Pará Arára language

Not to be confused with Mato Grosso Arára language.
Arára
Pará Arára
Parirí
Native to Brazil
Ethnicity Arara people
Native speakers
 340 (2010)[1]
Cariban

  • Pekodian

    • Arara
      • Arára
Language codes
ISO 639-3 aap
Glottolog para1310[2]

Arára is a Cariban language of Pará, Brazil.

Area

The language is spoken by a people who includes tribes still uncontacted. They live mainly in three villages: Cachoeira Seca, Laranjal and Maia. However, the natives of the latter have switched to Portuguese, while 85 speakers still remain in Cachoeira Seca and 250 in Laranjal.

Animal talk

Linguist Isaac Costa de Souza studied the language and concluded some words were modified when used to talk to different animals.[3] The table below shows some modified words used when speaking to a capuchin monkey.

Normal word Capuchin word English gloss
ɔɛt ɔɛgɛt rubber tree
aɛ aɛge wasp
ikpa ikpaga mud
kuɾi kuligi bead
kɔk kɔgɔk night, evening
nu nugu tumour, abscess
paɾu palugu water

Different modifications are used according to the species of animal being addressed. The word ikpa, for example, might be modified as tɔkpa when addressing a dog, or as ĩkpã when addressing a howler monkey. Specific modifications may be used when talking to woodpeckers, tortoises, and coatis, among other animals.

References

  1. ↑ Arára at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Para Arara". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. ↑ Isaac Costa de Souza, 2010, A Phonological Description of "Pet Talk" in Arara, M.A. thesis, University of North Dakota.


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