Kanakanavu (also spelled Kanakanabu) is a Southern

Tsouic language The Tsouic languages (also known as the Central Formosan languages) are three Formosan languages, Tsou language, Tsou proper and the Southern languages Kanakanavu language, Kanakanavu and Saaroa language, Saaroa. The Southern Tsouic languages of ...

spoken by the

Kanakanavu people The Kanakanavu () are an indigenous people of central southern Taiwan. They live in the two villages of Manga and Takanua in Namasia District, Kaohsiung City, Taiwan. History The native Kanakanavu speakers were Taiwanese aboriginals living o ...

, an indigenous people of Taiwan (see Taiwanese aborigines). It is a Formosan language of the

Austronesian Austronesian may refer to: *The Austronesian languages *The historical Austronesian peoples The Austronesian peoples, sometimes referred to as Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a large group of peoples in Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, M ...

family. The Kanakanavu live in the two villages of Manga and Takanua in Namasia District (formerly Sanmin Township),

Kaohsiung Kaohsiung City (Mandarin Chinese: ; Wade–Giles: ''Kao¹-hsiung²;'' Pinyin: ''Gāoxióng'') is a special municipality located in southern Taiwan. It ranges from the coastal urban center to the rural Yushan Range with an area of . Kaohsi ...

. The language is moribund.

History

The native Kanakanavu speakers were

Taiwanese aboriginals Taiwanese indigenous peoples (formerly Taiwanese aborigines), also known as Formosan people, Austronesian Taiwanese, Yuanzhumin or Gaoshan people, are the Indigenous peoples of Oceania, indigenous peoples of Taiwan, with the nationally recogni ...

living on the islands. Following the Dutch Colonial Period in the 17th century,

Han-Chinese The Han Chinese () or Han people (), are an East Asian ethnic group native to China. They constitute the world's largest ethnic group, making up about 18% of the global population and consisting of various subgroups speaking distinctive var ...

immigration began to dominate the islands population. The village of Takanua is a village assembled by Japanese rulers to relocate various aboriginal groups in order to establish easier dominion over these groups.

Phonology

There are 14 different consonant phonemes, containing only voiceless plosives within Kanakanavu. Adequate descriptions of liquid consonants become a challenge within Kanakanavu. It also contains 6 vowels plus

diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...

s and triphthongs. Vowel length is often not clear if distinctive or not, as well as speakers pronouncing vowel phonemes with variance. As most

and Formosan languages, Kanakanavu has a CV syllable structure (where C = consonant, V = vowel). Very few, even simple words, contain less than three to four syllables.

Consonants

Vowels

Orthography

Kanakanavu is usually written with the Latin script. The following are often used to represent sounds in the language: A, C, E, I, K, L, M, N, Ng, O, P, R, S, T, U, Ʉ, V, ' /ʔ. C represents the phoneme /c/. L represents the phonemes /ɗ/ and /ɽ/. P represents both /ɓ/ and /p/. /ɫ/ is spelled as hl.

References

External links

www.kanakanavu.info
– language documentation project website

– Kanakanavu search page at the "Aboriginal language online dictionary" website of the Indigenous Languages Research and Development Foundation
Endangered Languages

Kanakanavu teaching and leaning materials published by the Council of Indigenous Peoples of Taiwan

Kanakanavu translation of President Tsai Ing-wen's 2016 apology to indigenous people
– published on the website of the presidential office {{DEFAULTSORT:Kanakanavu Language Formosan languages Languages of Taiwan Endangered Austronesian languages