Guayabero language

Guayabero
Jiw
Native to	Colombia
Region	Upper Guaviaré River
Ethnicity	1,120 (2011) [1]
Native speakers	1,000 (2008) [1]
Language family	Guajiboan Southwest Guayabero
Language codes
ISO 639-3	guo
Glottolog	guay1257
ELP	Guayabero

Guayabero is a Guahiban language that is spoken by a thousand people in Colombia. Many of its speakers are monoglots, with few fluent Spanish speakers in the population.

Phonology

The Guayabero syllable structure can be represented as CV(V)(C)(C). Each syllable has an obligatory single consonant onset and a nucleus of one or two vowels. An optional coda of at most two consonants can occur in both word-medial and final positions. ^[2]

Consonants ^{[2] [3]}

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	voiceless	p	t		k	ʔ
	voiced	b	d
Affricate				t͡ʃ
Fricative		ɸ	s		x	h
Nasal		m	n
Approximant		w	l	j
Flap			ɾ

• /w/ is heard as labiodental [ʋ] when preceding front vowel sounds.
• /d/ can be heard as fricatives in syllable-final positions. As a voiced dental [ð] when after front vowels, and as a voiceless [θ] when after back vowels in syllable-final positions.
• /n/ is heard as [ɲ] when following front vowels and as [ŋ] when preceding velar /k/.
• /b/ is heard as preglottal [ˀb] in accented syllable-initial positions and as [β] in intervocalic positions.
• /s/ is also heard as postalveolar [ʃ] in syllable-final position in free variation.
• /x/ is heard as uvular [χ] in accented syllables.
• /j/ is heard as a stop [ɟ] in accented syllable-initial positions.

Vowels ^[3]

	Front	Central	Back
High	i	ɨ	u
Mid	e		o
Low	æ	a

• Vowels /i, e, ɨ, a, o, u/ are heard in unstressed position as [ɪ, ɛ, ɨ̞, ʌ, ɔ, ʊ].

References

1. Guayabero at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. Keels J (1985). "Guayabero: Phonology and morphophonemics" (PDF). Language Data. Amerindian Series. 9: 57–87. ISBN   0-88312-091-7.
3. Ortiz, Nubia Tobar (2000). Aspectos generales de la lengua Guayabero. In González de Pérez, María Stella and Rodríguez de Montes, María Luisa (eds.), Lenguas indígenas de Colombia: una visión descriptiva: Santafé de Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo. pp. 599–610.