Wayãpi or Wayampi (Waiãpi, Guayapi, Oiampí) is a Tupi–Guarani language spoken by the Wayãpi people. It is spoken in

French Guiana French Guiana, or Guyane in French, is an Overseas departments and regions of France, overseas department and region of France located on the northern coast of South America in the Guianas and the West Indies. Bordered by Suriname to the west ...

and

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

In closed syllables, /e, o/ are heard as

Orthography

Wayãpi is spelt phonetically based on the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...

, and not according the French orthography. The spelling uses the letter ɨ for the

close central unrounded vowel The close central unrounded vowel, or high central unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in some languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , namely the lower-case I, letter ''i'' with ...

between i and u. E is always pronounced é, vowels with a tilde are always nasal (ã, ẽ, ĩ, õ, ũ), ö is like the German O umlaut, and b is pronounced mb. All letters are pronounced.

References

Bibliography

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External links

Wayampi
(

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 An ...

) Tupi–Guarani languages Languages of French Guiana Languages of Brazil {{tupian-lang-stub