Awa Pit language
Cuaiquer | |
---|---|
Awa Pit | |
Native to | Colombia, Ecuador |
Ethnicity | 15,000 Awa-Kwaiker (2007)[1] |
Native speakers | 13,000 (2008)[1] |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 |
kwi |
Glottolog |
awac1239 [2] |
Awa or Awa pit, also known as Cuaiquer, is a Barbacoan language spoken by the Awa-Kwaiker people, who inhabit territory straddling northern Ecuador and southern Colombia (the language is sometimes also referred to as Coaiquer, Quaiquer, or Kwaiker in Colombia, and as Awapit in Ecuador).[3] Awa pit is classified by UNESCO as a severely endangered language.[4]
Speakers and characteristics
The Awa pit language has around 21 thousand speakers, mostly residing on the Colombian Pacific slopes of the Andes, with about a thousand in an adjacent area of Ecuador.[3] While most men also speak Spanish, the women and children are predominantly monolingual.[3] Literacy among Awa speakers is less than 1% in their native language and under 5% in the secondary Spanish language.[3]
The Awa pit language has a subject–object–verb structure and has adopted the Latin script.[3] Grammatically, Awa pit uses a characteristic conjunct/disjunct system of verb suffixes for person-marking which displays similarities with some Tibeto-Burman languages, such as the Newari language of Kathmandu.[5][6][7]
Phonology
The Awa pit inventory is as follows:[8]
Labial | Alveolar | Dorsal | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
lateral | central | palatal | ||||
Occlusive | nasal | m | n | ŋ | ||
voiceless | p | t | k | |||
Continuant | voiceless | ɬ | s | ʃ | ||
voiced | ɬ | z | ʒ | |||
Semivowel | w | j |
Front | Central | Back | |
---|---|---|---|
Close | i | ɨ | u |
Open | a |
References
- 1 2 Cuaiquer at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
- ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Awa-Cuaiquer". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Awa–Cuaiquer, per SIL, Ethnologue, 1986 and 1991. Retrieved 23 April 2012.
- ↑ Haboud, Marleen; Adelaarurl, Willem (2008). "Awapit" . In: Moseley, Christopher, ed (2010). Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, 3rd edn, Paris. UNESCO Publishing (online version). Retrieved 23 April 2012.
- ↑ Curnow, Timothy Jowan (1997). A Grammar of Awa Pit (Cuaiquer): An indigenous language of south-western Colombia. PhD Thesis, Australian National University, Canberra. Retrieved 23 April 2012.
- ↑ Curnow, Timothy Jowan (2 May 2002). "Conjunct/disjunct marking in Awa Pit". Linguistics – An Interdisciplinary Journal of the Language Sciences 40(3):611-627.(subscription required)
- ↑ Cysouw, Michael (2003). "The Paradigmatic Structure of Person Marking", p 43–44. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199554263
- ↑ Curnow, Timothy Jowan; Liddicoat, Anthony J (1998). "The Barbacoan languages of Colombia and Ecuador". Anthropological Linguistics 40(3):384-408.(subscription required)
External links
- "Cuaiquer Indian Language (Awa Pit, Awa-Cuaiquer)" – Native-Languages.org
- "Gramática pedagógica del Awapit" (A learner's grammar of Awapit) – direct download link to Microsoft Word document in Spanish, available from here (via Sasiku Project)