Sanapana () is a Mascoian language of the Paraguayan Chaco, spoken by the Sanapaná people. The language is not critically endangered, as children are still learning it.
Status Sanapana is spoken by around half of all Sanapana people, who call themselves , and is still being transmitted to children in the two largest communities, La Esperanza and Anaconda, who grow up monolingual in Sanapana before they go to school, where they learn Spanish. The language is also reported to be in everyday use, including in religious contexts.
Classification Sanapana is classified as a member of the Mascoian (Enlhet-Enenlhet) languages, distributed in the Gran Chaco region. They are considered to have evolved from a dialect continuum.
Phonology and orthography Sanapana has three vowels and 13 consonants.
Vowels FrontCentralBack Mid Open The two mid vowels can be raised in certain phonetic environments, but no minimal pairs, words differing in only one phoneme, are known to contrast getween high and mid vowels. The status of vowel length is uncertain, as no minimal pairs exist for this contrast, although certain words have consistently lengthened vowels (e.g. 'night'), and others consistently without (e.g. 'fish'). Vowels are written as in Spanish.
Consonants Orthographical equivalents are written in . LabialAlveolarPalatalVelarLabiovelarGlottal Plosive Nasal Fricative Lateral Approximant Long phonemes are written doubled. The sequence is "often" written as . Gomes (2013) analyzes as an allophone of before a velar phoneme, and posits as a phoneme, rather than as a sequence of followed by .
Morphology
Noun Sanapana noun morphology is simple in comparison with that of the verb. Nouns are frequently used as bare stems without any additional morphemes.
Notes
References
External links Sanapaná (Angaité dialect) (Intercontinental Dictionary Series) Sanapaná (Enlhet dialect) (Intercontinental Dictionary Series)