Pemon language

Not to be confused with Pémono language.

The Pemon language (or Pemón in Spanish) is an Indigenous language of the Cariban family spoken by some 30,000 Pemon people, in Venezuela's Southeast, particularly in the Canaima National Park, in the Roraima State of Brazil and in Guyana.

Pemon
Arecuna
Ingarikó, Kapon
Native to	Venezuela, Brazil, Guyana
Ethnicity	Pemon
Native speakers	(6,000 cited 1990–2006)[1]
Language family	Cariban Venezuelan Carib Pemóng–Panare Pemóng Pemon
Dialects	Camaracoto
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	aoc
Glottolog	pemo1248
ELP	Pemón

Lino Figueroa, a Pemon, author of Makunaima, demonstrating the Pemon Language.

It covers several dialects, including Arecuna (or Arekuna), Camaracota, Camaracoto, Ingariko (or Ingarikó), Taulipang, and Taurepan (Camaracoto may be a distinct language). The Pemon language may also be known and designated informally by one of the two dialects Arecuna (or Arekuna) or Ingariko (or Ingarikó), or incorrectly under the name Kapon which normally designates another closely related small group of languages.

Pemon is one of several other closely related Venezuelan Cariban languages which also include the Macushi and Kapon (or Kapong, also sometimes used by natives to name the Pemon language itself, even if Kapon strictly covers only the two Akawaio and Patamona languages). These four languages (including Macushi) form the group of Pemongan (or Pemóng) languages. The broad Kapon (or Kapong) and selective Ingariko (or Ingarikó) terms are also used locally as a common ethnonym grouping Pemón, Akawaio, and Patamono peoples (and sometimes as well the Macushi people), and may be used as well to refer to the group of the four Pemongan (or Pemóng) languages that they speak.

Typology

The Pemon language's syntax type is SOV with alternation to OVS.^[2]

Writing

Pemon was an oral language until the 20th century. Then efforts were made to produce dictionaries and grammars, primarily by Catholic missionaries, specially Armellada and Gutiérrez Salazar. The Latin alphabet has been used, adding diacritic signs to represent some phonemes not existing in Spanish.^[3]

Phonology

Vowels

Arekuna Pemon has the following vowels:

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ	u
Open-mid	e	ɤ[4]	o
Open		a

There are still texts only using Spanish characters, without distinguishing between pairs such as /o/ and /ɤ/. Diphthong sounds are [aɪ, au, ɔɪ, eɪ].

Consonants

	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Stop	p	t			k
Fricative			s
Nasal	m	n
Tap/Flap			ɾ
Approximant				j	w

Allophones of /s n k j/ are [tʃ ŋ ʔ ʎ].^[5]

Grammar

Pronouns in Pemon are:

Pemon	English
yuré	I, me
amäre	you (singular)
muere, mesere	he, she
urekon	we
ina	we (exclusive)
amärenokon	you (plural)
ichamonan	they, them