Language of Peru
Cholón (Cholona), also known as Seeptsá and Tsinganeses, 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]
The language was previously thought to be extinct but a native speaker was discovered in 2021. Martha Pérez Valderrama is believed to be the last remaining speaker of Cholón.[4]
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 (Adelaar 2004:464).
The vowels appeared to have been 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 used different forms for "you" depending on whether one was speaking to a man or a woman:
References
Wiktionary has a word list at
Appendix:Cholón word list - ^ Loukotka, Čestmír (1968). Classification of South American Indian languages. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center.
- ^ "Cholon | The Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America". ailla.utexas.org. Retrieved 2024-02-09.
- ^ Eberhard, David M.; Simons, Gary F.; Fennig, Charles D., eds. (2019). "Peru languages". Ethnologue: Languages of the World (22nd ed.). Dallas: SIL International.
- ^ "Pérez Valderrama, Martha | The Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America". ailla.utexas.org. Retrieved 9 February 2024.
- Adelaar, Willem (2004). The Languages of the Andes. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-36275-7.
- Fabre, Alain. 2005. Diccionario etnolingüístico y guía bibliográfica de los pueblos indígenas sudamericanos: Cholón
