Cholón language

Cholón (Spanish: lengua cholona), natively known as Seeptsá and Tsinganes, is a language of Peru. It was spoken near Uchiza,^[1][2] from Tingo María to Valle in the Huallaga River valley of Huanuco and San Martín regions.^[3]

Cholón
Seeptsá
Native to	Peru
Region	Huallaga River valley
Ethnicity	Cholones
Extinct	1990s >2 rememberers (2021)
Language family	Hibito–Cholon ? Cholón
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	cht
Glottolog	chol1284
Cholón
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The language was previously thought to be extinct but a native speaker was discovered in 2021, in the city of Juanjuí. Martha Pérez Valderrama is believed to be the last remaining speaker of Cholón.^[4] However, her cousin Clemente also speaks Cholón, and she reports that there are more speakers in the area. Despite the last fully fluent speakers dying in the 1990s, the current speakers can produce brief texts, not being limited to basic words and phrases.^[5]

Phonology

Due to the amateur Spanish pronunciation spellings used to transcribe Cholon, its sound inventory is uncertain. The following is an attempt at interpreting them.^[6] Orthographical equivalents are in brackets.^[5]

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m	n	ɲ ⟨ñ⟩	ŋ ⟨ng⟩
Plosive	p	t		k	ʔ ⟨’⟩
Affricate		ts	tʃ ⟨ch⟩
Fricative		s	ʃ ⟨sh⟩	h
Lateral		l	ʎ ⟨ll⟩
Approximant	w		j ⟨y⟩

The vowels appear to be similar to Spanish [a e~ɪ i o~ʊ u].

Grammar

Cholon distinguishes masculine and feminine grammatical gender in the second person. That is, one uses different forms for "you" depending on whether one is speaking to a man or a woman:

katsok	'house'
aktsok	'my house'
miktsok	'your house' (speaking to a man)
piktsok	'your house' (speaking to a woman)
intʃamma	'what did you say?' (speaking to a man)
intʃampa	'what did you say?' (speaking to a woman)