Kanakanavu (also spelled Kanakanabu) is a Southern
Tsouic language spoken by the
Kanakanavu people, an
indigenous people
Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
of
Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
(see
Taiwanese aborigines
Taiwanese may refer to:
* Taiwanese language, another name for Taiwanese Hokkien
* Something from or related to Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China ...
). It is a
Formosan language
The Formosan languages are a geographic grouping comprising the languages of the indigenous peoples of Taiwan, all of which are Austronesian. They do not form a single subfamily of Austronesian but rather nine separate subfamilies. The Taiwa ...
of the
Austronesian family.
The Kanakanavu live in the two villages of Manga and Takanua in
Namasia District
Namasia District ( Kanakanavu language, Bunun language: ''Namasia''; ), formerly Sanmin Township (), is a mountain indigenous district located in the northeastern part of Kaohsiung, Taiwan. It is the second largest district in Kaohsiung after T ...
(formerly Sanmin Township),
Kaohsiung.
The language is moribund.
History
The native Kanakanavu speakers were
Taiwanese aboriginals
Taiwanese indigenous peoples (formerly Taiwanese aborigines), also known as Formosan people, Austronesian Taiwanese, Yuanzhumin or Gaoshan people, are the indigenous peoples of Taiwan, with the nationally recognized subgroups numbering about 5 ...
living on the islands. Following the
Dutch Colonial Period in the 17th century,
Han-Chinese immigration began to dominate the islands population. The village of
Takanua is a village assembled by
Japanese rulers to relocate various aboriginal groups in order to establish easier dominion over these groups.
Phonology
There are 14 different consonant phonemes, containing only voiceless plosives within Kanakanavu. Adequate descriptions of liquid consonants become a challenge within Kanakanavu. It also contains 6 vowels plus
diphthongs and
triphthong
In phonetics, a triphthong (, ) (from Greek τρίφθογγος, "triphthongos", literally "with three sounds," or "with three tones") is a monosyllabic vowel combination involving a quick but smooth movement of the articulator from one vowel q ...
s. Vowel length is often not clear if distinctive or not, as well as speakers pronouncing vowel phonemes with variance. As most
Austronesian and
Formosan languages, Kanakanavu has a
CV syllable structure (where C = consonant, V = vowel). Very few, even simple words, contain less than three to four syllables.
Consonants
Vowels
Orthography
Kanakanavu is usually written with the
Latin script
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern I ...
. The following are often used to represent sounds in the language: A, C, E, I, K, L, M, N, Ng, O, P, R, S, T, U, Ʉ, V, ' /ʔ.
C represents the phoneme /c/.
L represents the phonemes /ɗ/ and /ɽ/.
P represents both /ɓ/ and /p/.
/ɫ/ is spelled as hl.
References
Further reading
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External links
www.kanakanavu.info– language documentation project website
– Kanakanavu search page at the "Aboriginal language online dictionary" website of the Indigenous Languages Research and Development Foundation
Endangered LanguagesKanakanavu teaching and leaning materials published by the Council of Indigenous Peoples of Taiwan
Kanakanavu translation of President Tsai Ing-wen's 2016 apology to indigenous people– published on the website of the presidential office
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kanakanavu Language
Formosan languages
Languages of Taiwan
Endangered Austronesian languages