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| Chono | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Chile |
| Region | Chonos Archipelago,Chiloé Archipelago |
| Ethnicity | Chono people |
| Extinct | 1875[citation needed] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | None (mis) |
| Glottolog | chon1248 |
 | |
Chono is a poorly attested extinct language of confusing classification. It is attested primarily from an 18th-century catechism,[1] which is not translated into Spanish. Various placenames inChiloé Archipelago have Chono etymologies, despite the main indigenous language of the archipelago at thearrival of the Spanish beingVeliche.[2]
Campbell (2012) concludes that the language called Chono orWayteka or Wurk-wur-we by Llaras Samitier (1967) is spurious, with the source material being a list of mixed and perhaps invented vocabulary.[3]
Viegas Barros, who postulates a relationship betweenKawesqar andYaghan, believes that 45% of the Chono vocabulary and grammatical forms correspond to one of those languages, though it is not close to either.[4]
Glottolog concludes that "There are lexical parallels with Mapuche as well as Qawesqar, ... but the core is clearly unrelated." They characterize Chono as a "language isolate", which corresponds to anunclassified language in other classifications.[citation needed]
The phonology of Chono can be tentatively reconstructed in part from the data provided by Basauni (1975).[5] Syllables are frequently, but not necessarily, closed. There are few consonant clusters but frequent vowel clusters.[6]
The consonant table shows the IPA representation as given by Adelaar (2004), with symbols that differ in angle brackets.[7]
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | nʲ⟨ny⟩ | ŋ | |||
| Plosive/ | voiceless | p | t | t͡ɕ⟨č⟩ | k | ||
| voiced | b | g | |||||
| Fricative | f | z[a] | s | x | h | ||
| Approximant | w | j | |||||
| Lateral | l | lʲ⟨ly⟩ | |||||
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | u | |
| Mid | e | o | |
| Low | a |
In addition to the fivemonophthongs, Chono appears to have had eightdiphthongs, which Adelaar represents as a vowel and a glide:⟨aw⟩,⟨ew⟩,⟨ow⟩,⟨ay⟩,⟨yu⟩,⟨wa⟩,⟨we⟩, and⟨wi⟩.[8]
