Arára is a Cariban language of

Pará Pará is a state of Brazil, located in northern Brazil and traversed by the lower Amazon River. It borders the Brazilian states of Amapá, Maranhão, Tocantins, Mato Grosso, Amazonas and Roraima. To the northwest are the borders of Guyana ...

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 ...

. It is spoken by the Arara and perhaps other related groups. Arára forms part of the ''Kampot dialect cluster'' along with Ikpeng, Apiaká do Tocantins, Parirí, and Yarumá.Carvalho, Fernando O. de (2020)
Tocantins Apiaká, Parirí and Yarumá as Members of the Pekodian Branch (Cariban)
''Revista Brasileira de Línguas Indígenas - RBLI''. Macapá, v. 3, n. 1, p. 85-93, 2020.

Phonology

Consonants

Two of the sixteen consonants, /ʙ̥, h/ occur infrequently. /ʙ̥/ only occurs in expressive words, or before the vowel /u/. /h/ only occurs after a coronal consonant, like /a/ or /u/. There is also a specially rare occurrence of two implosive consonants, and .

Vowels

Area

The language is spoken by a people which includes groups that are still uncontacted. They live mainly in three villages: Cachoeira Seca, Laranjal and Maia. However, the natives of the latter have switched to

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

, 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.Isaac Costa de Souza, 2010
''A Phonological Description of "Pet Talk" in Arara''
, M.A. thesis, University of North Dakota. The table below shows some modified words used when speaking to a

capuchin monkey The capuchin monkeys () are New World monkeys of the subfamily Cebinae. They are readily identified as the " organ grinder" monkey, and have been used in many movies and television shows. The range of capuchin monkeys includes some tropical fores ...

. 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 Howler monkeys (genus ''Alouatta'', monotypic in subfamily Alouattinae) are the most widespread primate genus in the Neotropics and are among the largest of the platyrrhines along with the muriquis (''Brachyteles''), the spider monkeys (''Atele ...

. Specific modifications may be used when talking to

woodpecker Woodpeckers are part of the bird family Picidae, which also includes the piculets, wrynecks, and sapsuckers. Members of this family are found worldwide, except for Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, Madagascar, and the extreme polar regions. ...

tortoise Tortoises () are reptiles of the family Testudinidae of the order Testudines (Latin: ''tortoise''). Like other turtles, tortoises have a shell to protect from predation and other threats. The shell in tortoises is generally hard, and like oth ...

s, and

coati Coatis, also known as coatimundis (), are members of the family Procyonidae in the genera ''Nasua'' and ''Nasuella''. They are diurnal mammals native to South America, Central America, Mexico, and the southwestern United States. The name ...

s, among other animals.

References

External links

* Languages of Brazil Cariban languages {{IndigenousAmerican-lang-stub