Fuegian Languages
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Fuegian Languages
The Fuegian languages are the indigenous languages historically spoken in Tierra del Fuego by Native Americans. Adelaar lists the Fuegian languages as the Kawésqar language, the Selkʼnam language and the Yaghan language in addition to Chono, Gününa Yajich (also known as Puelche), and the Tehuelche language (Adelaar and Mysken 552-553). Based on current data, the languages are not considered part of the same language family or linguistic area. Though possible genetic relationships have been proposed to categorize them, "more complete descriptions and more detailed comparative studies are needed" before any claim can be made about a genetic relationship (Adelaar and Mysken 578). The current consensus is that Kawésqar, Yaghan, and Chono are language isolates and Selkʼnam (also referred to as Ona) is one of the Chon languages, along with Tehuelche and Gününa Yajich (Campbell and Grondona 61). Yaghan Yaghan (also referred to as Yahgan or Yámana, among other names) is a lan ...
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Tierra Del Fuego
Tierra del Fuego (, ; Spanish for "Land of Fire", rarely also Fireland in English) is an archipelago off the southernmost tip of the South America, South American mainland, across the Strait of Magellan. The archipelago consists of the main island, Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, with an area of , along with numerous smaller islands, including Cape Horn and Diego Ramírez Islands. The western part of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago, about two-thirds including its many islands, is part of Chile, and the eastern part is part of Argentina. The southernmost extent of the archipelago, Cape Horn, lies just north of latitude 56th parallel south, 56°S. The earliest-known human settlement in Tierra del Fuego dates to approximately 8,000 BC. Europeans first explored the islands during Ferdinand Magellan's expedition of 1520. ''Tierra del Fuego'' ("Land of Fire") and similar names stem from sightings of the many fires that the inhabitants built along the coastline and possibly even in ...
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Fuegians
Fuegians are the indigenous inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, at the southern tip of South America. The name has been credited to Captain James Weddell, who supposedly created the term in 1822. The indigenous Fuegians belonged to several different ethnic groups including the: * Selkʼnam, also known as Ona or Onawo * Haush, also known as Manekʼenk * Yahgan, also known as Yagán, Yaghan, Yámana, Yamana, or Tequenica * Kawésqar, also known as Alacalufe, Kaweskar, Alacaluf, or Halakwulup All of these ethnic groups except the Selkʼnam lived exclusively in coastal areas and have their own languages. The Yahgan and the Kawésqar traveled by birchbark canoes around the islands of the archipelago, while the coast dwelling Haush did not. The Selkʼnam lived in the interior of Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego and were exclusively terrestrial hunter gatherers who hunted terrestrial game such as guanacos, foxes, tuco-tucos and upland nesting birds as well as littoral fish and shellf ...
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Kawésqar Language
Kawésqar (Qawasqar), also known as Alacaluf, is a critically endangered Alacalufan language spoken in southern Chile by the Kawésqar people. Originally part of a small family, only the northern language remains. In 2009, only a handful of elderly people spoke the language, most of whom lived on Wellington Island off the southwest coast of Chile. Phonology Vowels Consonants Alphabet The alphabet in use has the following letters: a, æ, c, cꞌ, e, f, h, i, j, k, kꞌ, l, m, n, o, p, pꞌ, q, r, rr, s, t, tꞌ, u, w, x. However, differences are reported between dialects, and some sounds are not represented. Morphology and syntax Kawésqar has a complex system of grammatical tense In grammar, tense is a grammatical category, category that expresses time reference. Tenses are usually manifested by the use of specific forms of verbs, particularly in their grammatical conjugation, conjugation patterns. The main tenses found ..., which includes a basic morphological con ...
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Selkʼnam Language
Selkʼnam, also known by the exonym Ona, is a language formerly spoken by the Selkʼnam people in Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego in southernmost South America. One of the Chonan languages of Patagonia, Selkʼnam is now extinct, due to the late 19th-century Selkʼnam genocide by Spanish Argentines, European immigrants, high fatalities due to disease, and disruption of traditional society. One source states that the last fluent native speakers died in the 1980s. Radboud University Nijmegen, Radboud University linguist Luis Miguel Rojas-Berscia worked with two individuals to write a reference grammar of the language, namely, Herminia Vera-Ona (died 2014), a semi-speaker who spoke Ona until the age of 8, and , a young man who started learning the language after learning he was part-Selkʼnam at the age of 8. At the time the grammar was written, the latter was believed to be the only living individual fluent in Selkʼnam, albeit not natively. Classification Within the Southern Chon ...
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Yaghan Language
Yahgan or Yagán (also spelled Yaghan, Jagan, Iakan, and also known as Yámana, Háusi Kúta, or Yágankuta) is an extinct language that is one of the indigenous languages of Tierra del Fuego, spoken by the Yahgan people. It is regarded as a language isolate, although some linguists have attempted to relate it to Kawésqar and Chono. Yahgan was also spoken briefly on Keppel Island in the Falkland Islands at a missionary settlement. In 2017, Chile's National Corporation of Indigenous Development convened a workshop to plan an educational curriculum in the Yahgan language, and in June 2019 it planned to inaugurate a language nest in the community of Bahía Mejillones, near Puerto Williams. The government also funded the publication of a "concise and illustrated dictionary" of the Yahgan language. Following the death of Cristina Calderón (1928–2022) of Villa Ukika on Navarino Island, Chile, no native speakers of Yahgan remain. . 'to take, convey' > , and so on. Present ...
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Puelche Language
Puelche or Puelches may refer to: *Puelche people The Gününa küna (Guennakin), or sometimes Puelche (Mapudungun: ''pwelche'', "people of the east") were Indigenous peoples living east of the Andes Mountains in Chile and Southwest Argentina. They were annihilated by Plague (disease), plagues ... or Gününa Küne people, an Indigenous people of Argentina and Chile * Puelche language or Gününa Küne language, spoken by the Gününa Küne or Puelche people * Puelche (wind), a dry wind of Chile * Puelches, La Pampa, a village in Argentina {{disambig ...
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Tehuelche Language
Tehuelche (''Aoniken, Inaquen, Gunua-Kena, Gununa-Kena'') is one of the Chonan languages of Patagonia. Its speakers, the Tehuelche people, were nomadic hunters who occupied territory in present-day Chile, north of Tierra del Fuego and south of the Mapuche people. It is also known as ''Aonekkenk'' or ''Aonekko ʼaʼien'' (). The decline of the language started with the Mapuche invasion in the north, that was then followed by the occupation of Patagonia by the Argentine and Chilean states and state-facilitated genocide. Tehuelche was considerably influenced by other languages and cultures, in particular Mapudungun (the language of the Mapuche). This allowed the transference of morpho-syntactic elements into Tehuelche. During the 19th and 20th centuries, Spanish language, Spanish became the dominant language as Argentina and Chile gained independence, and Spanish-speaking settlers took possession of Patagonia. Because of these factors the language began dying out. In 1983/84 there we ...
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Linguistic Area
A sprachbund (, from , 'language federation'), also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence, or diffusion area, is a group of languages that share areal features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact. The languages may be genetically unrelated, or only distantly related, but the sprachbund characteristics might give a false appearance of relatedness. A grouping of languages that share features can only be defined as a sprachbund if the features are shared for some reason other than the genetic history of the languages. Without knowledge of the history of a regional group of similar languages, it may be difficult to determine whether sharing indicates a language family or a sprachbund. History In a 1904 paper, Jan Baudouin de Courtenay emphasised the need to distinguish between language similarities arising from a genetic relationship (''rodstvo'') and those arising from convergence due to language contact (''srodstvo''). Nikolai Trubetzk ...
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Language Isolate
A language isolate is a language that has no demonstrable genetic relationship with any other languages. Basque in Europe, Ainu and Burushaski in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, Haida and Zuni in North America, Kanoê in South America, and Tiwi in Oceania are all examples of such languages. The exact number of language isolates is yet unknown due to insufficient data on several languages. One explanation for the existence of language isolates is that they might be the last remaining member of a larger language family. Such languages might have had relatives in the past that have since disappeared without being documented, leaving them an orphaned language. One example is the Ket language spoken in central Siberia, which belongs to the wider Yeniseian language family; had it been discovered in recent times independently from its now extinct relatives, such as Yugh and Kott, it would have been classified as an isolate. Another explanation for language isolates is that they aro ...
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Chon Languages
The Chonan languages are a family of indigenous American languages which were spoken in Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia. Two Chon languages are well attested: Selkʼnam (or Ona), spoken by the people of the same name who occupied territory in the northeast of Tierra del Fuego; and Tehuelche spoken by the people of the same name who occupied territory north of Tierra del Fuego. The name of the family is from ''čonn'', the Selkʼnam word for 'man'. Previous studies The Selkʼnam people were widely studied by anthropologists such as Martin Gusinde and Anne Chapman throughout the 20th century. However, their language went extinct in the 1970s. Classification The Haush spoke a language similar to Ona. Some scholars also add to the family the Teushen language — once spoken by the Teushen, located between the Tehuelche and Puelche —though it is poorly attested. Viegas Barros (2005) attempts to demonstrate that Gününa Küne to the north is related to the Chon languages an ...
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Cristina Calderón
Cristina Calderón Harban (24 May 1928 – 16 February 2022) was a Chilean ethnographer, craftswoman, writer and cultural activist who was the last living full-blooded Yahgan person after the death of her 84-year-old sister Úrsula in 2005. By 2004, Calderón (often referred to as simply "''Abuela''", Spanish for "grandmother") and her sister-in-law Emelinda Acuña were the only two remaining native speakers of the Yahgan language, an indigenous language in Tierra del Fuego. Early life Calderón was born in Robalo, Puerto Williams, Navarino Island, on 24 May 1928 to Juan Calderón (''Akačexaninčis'') and Carmen Harban (''Lanixweliskipa''). Her father was one of the informants of missionary and anthropologist Martin Gusinde. She was orphaned when she was four and was taken in by her grandfather and grandmother Williams Harban (''Halnpenš'') and Julia (''Karpakolikipa''), who taught her about Yahgan culture. Her life with her grandparents was one of poverty, and Calderó ...
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Spanish Language
Spanish () or Castilian () is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. Today, it is a world language, global language with 483 million native speakers, mainly in the Americas and Spain, and about 558 million speakers total, including second-language speakers. Spanish is the official language of List of countries where Spanish is an official language, 20 countries, as well as one of the Official languages of the United Nations, six official languages of the United Nations. Spanish is the world's list of languages by number of native speakers, second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese; the world's list of languages by total number of speakers, fourth-most spoken language overall after English language, English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindustani language, Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu); and the world's most widely spoken Romance language ...
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