Kuna language

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Dulegaya (Kuna Language)

The Kuna Language belongs to the Chibchan linguistic family.

Phonemes

Kuna recognises 5 vowel phonemes and 17 consonantal phonemes.

Vowels
        Front   Central    Back
High    i                   u
Mid     e               
Low             a       

Consonants
              labial  alveolar  palatal  velar
lax stops       p       t                  k
tense stops     pp      tt                 kk
lax nasals      m       n                       
tense nasals    mm      nn                      
affricate                         ĉ     
fricative               s                       
lax lateral             l               
tense lateral           ll              
rhotic                  r               
approximant     w                 y     

The oclusive consonants p, t, and k become the sonorants b, d, and g when they are between vowels or beside the consonants m, n, l, r, y, or w, just as at the beginning of the word, when the pronunciation fluctuates liberally. The alveolars s through n become the palatals ŝ and ly like l after k.

Morphology

Kuna is an agglutinative language which contains words of up to about 9 morphemes, although words of two or three morphemes are more common. Most of the morphological complexity is found in the verb word, which contains suffixes of tense and aspect, plurals, negatives, position (sitting, standing, etc.), and various adverbials. The verb word does not contain person.