Wayãpi or Wayampi (Waiãpi, Guayapi, Oiampí) is a Tupi–Guarani language spoken by the Wayãpi people. It is spoken in

French Guiana French Guiana ( or ; french: link=no, Guyane ; gcr, label= French Guianese Creole, Lagwiyann ) is an overseas department/region and single territorial collectivity of France on the northern Atlantic coast of South America in the Guianas ...

and

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 ...

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

In closed syllables, /e, o/ are heard as

Orthography

Wayãpi is spelt phonetically based on the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...

, and not according the

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

orthography. The spelling uses the letter ɨ for the

close central unrounded vowel The close central unrounded vowel, or high central unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in some languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , namely the lower-case letter ''i'' with a h ...

between i and u. E is always pronounced é, vowels with a tilde are always nasal (ã, ẽ, ĩ, õ, ũ), ö is like the German O umlaut, and b is pronounced mb. All letters are pronounced.

References

Bibliography

* *

External links

Wayampi
(

Intercontinental Dictionary Series The Intercontinental Dictionary Series (commonly abbreviated as IDS) is a large database of topical vocabulary lists in various world languages. The general editor of the database is Bernard Comrie of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary A ...

) Tupi–Guarani languages Languages of French Guiana Languages of Brazil {{tupian-lang-stub