffix
- saijia stone yields sai stone
Pronouns
Arabela has a complex pronominal system, similar to the one of the other zaparoan languagesZaparoan languages
Zaparoan is an endangered language family of Peru and Ecuador with fewer than 100 speakers...
and distinguishes between active and passive personal pronouns. Active pronouns act as subjects in independent clause and as objects in dependent ones.
Personal pronouns
| First singular | Second singular | Third singular | First plural inclusive | First plural exclusive | Second plural | Third plural | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Independent clause subject | janiya -nijiya |
quiajaniya quiaa -quiaa |
nojuajua -Vri |
paa -pue paajaniya |
canaa | niajaniya niaa |
nojori | |
| Independent clause object | cua | quia | na quinio |
pa | canaa | nia | nojori na -no |
Anaphoric pronouns
The verbal ending -no is used as an anaphoricAnaphora (linguistics)
In linguistics, anaphora is an instance of an expression referring to another. Usually, an anaphoric expression is represented by a pro-form or some other kind of deictic--for instance, a pronoun referring to its antecedent...
. It can also mark the subject of a subordinate sentence when it refers to the object of the main sentence.
Demonstrative pronouns
Arabela has three kinds of demonstrative pronouns :- noo indicates an object close to the speaker
- nio indicates an object further away from the speaker (Nio-te quia panishano - is it what you want)
- cuno indicates a contrast between objects or persons (cuno-cuaja cua sare - this is my dog)
Interrogative pronouns
Arabela has a rather restricted of interrogative pronouns, composed of:- cana : who
- canapue : who (plural)
- casaa : what
- taa : how, how much
- taamueca : how
- tee : where
- teje : where from
- teyano : who, which