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

Patagonia Patagonia () is a geographical region that includes parts of Argentina and Chile at the southern end of South America. The region includes the southern section of the Andes mountain chain with lakes, fjords, temperate rainforests, and glaciers ...

. Its speakers, the

Tehuelche people The Tehuelche people, also called the Aónikenk, are an Indigenous people from eastern Patagonia in South America. In the 18th and 19th centuries the Tehuelche were influenced by Mapuche people, and many adopted a horseriding lifestyle. Once a ...

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

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

and south of the

Mapuche The Mapuche ( , ) also known as Araucanians are a group of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina, including parts of Patagonia. The collective term refers to a wide-ranging e ...

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

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

and

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...

gained independence, and Spanish-speaking settlers took possession of Patagonia. Because of these factors the language began dying out. In 1983/84 there were 29 speakers, but by the year 2000 there were only 4 speakers left, and by 2012 only 2. In 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 ensure

language revival Language revitalization, also referred to as language revival or reversing language shift, is an attempt to halt or reverse the decline of a language or to revive an extinct one. Those involved can include linguists, cultural or community group ...

, as Tehuelche 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 ''Aonekkenks'', 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, Selkʼnam (Ona) and Haush. The latter two languages, spoken by tribes in northeast and far northeast

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

Dialects

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

History and demographics

The northern Tehuelche were conquered and later assimilated by the

during the

Araucanization of Patagonia The Araucanization of Patagonia () was the process of the expansion of Mapuche culture, influence, and its Mapudungun language from Araucanía across the Andes into the plains of Patagonia. Historians disagree over the time period during which ...

. Some 1.7 million Mapuche continue to live in

and southwest Argentina. Further south they traded peacefully with y Wladfa, the colony of Welsh settlers. Some Tehuelche learnt Welsh and left their children with the settlers for their education. A solid photographic record was made of this people. However, they were later nearly exterminated in the late 19th-century government-sponsored genocides of Patagonia. Of some 5000 speakers in 1900, there were about 20 speakers left. Tehuelche is now extinct as of 2019.

Phonology

Vowels

Tehuelche has 3 vocalic qualities which can be short or long.

Consonants

Tehuelche has 25 consonantal phonemes. Stops can be plain, glottalized or voiced.

Morphology

Pronoun

Noun

Verb

Alignment

Tehuelche is a nominative–accusative language. Strangely, it marks the nominative but not the accusative, a phenomenon only found in 6 languages worldwide.

References

* * * * * *

External links

Tehuelche
( Intercontinental Dictionary Series) * (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