Opón-Carare (Opone) is an extinct, unusually divergent Cariban language of Colombia. It is most closely related to Yukpa. It is known only from two wordlists, published in 1878 and 1958 respectively.[1] The language was reported to be likely extinct by 1973.[2]
Phonology
Giraldo and Fornaguera (1958)
Marshall Durbin and Haydée Seijas derive the following phonology for Opón-Carare based on data published in 1958 from Giraldo and Fornaguera.[2]
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | k | (ʔ)1 | ||
| voiced | b | d | g | ||||
| Fricative | s | ʃ | h | ||||
| Trill | r | ||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ||||
| Approximant | w | j | |||||
- [ʔ] may not be phonemic, it appears only at morpheme boundaries.
| Front | Central | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| short | long | short | long | short | long | |
| Close | i | iː | u | uː | ||
| Mid | e | eː | ə | o | oː | |
| Open | a | aː | ||||
While common in other Cariban languages, nasal vowels are not recorded in Opón-Carare.
Lengerke (1878)
The following phonology is derived from the data in Lengerke (1878).
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | k | |||
| voiced | b | ||||||
| Fricative | s | (ʃ) | h | ||||
| Affricate | tʃ | ||||||
| Trill | r | ||||||
| Nasal | m | n | |||||
| Approximant | w | j | |||||
The phonology is the same in Carare, with the exception that /tʃ/ and /w/ are not present, and /ʃ/ interpreted for the sequence ⟨sy⟩.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Mid | e | (ə) | o |
| Open | a |
References
Further reading
- del Castillo Mathieu, Nicolás (1977). “Léxico caribe en el Caribe insular (primera parte)” (PDF). Thesaurus: Boletín del instituto Caro y Cuervo. 32 (2): 319. eISSN 2462-8255. ISSN 0040-604X.
- von Lengerke, Geo. (1878). “Palabras indias dictadas por un lndio de la tríbu de Carare”. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie. 10: 306–306. ISSN 0044-2666.