Chono is a poorly attested extinct language of confusing classification. It is attested primarily from an 18th-century catechism, which is not translated into Spanish.
There are various placenames in
Chiloé Archipelago with Chono etymologies despite the main indigenous language of the archipelago at the
arrival of the Spanish being
Veliche.
Classification
Campbell (2012) concludes that the language called Chono or Wayteka or Wurk-wur-we by Llaras Samitier (1967) is spurious, with the source material being a list of mixed and perhaps invented vocabulary.
Viegas Barros, who postulates a relationship between
Kawesqar and
Yaghan Yaghan, Yagán or Yahgan may refer to:
* Yahgan people, an ethnic group of Argentina and Chile
* Yahgan language
Yahgan or Yagán (also spelled Yaghan, Jagan, Iakan, and also known as Yámana, Háusi Kúta, or Yágankuta), is an extinct language ...
, believes that 45% of the Chono vocabulary and grammatical forms correspond to one of those languages, though it is not close to either.
''
Glottolog
''Glottolog'' is a bibliographic database of the world's lesser-known languages, developed and maintained first at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany (between 2015 and 2020 at the Max Planck Institute for ...
'' concludes that "There are lexical parallels with Mapuche as well as Qawesqar, ... but the core is clearly unrelated." They characterize Chono as a "language isolate", which corresponds to an
unclassified language in other classifications.
Samitier (1967) word list
The following list of Chono (Wayteka) words, as spoken in the
Gulf of Penas, is from Samitier (1967).
[Samitier, Liaras. 1967. El grupo chono o wayteka y los demas pueblos fuegopatagonia. ''Runa'' 10. 1-2:123-94 (Buenos Aires).] It was later found to be spurious by Campbell (2012).
References
External links
*
Chono works at
Wikisource
{{South American languages
Extinct languages of South America
Indigenous languages of South America
Language isolates of South America