Arabela is a nearly extinct

indigenous Indigenous may refer to: *Indigenous peoples *Indigenous (ecology), presence in a region as the result of only natural processes, with no human intervention *Indigenous (band), an American blues-rock band *Indigenous (horse), a Hong Kong racehorse ...

American

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...

of the

Zaparoan Zaparoan (also Sáparoan, Záparo, Zaparoano, Zaparoana) is an endangered language family of Peru and Ecuador with fewer than 100 speakers. Zaparoan speakers seem to have been very numerous before the arrival of the Europeans. However, their grou ...

family spoken in two

Peru , image_flag = Flag of Peru.svg , image_coat = Escudo nacional del Perú.svg , other_symbol = Great Seal of the State , other_symbol_type = Seal (emblem), National seal , national_motto = "Fi ...

vian villages in tropical forest along the Napo tributary of the Arabela river. Also known as Chiripuno and Chiripunu, it is spoken by fewer than 50 people out of an ethnic population of about 400. Since there are so few speakers of Arabela left, its speakers speak either

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...

Quechua Quechua may refer to: *Quechua people, several indigenous ethnic groups in South America, especially in Peru *Quechuan languages, a Native South American language family spoken primarily in the Andes, derived from a common ancestral language **So ...

as a

second language A person's second language, or L2, is a language that is not the native language (first language or L1) of the speaker, but is learned later. A second language may be a neighbouring language, another language of the speaker's home country, or a fo ...

. The

literacy rate Literacy in its broadest sense describes "particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing" with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in written form in some specific context of use. In other words, huma ...

for Arabela as a

first language A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongu ...

is about 10–30%, and about 50–75% for a

. It uses a

SOV word order SOV may refer to: * SOV, Service Operations Vessel * SOV, a former ticker symbol for Sovereign Bank * SOV, a legal cryptocurrency created by the Sovereign Currency Act of 2018 of the Republic of the Marshall Islands * SOV, the National Rail station ...

. Like all native languages in

, it has an

official An official is someone who holds an office (function or mandate, regardless whether it carries an actual working space with it) in an organization or government and participates in the exercise of authority, (either their own or that of their ...

status in areas where it is spoken. Artículo 48º Son idiomas oficiales el castellano y, en las zonas donde predominen, también lo son el quechua, el aimara y las demás lenguas aborígenes, según la ley.

The language and its speakers

Arabela is a language of the

family of languages. Zaparoan tongues were once widely spoken in the

rain forest Rainforests are characterized by a closed and continuous tree canopy, moisture-dependent vegetation, the presence of epiphytes and lianas and the absence of wildfire. Rainforest can be classified as tropical rainforest or temperate rainforest ...

of north-eastern

, but Zaparoan-speaking people have been decimated by diseases, wars with neighboring native groups, and by quasi-enslavement during the

rubber boom The Amazon rubber boom ( pt, Ciclo da borracha, ; es, Fiebre del caucho, , 1879 to 1912) was an important part of the economic and social history of Brazil and Amazonian regions of neighboring countries, being related to the extraction and comm ...

. Most Zaparoan communities have shifted to

Lamas Quechua Lamas or San Martín Quechua (''Lamista, Llakwash Runashimi'') is a variety of Quechua languages, Quechua spoken in the provinces of Lamas Province, Lamas in the Peruvian region of San Martin Region, San Martin and in some villages on the river H ...

, while others have been incorporated into

Shuar The Shuar are an Indigenous people of Ecuador and Peru. They are members of the Jivaroan peoples, who are Amazonian tribes living at the headwaters of the Marañón River. Name Shuar, in the Shuar language, means "people". The people who speak ...

groups. The few surviving Zaparoan languages are all severely endangered. Among those, Arabela is most closely related to Zaparo (the only one still spoken), Andoa and Conambo.

Current situation

The dominant languages of the area are

Kichwa Kichwa (, , also Spanish ) is a Quechuan language that includes all Quechua varieties of Ecuador and Colombia (''Inga''), as well as extensions into Peru. It has an estimated half million speakers. The most widely spoken dialects are Chimborazo ...

and

, and they are both widely spoken by Arabelas. Kichwa has been the default language for native communities in the area since the rubber boom era, and has spread through trade mixed marriages. It is, however, losing ground to Spanish in the younger generations. The use of Arabela is restricted to a small elderly fraction of the population. The language is official per the

Constitution of Peru The Constitution of Peru is the supreme law of Peru. The current constitution, enacted on 31 December 1993, is Peru's fifth in the 20th century and replaced the 1979 Constitution. The Constitution was drafted by the Democratic Constituent Congre ...

New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christ ...

in Arabela) was completed in 2008. The

Old Testament The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...

was completed in 2009. The language has been used in education by the Peruvian government, which has issued some school material in it. The

Universal Declaration of Human Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the Human rights, rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN Drafting of the Universal De ...

has been translated into Arabela in 1988.

Dialectal divisions

There is no dialectal division among known Arabela speakers. A small group, called ''Pananuyuri'', separated from other Arabelas roughly a century ago. Their fate is unknown but they may have survived, in which case their dialect is likely to have somewhat diverged from the other speakers'.

Phonology

The Arabela phonemic inventory is quite typical for a Zaparoan language. It has five

places of articulation In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is a location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articula ...

and a vowel inventory of five

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...

s common within the family.

Vowels

Consonants

Morphology

The noun

Arabela has no

grammatical gender In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns ...

but for a few words, mostly describing persons, the sex can be specified by adding a suffix: *: 'my son' *: 'my daughter' Arabela has two

grammatical number In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and other languages present number categories of ...

s, singular and plural. The plural is generally added by adding a suffix to the singular, the nature of this suffix varying according to the pluralized word. *: 'house' yields : 'houses' *: 'woman' yields : 'women' *: 'unmarried girl' yields : 'unmarried girls' In a few cases, however, the plural can be formed through suffix substitution, or by using a different root altogether. *: 'man' yields '' *: 'group' yields '' *: 'mother' yields '' A number of other words form their plural by removing a singular specific suffix: *: 'stone' yields 'stone'

Pronouns

Arabela has a complex pronominal system, similar to the one of the other

Zaparoan languages Zaparoan (also Sáparoan, Záparo, Zaparoano, Zaparoana) is an endangered language family of Peru and Ecuador with fewer than 100 speakers. Zaparoan speakers seem to have been very numerous before the arrival of the Europeans. However, their grou ...

and distinguishes between active and passive personal pronouns. Active pronouns act as subjects in independent clauses and as objects in dependent ones.

Personal pronouns

Anaphoric pronouns

The verbal ending is used as an anaphoric. It can also mark the subject of a subordinate sentence when it refers to the object of the main sentence.

Demonstrative pronouns

Arabela has three kinds of

demonstrative pronoun Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...

s: * indicates an object close to the speaker * indicates an object further away from the speaker (—is it what you want) * indicates a contrast between objects or persons (—this is my dog)

Interrogative pronouns

Arabela has a rather restricted of interrogative pronouns, composed of: * : who * : who (plural) * : what * : how, how much * : how * : where * : where from * : who, which

References

Bibliography

* Dicconario Arabela—Castellano, Rolland G. Rich, Instituto Lingüistico de Verano, Perú – 1999 * Rich, Furne. 1963. "Arabela Phonemes and High-Level Phonology," SPIL I, 193-206

External links

* *
Dicconario Arabella—Castellano, Rolland G. Rich, Instituto Lingüistico de Verano, Perú – 1999
{{DEFAULTSORT:Arabela Language Languages of Peru Zaparoan languages Subject–object–verb languages Endangered indigenous languages of the Americas