Pemon language

Not to be confused with Pémono language.
Pemon
Arecuna
Ingarikó, Kapon
Native to Venezuela, Brazil, Guyana
Ethnicity Pemon
Native speakers
 (6,000 cited 1990–2006)[1]
Cariban

  • Venezuelan Carib

    • Pemóng–Panare
      • Pemóng
        • Pemon
Dialects
  • Camaracoto
Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3 aoc
Glottolog pemo1248[2]

The Pemon language, or Arekuna, is an indigenous language of the Cariban family spoken by some 30,000 Pemon people, in Venezuela's Southeast, particularly in the Canaima National Park, in the Roraima State of Brazil and in Guyana.

It is one of several closely related languages called Ingarikó and Kapong.

Camaracoto may be a distinct language.

Typology

The Pemon language's syntax type is SOV with alternation to OVS.[3]

Writing

Pemon was an oral language until the 20th century. Then efforts were made to produce dictionaries and grammars, primarily by Catholic missionaries, specially Armellada and Gutiérrez Salazar. The Latin alphabet has been used, adding diacritic signs to represent some phonemes not existing in Spanish.[4]

Phonology

Vowels

Pemon has the following vowels:

  Front Central Back
Close i ɨ u
Open-mid e u o
Open   a  

There are still texts only using Spanish characters, without distinctive characters for /o/ or /ɵ/.

Consonants

b, ch, d, k, m, n, ñ, p, r, s, t, v, w, y

Grammar

Pronouns in Pemon are:

Pemon English
yuré I, me
amäre you (singular)
muere, mesere he, she
urekon we
ina we (exclusive)
amärenokon you (plural)
ichamonan they, them

References

  1. ↑ Pemon at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Pemon". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. ↑ La Transitividad en Japrería.
  4. ↑ http://ricardo.delgado.com/GUIA%20DE%20PEMON.pdf Guide for Pemon (Spanish)

Literature

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