| Selkʼnam | |
|---|---|
| Ona | |
| Selkʼnamčan | |
| Native to | Argentina,Chile |
| Region | Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego. |
| Ethnicity | Selkʼnam |
| Extinct | May 28, 1974, with the death ofÁngela Loij[1][2] 1 fluent L2 speaker (2014)[3] |
| Revival | currently being revitalised by the modern community |
Moseten–Chonan ?
| |
| Latin script | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | ona |
| Glottolog | onaa1245 |
| ELP | Ona |
 Ona is classified as Extinct by theUNESCOAtlas of the World's Languages in Danger. | |
Selkʼnam, also known by theexonymOna, is a language formerly spoken by theSelkʼnam people inIsla Grande de Tierra del Fuego in southernmostSouth America.
One of theChonan languages ofPatagonia, Selkʼnam is now extinct, due to the late 19th-centurySelkʼnam genocide byEuropean immigrants, high fatalities due to disease, and disruption of traditional society. One source states that the last fluent native speakers died in the 1980s.[4]Radboud Universitylinguist Luis Miguel Rojas-Berscia worked with two individuals to write a reference grammar of the language, namely, Herminia Vera-Ona (died 2014), asemi-speaker who spoke Ona until the age of 8, andJoubert "Keyuk" Yanten [es], a young man who started learning the language after learning he was part-Selkʼnam at the age of 8.[3] At the time the grammar was written, the latter was believed to be the only living individual fluent in Selkʼnam, albeit not natively.
Within the Southern Chon language family, Selkʼnam is closest toHaush, another language spoken on the island of Tierra del Fuego.
There is speculation that Chon together with theMoseten languages, a small group of languages in Bolivia, form part of aMoseten-Chonan language family.
TheSelkʼnam people, also known as the Ona, are anIndigenous people who inhabited the northeastern part of the archipelago ofTierra del Fuego for thousands of years before Europeans arrived. They were nomads known as "foot-people," as they did their hunting on land, rather than being seafarers.
The last full-blooded Selkʼnam,Ángela Loij, died in 1974.[5] They were one of the last aboriginal groups inSouth America to be reached by Europeans. Their language, believed to be part of theChonan family, is considered extinct as the last native speakers died in the 1980s.[4] Currently, Selkʼnam communities are revitalizing the language. A man of mixed Selkʼnam andMapuche ancestry, Joubert Yanten Gomez (Indigenous name: Keyuk) has successfully taught himself the language.[6]
Based on available data, Selkʼnam seems to have had 3 vowels and 23 consonants.[3]
Selkʼnam's three vowels were/a,ɪ,ʊ/.
There was also a simple tone system, which Najlis (1973) analyzed as high and low tone, and Martini (1982) analyzed aspitch accent.
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Post- alveolar | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| dental | plain | |||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ||||||
| Plosive/ Affricate | plain | p | t | t͡ʃ | k | q | ʔ | |
| glottalized | pˀ | tˀ | t͡ʃˀ | kˀ | qˀ | |||
| Fricative | s̪ | s | ʂ | x | h | |||
| Liquid | rhotic | ɾ | ||||||
| lateral | l | |||||||
| Semivowel | w | j | ||||||
The Ona language is anobject–verb–subject language (OVS). This is a rareword order: only 1% of languages use it as their default word order. There are only two word classes in Selkʼnam: nouns and verbs.[7]
The Selkʼnam language has Chonan vocabulary similar to theHaush language, though some words have been adopted fromSpanish andEnglish, such as the word for'cat', in Selkʼnam,kʼlattítaŭ; from the Spanish wordgatito, which translates to'kitten'.[8]
The following is a list of examples of comparative vocabulary from Chonan languages: Selkʼnam,Haush andTehuelche; and also vocabulary from the unrelatedYahgan (Yámana).[9][10][11][12]
| English | Selkʼnam | Haush | Tehuelche | Yahgan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Egg | Heil | Hel | Hel | Hach |
| Man | Chon | Kon | Chonke | Ona |
| Woman | Naa | Mna | Karken, naa | Kipa |
| Hand | Chen | Chen | Chen | Marʼpo |
| I, me | Ya | Iá, ya | ||
| Sea | Koy | Kowen, chowen | Koy | Yká |
| You | Ma, mak | Maha, maak | Sa |