Tehuelche (''Aoniken, Inaquen, Gunua-Kena, Gununa-Kena'') is one of the

Chonan languages The Chonan languages are a family of indigenous American languages which were spoken in Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia. Two Chon languages are well attested: Selk'nam (or Ona), spoken by the people of the same name who occupied territory in th ...

Patagonia Patagonia () refers to a geographical region that encompasses the southern end of South America, governed by Argentina and Chile. The region comprises the southern section of the Andes Mountains with lakes, fjords, temperate rainforests, and g ...

. Its speakers were nomadic hunters who occupied territory in present-day Chile, north of

Tierra del Fuego Tierra del Fuego (, ; Spanish for "Land of the Fire", rarely also Fireland in English) is an archipelago off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland, across the Strait of Magellan. The archipelago consists of the main island, Isla ...

and south of the

Mapuche The Mapuche ( (Mapuche & Spanish: )) are a group of indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina, including parts of Patagonia. The collective term refers to a wide-ranging ethnicity composed of various groups who s ...

people. It is also known as ''Aonikenk'' or ''Aonekko 'a'ien.'' The decline of the language started with the Mapuche invasion in the north, that was then followed by the occupation of Patagonia by the Chilean and Argentinian states and state-facilitated genocide. Tehuelche were considerably influenced by other languages and cultures, in particular Mapudungun (the language of the Mapuche). This allowed the transference of morpho-syntactical elements into Tehuelche. During the 19th and 20th centuries,

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

became the dominant language as

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest ...

and

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the eas ...

gained independence, and Spanish-speaking settlers took possession of Patagonia. Because of these factors the language was dying out. In 1983/84 there were 29 speakers but by the year 2000 there were only 4 speakers left of Tehuelche, by 2012 only 2, and by 2019 the last speaker died. As of 2000 the Tehuelche ethnic group numbered 200. Today many members of the Tehuelche ethnic group have limited knowledge of the language and are doing their best to keep it alive and revive it as the language is still a very important symbol for the group of people who identify themselves as Tehuelche. In spite of the death of Dora Manchado in 2019, the language has been documented (from her), recuperated and revitalized by various groups of ''Aonikenks'', with the collaboration of a group of linguists and anthropologists, that have made various studies and academic works about this language.

Classification

Tehuelche belongs to the Chonan family together with

Teushen The Teushen or Tehues were an indigenous hunter-gatherer people of Patagonia in Argentina. They were considered "foot nomads", whose culture relied on hunting and gathering.Adelaar and Muysken 550 Their territory was between the Tehuelche people ...

Selk'nam The Selk'nam, also known as the Onawo or Ona people, are an indigenous people in the Patagonian region of southern Argentina and Chile, including the Tierra del Fuego islands. They were one of the last native groups in South America to be enco ...

(

Ona Ona or ONA may refer to: Anthropology * Ona people, an indigenous people of southern Argentina and Chile ** Ona language, a language once spoken in Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego * Ona, a pre-Aksumite culture in Sembel, Eritrea Geography * On ...

) and

Haush The Haush or Manek'enk were an indigenous people who lived on the Mitre Peninsula of the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego. They were related culturally and linguistically to the Ona or Selk'nam people who also lived on the Isla Grande de Tierra ...

. The latter two languages, spoken by tribes in northeast and far northeast

, has different statuses of documentation and linguistic revitalization by their corresponding communities.

Dialects

Mason (1950) lists dialects as: *Northern: Payniken; Poya *Southern: Inaken

Phonology

Vowels

Tehuelche has 3 vocalic qualities which can be short or long. (Fernandez 1988: 87-88)

Consonants

Tehuelche has 25 consonantal phonemes. Stops can be plain, glottalized or voiced. (Fernández 1998: 88-89)

Morphology

Pronoun

Noun

Verb

References

* Fernández Garay, Ana V. (1997): ''Testimonios de los últimos tehuelches''. Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires.(Spanish) * Fernández Garay, Ana V. (1998):'' El tehuelche. Una lengua en vías de extinción''. Valdivia: Universidad Austral de Chile nejos de Estudios Filológicos 15 (Spanish) * Fernández Garay, Ana V. (2004): ''Diccionario tehuelche-español / índice español-tehuelche.'' Leiden: University of Leiden ndigenous Languages of Latin America 4(Spanish) * Viegas Barros, J. Pedro (2005): ''Voces en el viento. Raíces lingüísticas de la Patagonia.'' Buenos Aires: Mondragón.(Spanish) * Ana Fernandez Garay, ''La nominalizacion de lenguas indigenas de la Patagonia'', Puebla, México,2006 (Spanish)

External links

Tehuelche
(

Intercontinental Dictionary Series The Intercontinental Dictionary Series (commonly abbreviated as IDS) is a large database of topical vocabulary lists in various world languages. The general editor of the database is Bernard Comrie of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary A ...

)
kketo sh m ´ekot - lengua tehuelche
(Tehuelche community website)
qadeshiakk
(Materials about the language) {{DEFAULTSORT:Tehuelche Language Languages of Argentina Chonan languages Endangered indigenous languages of the Americas Indigenous languages of the South American Cone