Kashinawa language

Not to be confused with Tarauacá Kashinawa language.

Kashinawa (also spelled Kaxinawá, Kashinawa, Kaxynawa, Caxinawa, Caxinawá, and Cashinahua), or Hantxa Kuin (Hãtxa Kuĩ), is an Indigenous American language of western South America which belongs to the Panoan language family. It is spoken by about 1,600 Kaxinawá in Peru, along the Curanja and the Purus Rivers, and in Brazil by 400 Kaxinawá in the state of Acre.

Kashinawa
Kashinawa of the Ibuaçu River, Hantxa Kuin
Hãtxa Kuĩ, Hantxa Kuin, Huni Kui
Native to	Peru, Brazil
Ethnicity	Kaxinawá people
Native speakers	1,200 (2003–2007)[1]
Language family	Panoan Mainline Panoan Nawa Headwaters Kashinawa
Language codes
ISO 639-3	cbs
Glottolog	cash1254
ELP	Cashinahua
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About five to ten percent of speakers have some Spanish language proficiency,^[2] while forty percent are literate and twenty to thirty percent are literate in Spanish as a second language.

Dialects are Brazilian Kashinawa, Peruvian Kashinawa, and the extinct Juruá Kapanawa (Capanahua of the Juruá River) and Paranawa.

Phonology

Vowels

		Front	Central	Back
Close	oral	i ⟨i⟩	ɨ ⟨e⟩	u~ʊ~o ⟨u⟩
	nasal	ĩ ⟨ĩ⟩	ɨ̃ ⟨ẽ⟩	ũ~õ ⟨ũ⟩
Open	oral	a ⟨a⟩
	nasal	ã ⟨ã⟩

• In final syllables, /a, ã/ are heard as [ə, ə̃].
• /ɨ, ɨ̃/ can also be heard as mid-back [ɤ, ɤ̃].
• Although nasalization is generally marked by placing a tilde over the vowel, some authors choose to mark it with a following ⟨n⟩ to denote that the previous vowel or contiguous vowels are nasalised.

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m ⟨m⟩	n ⟨n⟩
Plosive	voiceless	p ⟨p⟩	t ⟨t⟩			k ⟨k⟩	ʔ ⟨’⟩
	voiced	b ⟨b⟩	d ⟨d⟩
Fricative			s ⟨s⟩	ʂ ⟨x/shr⟩	ʃ ⟨x/sh⟩		h ⟨j/h⟩
Affricate			t͡s ⟨ts⟩		t͡ʃ ⟨ch⟩
Approximant		w~β ⟨v/w⟩			j ⟨y⟩

• The stop consonant d /d/ may be pronounced as an alveolar flap [ɾ] when between two vowels, like the North American English pronunciation of ⟨dd⟩ in the word ladder.

Dictionary

A dictionary has been compiled and published since 1980.^[3]

Orthography

The Roman alphabet is used. There is an interrogative punctuation mark different from the question mark.

Morphology

Articles and adjectives are placed after nouns. There are seven prefixes and five suffixes.