Kawésqar language

Kawésqar, qawasqar, alacalufe or alacaluf is an isolated language or a group of related languages, Spoken by the Kawésqar or Alacalufes, an indigenous people of southern Chile and Argentina. It is a language close to extinction, spoken by only a few dozen people in Puerto Edén. It has a standardized spelling and there are studies of its grammar, as well as a dictionary under construction. Some authors distinguish two variants of Kawésqar: the aksaná or northern variant and the hekaine or southern variant.

Denominations

The names kawésqar and qawasqar are representations of the way in which their last speakers name themselves and the language; according to the linguist Óscar Aguilera it is a compound word that means "rational being of skin and bone", in the same sense as the Spanish expression "person of flesh and bone". The same author indicates that the term alacalufe or alacaluf is of uncertain etymology and is recorded for the first time in the writings of the English captain Robert Fitz Roy who called alikhoolip an indigenous group that inhabited the vicinity of the Strait of Magellan. One hypothesis is that it comes from a deformation of the Spanish word "regalar" that they would have used when boarding the boats and another is that it comes from halakwúlup which would mean mussel eaters and would have been a derogatory name given to them by the Yagans^{[citation required]}.

History and distribution

In 1698 the French adventurer Jean de la Guilbaudière compiled a vocabulary that constitutes the first testimony on this language. Since then, more than fifteen vocabularies have been compiled, on various dates and in various locations in western Patagonia (the area between the Gulf of Penas and the south of the Strait of Magellan, in Chile). These vocabularies are limited to a few hundred isolated words and a few short phrases. Since the 17th century, the Jesuit missionaries of Chiloé organized expeditions to the area to attract the canoeing peoples to Chiloé in order to evangelize and "civilize" them. Usually the missionaries used indigenous people already settled in their missions to attract others, because they did not speak their languages. However, there is evidence that in the 1760s, before the expulsion of the Jesuits, a grammar of the language of the so-called Cálenes and Taijatafes, considered Kawésqar, was being written at the Cailín mission, but the notes were lost when the missionary who was in charge of them drowned on an expedition to the Patagonian channels.

Last speakers

In the 1980s, there were forty-seven speakers of this language left, grouped in the small bay of Puerto Edén, on the eastern coast of Wellington Island. They are known as alacalufes, but they never call themselves by this name. They call themselves Kawésqar, and that is also the name of their language that was spoken from the Gulf of Penas, or perhaps further north, to the south of the Strait of Magellan.

They have been victims of a transculturation that has been plunging them into poverty and dependence on state assistance. Some continue to practice maritime nomadism and carry out long hunts for sea lions, but the installation in 1968 of some prefabricated houses in Puerto Edén has been disastrous for them. This is due to the poor location of these houses that have been assigned to them, and to the fact that no measure has been taken to adapt them to the new life that they must lead in the vicinity of the colonization of Puerto Edén (about three hundred inhabitants from the island de Chiloé), whose competition has been adverse to them.

In Puerto Edén, a small police station has also been installed, a first aid station, without personnel, and a school with a single teacher, governed by the same program as the other schools in Chile. This means that teaching is taught only in Spanish, which drastically contributes to the total extinction of the language. The Kawésqar adults number about twenty, and only two know how to read; On the other hand, the children who attend school have proven to be good students, although without opening up any new perspective for them. Nor is there one for the totality of this people whose rapid disappearance is thus imminent.

Dialects

The Kawésqar language had two or more varieties, which for Hammerly Dupuy would be two separate languages, the "aksánas" in the north and the "alakaluf" In the south. Most studies mention the presence of dialects and the authors differ as to the degree of divergence between them. The differences that are observed show a dialectization that is not always precise, although there are reasons that could partially explain them:

• Variations~ transcription errors dependent on the origin, studies and talent of the collector.
• The impossibility of identifying in some cases the linguistic community to which the informant belonged.
• The normal interfering between languages that occurs in the territorial boundary of two or more ethnic groups, as they are the most frequent contact.
• The nomadism of peoples.
• The natural evolution of the language.
• Cases of actual or apparent synonym.
• An essential characterization of this language which is the phenomenon of fonemas fluctuation, i.e. the free alternation of two or more fonemas in the same monema.

Clairis and other authors consider that the languages calen (calenches), caucahué and taijataf, identified by the Jesuit missionaries in the XVII century among the Chonos, are nothing more than northern dialects of Kawésqar. According to Aguilera and de Clairis, among the Kawésqar of Puerto Edén there are some people from further south, called tawóksers, whose language presents differences.

José Pedro Viegas Barros compared vocabulary lists from different times and places and concluded that there were three varieties: one from the north, the kawésqar of Puerto Edén; another in the center, in the Strait of Magellan, typical of the tawóksers; and another from the south, from the Brecknock Peninsula area. According to the results of this study, the divergence between the northern and central varieties would be 10 centuries and between the central and southern varieties, 17 centuries. However, the author warns of the possible distortion in the results due to the incompleteness of the documentation, the heterogeneity of times and places, and the process of language loss.

Classification

The relationship of the Kawésqar language or languages with other languages has not been satisfactorily proven, so it is classified as a language isolate or, according to others, as an isolated family made up of three languages; according to this last approach, the Kawésqar spoken by the inhabitants of Puerto Edén would be the northernmost of them. SIL International considered that the "kawésqar" was a member of the family of "lenguas alacalufes" along with the extinct "kakauhua" (the Caucahué language), but since there is no certainty of the language of the Caucahués, that language was later removed from Ethnologue, the catalog of languages of SIL International.

Mary Key (1978) and the following years, published studies in which she related the Kawésqar with the Mapudungun and the Yaghan. Viegas Barros (1994) considers the evidence of kinship between Kawésqar and Yaghan as promising, but rejects the kinship with the Chon or Mapuche languages.

In 1987, the American linguist Joseph Greenberg proposed a classification system for American languages in which the Amerindian family included the vast majority of the continent's languages, until then grouped into multiple independent families. According to that classification, Kawésqar would be within the southern group of Andean languages, together with "araucano" (Mapudungun), Gennaken, Patagon, and Yaghan. However, the comparison method used by Greenberg is controversial, and many linguists do not accept the existence of an Amerindian family or do not consider that the available information supports it.

In his research on the languages of Patagonia, Viegas Barros considers it plausible that there is some relationship between Kawésqar and Yagán, the language of its neighbors to the south, while he dismisses the same thing happening with the Chon languages, also geographically close, which were spoken by Tehuelches, Selknam and Haush.

Linguistic description

Phonology and phonetics

There is no agreement about the quality or the quantity of phonemes in the language between the two most complete phonological studies that have been carried out up to the year 2006. In the first of them, Christos Clairis affirms that there are 23 phonemes, 3 vowels, 2 semivowels and 18 consonants.

For their part, the authors of a Grammar of the Kawésqar Language and the Official Alphabet, Oscar Aguilera (Chilean anthropologist) and José Tonko Paterito (teacher and native speaker), distinguish 26 phonemes: 6 vowels, 2 semivowels and 18 consonants.

One of the most noticeable differences between both proposals is the existence in the Official Alphabet of /k/, while Clairis considered it just an allophone of /q/. Therefore, in one case the name of the language is written kawésqar and in the other, qawasqar.

The vowel inventory is given by:

Fonemas according to his description in the Official Alphabet of the Kawésqar Language (1999)

• /a/ is an unrounded central open vowel that in the vicinity of uvullular consonants has as an alophone to [›], an open vowel not rounded later. The main alophone [a] sounds like the "a" of padre in Spanish. The secondary alophone [Health] sounds like the "o" of hort in American English. Examples: at (house) ktojef (both).
• /æ/ is a previously unrounded semi-open vowel, like the "a" fat in English or the "ä" Kä♪ in German. Clairis considers it a /a/. Examples: ktæl (name).
• /i/ and /u/ are pronounced similarly to the vowels "i" and "u" of Castilian. Clairis considers them allophones of /e/ and /o/ respectively. Examples: kilIta (gallet) lul (bar).
• /e/ and /o/ are like the vowels "e" and "o" of Castilian.

The inventory of consonants is given by:

Fonemas according to his description in the Official Alphabet of the Kawésqar Language (1999)

• According to Aguilera, there are a series of deaf occlusive consonants /p/, /t/, /k/ and /q/, in which the first three have simple alophones ([p], [t], [k]) and aspirated ([p]^h], [t^h], [k^h]. Eject forms /p/, /t/ and /k/ are separate seals. Clairis, on the other hand, does not recognize phenymic value to [k] and considers it a completely interchangeable /q/ variant. This author postulates the existence of three series of occlusive seals: one of simple secondary joints (/t/, /p/, and /q/), another aspirated ((/t)^h/p^h/, and /q^h(/)) and another eye-catcher (/p/, /t/ and /q/). Chilean linguist Adalberto Salas questions Clairis' conclusions regarding the absence of fonema /k/. The consonant /q/ is a deaf uvular oclusive, which can also be found in the quechua; it resembles a "k" pronounced with the back of the raised tongue until making contact with the ovula.

• The African alveopalatal sorda simple /t./ and the eyectiva /t./ are recognized by both studies. These two consonants do not have an equivalent in Spanish, being the closest the sound of "ch" /tě/ is standard Spanish (a sorda postalveolar africada).
• The sorda /f/ lipid is equal to the "f" of Spanish. The /s/ is a sorda alveolar fricative made as the "s" of most of the Spanish dialects in America and the consonant /x/ (a fricativa watch sorda) sounds like the "j" of the standard Spanish, while /h/ (not recognized by Clairis) is a sorda glotal fricativa like the usual "j" in the Caribbean Spanish or the "h".

Alphabet

The alphabet in use today, called the Official Alphabet of the Kawésqar Language, was established in 1999. Those responsible were Óscar Aguilera and José Tonko Paterito. Contains 26 letters: 6 vowels (a æ e i o u), 2 semivowels (j w) and 18 consonants (č c' f h k k' l m n p p' q r rr s t t'x). The apostrophe above p, t, and k indicates that they are ejectives rather than single stops. Long vowels have a macron above them.

Grammar

It is an exclusively suffixing agglutinative language, like many other American languages. In the verb conjugation, tense, aspect, number and beneficiary are marked.

Possession is indicated by a genitive suffix added to the noun, and there are particles to indicate the topic of a sentence.