Sharanawa language

Sharanawa
Sharanahua
Arara, Sharanahuan tsain
Native to	Peru
Ethnicity	Sharanawa
Native speakers	(450 cited 2000)
Language family	Pano–Tacanan Panoan Amawaka–Jaminawa Sharanawa
Dialects	Marinawa Chandinawa Mastanawa
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mcd
Glottolog	shar1245

Sharanawa (Acre Arara) is a Panoan language of Peru. There are 200 Sharanawa (meaning 'good people') in Brazil, but only 3 speak the language. Its speakers call the language Arara. ^[1] The Mastanawa dialect may belong to either Sharanawa or Yaminawa, although the Mastanawa regarded their language to be identical with Sharanawa.

Phonology

Consonants

^[2]

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	p	t				k
Affricate		ts	tʃ
Fricative	ɸ	s	ʃ2	ʂ2			h1
Nasal	m	n
Approximant					j	w
Tap/Flap		ɾ

1. Pike and Scott (1962) indicate that [ h ] is velar.
2. [ ʃ ] and [ ʂ ] are contrastive only when preceeding [ a ] or [ ã ]. ^[3]

Vowels

^[2]

	Front		Central		Back
	plain	nasal	plain	nasal	plain	nasal
High	i	ĩ	ɨ	ɨ̃	u	ũ
Low			a	ã

Tone

Sharanawa is a tonal language. ^[2] It distinguishes high tone, marked with an acute accent, and low tone, which is unmarked. ^[3]

References

1. "A Survey of the Languages of the Upper Purus River". www.sil.org.
2. "Sharanawa". linguistics.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 2025-06-23.
3. Pike, Eunice; Scott, Eugene (1962-01-01). "The Phonological Hierarchy of Marinahua". Phonetica. 8 (1–3): 1–8. doi:10.1159/000258115. ISSN   1423-0321.