Munduruku is a
Tupi language
Old Tupi, Ancient Tupi or Classical Tupi () is a classical Tupian language which was spoken by the indigenous Tupi people of Brazil, mostly those who inhabited coastal regions in South and Southeast Brazil. In the words of Brazilian tupinol ...
spoken by 10,000 people in the
Tapajós River
The Tapajós ( ) is a river in Brazil. It runs through the Amazon Rainforest and is a major tributary of the Amazon River. When combined with the Juruena River, the Tapajós is approximately long. Prior to a drastic increase in illegal gold mi ...
basin in north central
Brazil
Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...
, of which most of the women and children are monolingual.
Gomes (2006) points out that Munduruku is one of the languages of the Tupian family and constitutes, together with Kuruaya, the Munduruku linguistic branch
..The Portuguese language has made significant inroads among the Munduruku. Some loss of the Munduruku language is occurring among those who live in the area of the Madeira River and in the outskirts of the towns next to the Tapajós River; however, the situation is not as bad as it seems, as even here, the language of the majority of is Munduruku, and bilingualism only takes place after Munduruku has already been acquired (around 10 years of age), usually as a result of learning Portuguese at school.
Those who live in the villages of the Tapajós River valley speak only Munduruku, even in the presence of non-indigenous people. There are elementary schools located in almost all villages, and courses promoted by the Brazilian government have turned over education to the Mundurukú, who are starting to take control of their own formal education."
Phonology
Phoneme inventory
Consonants
Vowels
Syllable structure
The syllable in Munduruku is made up of an obligatory vocalic nucleus and one of four phonemic accents (three of
pitch and one of laryngealization). It may also have an
onset or
coda. No
consonant cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fie ...
s are permitted. Thus, the permissible syllables are CV, CVC, V, and VC (with V being the most rare).
Onset
The onset in this language may be any one of the 16 consonant phonemes which contrast as to the manner and
point of articulation: (1) voiceless stops /p, t, k, tʃ, k, ʔ/; (2) Voiced stops /b, d
dʒ/; (3) Fricatives /s, ʃ, h/, (4) nasals /m, n, ŋ/, (5) Sonorants /w, y, r/
Coda
The only segment not allowed in the coda is /tʃ/. Observe that CVj and CVw and not CV.V ones are considered CVC syllables for a variety of reasons; one is that it would require positing a new syllable pattern limited to CVu and CVi with no other vowels occurring in coda position. There is also a phonetic contrast between /i, u/ as vowel nuclei and /y, w/ as codas, the former being distinctly vocalic and the latter consonantal.
Nucleus
The syllabic nucleus is limited to only one vowel.
Accent
Accent is considered a feature of the entire syllable rather than of the nucleus only. One accent occurs with each syllable. Note that the functional load of accent is light—only some 40 lexical pairs with contrastive accents have been found, and few grammatical contrasts are marked by accent alone.
Syntax
Munduruku is an
OV language.
Vocabulary
Numerals
Munduruku lacks words for numbers above 5.
See also
*
Munduruku people
The Munduruku, also known as Mundurucu or Wuy Jugu, are an indigenous people of Brazil living in the Amazon River basin. Some Munduruku communities are part of the Coatá-Laranjal Indigenous Land. They had an estimated population in 2014 of 13,7 ...
References
*
*
External links
*
Mundurukú(
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 ...
)
TuLaR (Tupian Languages Resources)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Munduruku Language
Languages of Brazil
Indigenous languages of South America