Mehináku (Meinaku) is an
Arawakan language
Arawakan (''Arahuacan, Maipuran Arawakan, "mainstream" Arawakan, Arawakan proper''), also known as Maipurean (also ''Maipuran, Maipureano, Maipúre''), is a language family that developed among ancient indigenous peoples in South America. Branch ...
spoken by the
Mehinaku people in the
Xingu Indigenous Park
The Xingu Indigenous Park (, pronounced ) is an indigenous territory of Brazil, first created in 1961 as a national park in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil. Its official purposes are to protect the environment and the several tribes of Xingu in ...
of
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
.
[Seki, Lucy. 2011]
Alto Xingu: uma área linguística?
In: Franchetto, Bruna (ed.),
Alto Xingu: uma sociedade multilíngue
', p. 57-85. Rio de Janeiro: Museu do Índio/FUNAI. One dialect, Waurá-kumá, is "somewhat
intelligible" with
Waurá due to influence from this language.
[
]
Phonology
Mehináku features five vowels /a e i ɨ u/ which can be either oral or nasal /ã ẽ ĩ ɨ̃ ũ/.
The language has thirteen consonants.
References
Arawakan languages
Languages of Xingu Indigenous Park
{{Arawakan-lang-stub