| Cashinahua | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spoken in | Perú, Brazil | |||
| Ethnicity | Kaxinawá people | |||
| Native speakers | 2,000 (2003) | |||
| Language family |
Pano–Tacanan
|
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| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-3 | cbs | |||
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Cashinahua (also spelled Kaxinawá, Kaxynawa, Caxinawa, and Caxinawá), or Hantxa Kuin, is an indigenous American language of western South America which belongs to the Panoan language family. It is spoken by about 1,600 Cashinahua people in Perú along the Curanja and Purus rivers; and in Brazil by 400 Cashinahua people in the state of Acre.
About five to ten percent of Cashinahua speakers have some Spanish language proficiency,[1] while forty percent are literate and twenty to thirty percent are literate in Spanish as a second language.
Contents |
| Front | Central | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close (high) |
Oral | i /i/ | e /ɨ/ | u /u~ʊ~o/ |
| Nasal | ĩ /ĩ/ | ẽ /ɨ̃/ | ũ /ũ~õ/ | |
| Open (low) |
Oral | a /ɑ/ | ||
| Nasal | ã /ã/ | |||
| Consonants | Labial | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Glottal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | p /p/ b /b/ |
t /t/ d /d/ |
k /k/ | ’ /ʔ/ | ||
| Fricative | s /s/ | x/shr /ʂ/ | x/sh /ʃ/ | j/h /h/ | ||
| Affricates | ts /t͡s/ | ch/t͡ʃ/ | ||||
| Nasal | m /m/ | n /n/ | ||||
| Approximant | v/w /w~β/ | y /j/ |
A Cashinahua dictionary has been compiled and published since 1980. Generatives come before nouns. Articles and adjectives are placed after nouns. Cashinahua uses a distinct interrogative punctuation mark, different from the question mark. There are seven prefixes and five suffixes. Roman script is used.