Ona language

Ona (Aona), also known as Selk'nam (Shelknam), is a language that is spoken by the Selk'nam people in Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego in southernmost South America.

Ona
Selk'nam
Native toArgentina, Chile
RegionPatagonia, Tierra del Fuego.
EthnicitySelk'nam
Extinct1970s (is being revitalised by the modern community)[1]
Chonan †
  • Chon proper †
    • Island Chon †
      • Ona
Language codes
ISO 639-3ona
Glottologonaa1245
ELPOna

Part of the Chonan languages of Patagonia, Selk'nam is almost extinct, due both 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 speaker Herminia Vera-Ona, who died in 2014, to write a reference grammar of the language.[3]

Classification

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'nan as an Amerind language of the Southern Andinan group.[4]

History

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. 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. 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.[5]

Phonology

Based on available data, Selk'nam seems to have had 3 vowels and 23 consonants.[3]

Selk'nam has three vowels: /a, ɪ, ʊ/.

Consonants
Bilabial Alveolar Palato-
alveolar		 Retroflex Palatal Velar Uvular Glottal
dental plain
Nasal m n
Plosive/
Affricate		 plain p t t͡ʃ k q ʔ
ejective pʼ tʼ t͡ʃʼ kʼ qʼ
Fricative s̪ s ʂ x h
Approximant l j w
Flap ɾ

Grammar

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.[6]

See also

References
  1. Ona at Ethnologue (19th ed., 2016) closed access
  2. Adelaar, Willem (2010). "South America". In Moseley, Christopher; Nicolas, Alexandre (eds.). Atlas of the world's languages in danger (3rd entirely revised, enlarged and updated ed.). Paris: UNESCO. pp. 86–94. ISBN 978-92-3-104096-2.
  3. Rojas-Berscia, Luis Miguel (2014). A Heritage Reference Grammar of Selk’nam (Thesis). Nijmegen: Radboud University.
  4. Bolnick, Deborah; Shook, Beth; Campbell, Lyle; Goddard, Ives (2004). "Problematic Use of Greenberg's Linguistic Classification of the Americas in Studies of Native American Genetic Variation". American Journal of Human Genetics. 75 (3): 519–523. Retrieved 18 May 2007.
  5. Thurman, Judith. "A loss for words: Can a dying language be saved?". The New Yorker. Condé Nast. Retrieved 15 October 2022.
  6. Najlis, Elena L. (1973). Lengua selknam. Filología y lingüística (in Spanish). Vol. 3. Buenos Aires: Universidad de Salvador.
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