Gününa Küne (Puelche) is an extinct language formerly spoken by the Gününa Küne people in the

Pampa The Pampas (; from Quechuan languages, Quechua 'plain'), also known as the Pampas Plain, are fertile South American low grasslands that cover more than and include the Argentina, Argentine Provinces of Argentina, provinces of Buenos Aires Pro ...

s region of

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

. The language is also known as Gennaken (Guenaken), Northern Tehuelche, ''Gününa Yajich'', Ranquelche, and Pampa. It may also have been spoken by the Chechehet.

Classification

Gününa Küne has long been considered a

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 ...

. Based on very limited evidence, Viegas Barros (1992) suggested that Gününa Küne might be closely related to the

Querandí language The Querandí language is an Indigenous language of Argentina believed by some to be a member of the Het language family. It is almost entirely unknown, mainly on the basis of a few phrases and words, as well as on the basis of onomastics. ...

, one of the

Het peoples Het is the term used by Thomas Falkner, an English Jesuit, at the end of the 18th century for various nomadic groups from the and Patagonia, including the so-called and northern Tehuelches, but excluding the Mapuche (speakers of Mapudungun). ...

, and Viegas Barros (2005) said that it is related to the

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 t ...

. Further afield, inclusion in a putative Macro-Jibaro family has been posited.

Documentation

In 1829,

D'Orbigny Alcide Charles Victor Marie Dessalines d'Orbigny (6 September 1802 – 30 June 1857) was a French naturalist who made major contributions in many areas, including zoology (including malacology), palaeontology, geology, archaeology and anthropol ...

toured the area of southern

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...

and the mouth of the Río Negro. There he collected words of the "puelches', " aucas' and " tehuelches' —that is, in günün a iajüch, mapuzungun and teushen, respectively—in the vicinity of

Carmen de Patagones Carmen de Patagones is the southernmost city in the . Geography It is located 937 km southwest from the city of Buenos Aires, on the north bank of the Río Negro ("Black River"), near the Atlantic Ocean, and opposite Viedma, capital of ...

, in a permanent settlement of linguistically heterogeneous groups. The French traveler, intrigued by the indigenous languages of the area, arrived at the tolderías and contacted some interpreters:

"''In a tent of friendly Patagonians I found a woman named Lunareja who spoke enough Spanish as if to serve as an interpreter; belonged to the Puelche nation and was married to a Patagonian, so that I knew both languages equally, which was of the greatest use to me. I also knew Araucanian, but the notions of this language could be better transmitted to me by the Indians.''"

In he includes some comments on which highlights pronunciation features, the use of the morpheme ya- prefixed to the parts of the body, the numbering system or the absence of gender markings on adjectives, as well as a list of words that compares with those of other languages of South America.

Studies of Gününa yajüch

In 1864, Hunziker recorded a vocabulary and a collection of phrases from a language called Genakenn in the Viedma region. In 1865, the explorer Jorge Claraz traveled from south of Buenos Aires to Chubut being guided by individuals who spoke Gününa iajëch, collecting the names of places, words and sentences in his (''Chubut exploration travel diary'') (1865–1866). In 1913, Lehmann Nitsche used the data collected by Hunziker and Claraz to create a comparative vocabulary of Tehuelche languages: (''The Chonan Linguistic Groups of the Magellanic Territories''). In 1925, Harrington gathered words from bilingual Tehuelche speakers which he published in 1946 in (''A Contribution to the Study of the Gününa küne Indian''), claiming that they called their language Gününa yájitch or Pampa. During the 1950s, Casamiquela collected vocabulary, songs and prayers from various elders, outlining a morphosyntactic analysis. In 1960, Ana Gerzenstein made a phonetic and phonological classification in her (''Phonology of the Gününa-këna Language''). In 1991, José Pedro Viegas Barros outlined a morphosyntactic projection in (''Linguistic Clarification of Intercultural and Inter-ethnic Relations in the Pampas-Patagonian Region''), and in 2005 he developed a phonological description in (''Voices in the Wind''). Puelche is a

dead language An extinct language or dead language is a language with no living native speakers. A dormant language is a dead language that still serves as a symbol of ethnic identity to an ethnic group; these languages are often undergoing a process of re ...

. Casamiquela released the first and last name of the last Puelche speaker: José María Cual, who died in 1960 at the age of 90.

Phonology

Vowels

Gününa Küne has 7

vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

s: A short sounding // is realized as [].

Consonants

Gününa Küne has 25 consonants: It is not clear if there is a uvular ejective stop .

Vocabulary

Čestmír Loukotka, Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items for Gennaken. :

Comparative vocabulary

:Below there is a list of comparative vocabulary between Chonan languages; Gününa Küne, Teushen language, Teushen, Selkʼnam, Tehuelche, and

Haush The Haush or people were an Indigenous people who lived on the Mitre Peninsula of the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego. They were related culturally and linguistically to the Selkʼnam (also known as Ona) people who also lived on the Isla Gran ...

, as well as Moseten languages; Chimane and Mosetén.

Bibliography

* *

References

External links

Gününa Küne language dictionary online from IDS
(select simple or advanced browsing)
WALS: ''Puelche''

Gününa Küne
(

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 An ...

) {{Languages of Argentina Languages of Argentina Chonan languages Extinct languages of South America Languages extinct in the 1930s Language isolates of South America