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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 beingHuilliche.[2]
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.[3]
Glottolog concludes that "There are lexical parallels with Mapuche as well as Qawesqar, ... but the core is clearly unrelated." They characterize Chono as alanguage isolate, though only as it relates to Mapuche and Qawesqar.
Campbell (2012) concludes that a language calledWayteka or Wurk-wur-we by Llaras Samitier (1967), and which also went by the geographical name "Chono", is spurious, with the source material being a list of mixed and perhaps invented vocabulary.[4]
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]
