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Ona, also known as Selk'nam (Shelknam), is a language spoken by the Selk'nam people in Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego in southernmost South America.
Part of the Chonan languages of Patagonia, Selk'nam is almost extinct, due to the late 19th-century Selk'nam genocide by European immigrants, high fatalities due to disease, and disruption of traditional society. One source states that the last fluent native speakers died in the 1980s.[2] A Radboud University linguist worked with two individuals to write a reference grammar of the language, namely, Herminia Vera-Ona (deceased since 2014), a semi-speaker who spoke Ona until the age of 8, and Joubert "Keyuk" Yanten, a young man who started learning the language after learning he was part-Selk'nam 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 Selk'nam, albeit not natively.
Within the Southern Chon language family, Selk'nam is closest to Haush, another language spoken on the island of Tierra del Fuego.
There is speculation that Chon together with the Moseten languages, a small group of languages in Bolivia, form part of a Moseten-Chonan language family. Another proposal is, that it is related to the Pano-Tacanan languages.
Joseph Greenberg classifies Selk'nam as an Amerind language of the Southern Andean group, but this categorization is universally rejected by linguists.[4]
The Selk'nam people, also known as the Ona, are an indigenous people who inhabited the northeastern part of the archipelago of Tierra 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 Selk'nam, Ángela Loij, died in 1974.[5] They were one of the last aboriginal groups in South America to be reached by Europeans. Their language, believed to be part of the Chonan family, is considered extinct as the last native speakers died in the 1980s.[2] Currently, Selk'nam communities are revitalizing the language. A man of mixed Selk'nam and Mapuche ancestry, Joubert Yanten Gomez (indigenous name: Keyuk) has successfully taught himself the language.[6]
Based on available data, Selk'nam seems to have had 3 vowels and 23 consonants.[3]
Selk'nam has three vowels: /a, ɪ, ʊ/.
The Ona language is an object–verb–subject language (OVS). This is a rare word order: only 1% of languages use it as their default word order. There are only two word classes in Selk'nam: nouns and verbs.[7]
The Selk'nam language has Chonan vocabulary similar to the Haush language, though some words have been adopted from Spanish and English, such as the word for "cat", in Selk'nam, k'lattítaŭ; from the Spanish word gatito, which translates to "kitten".[8]
Comparative vocabulary
The following is a list of examples of comparative vocabulary from Chonan languages: Ona, Haush and Tehuelche; and also vocabulary from the unrelated Yahgan (Yámana).[9][10][11][12]
| Ona | Haush | Tehuelche | Yahgan | English |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heil | Hel | Hel | Hach | Egg |
| Chon | Kon | Chonke | Ona | Man |
| Naa | Mna | Karken, Naa | Kipa | Woman |
| Chen | Chen | Chen | Mar'po | Hand |
| Ya | Iá, Ya | I, me | ||
| Koy | Kowen, Chowen | Koy | Yká | Sea |
| Ma, Mak | Maha, Maak | Sa | You |
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