Tucano language

Tucano, also Tukano or Tucana, endonym ye’pâ-masa yee uúku͂sehé,^[3] is a Tucanoan language spoken in Amazonas, Brazil and Colombia.

Tucano
ye’pâ-masa yee uúku͂sehé
Native to	Brazil, Colombia
Ethnicity	Tucano people
Native speakers	4,600 in Brazil (2006)[1] 7,020 in Colombia (2012), including Pisamira[1]
Language family	Tucanoan Eastern North Tucano
Official status
Official language in	Brazil (São Gabriel da Cachoeira)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: tuo – Tucano arj – Arapaso
Glottolog	tuca1252  Tucano arap1275  Arapaso
ELP	Tukano
	Arapaso[2]

Many Tariana people, speakers of the endangered Tariana language are switching to Tucano.

Phonology

Consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	plain	p	t		k	ʔ
	voiced	b	d		ɡ
Nasal		(m)	(n)		(ŋ)
Fricative			s			h
Trill			r
Approximant		w		j

Nasal sounds [m n ŋ] are variants of voiced stops /b d ɡ/ between nasal vowels. Stops may also be heard as prenasalized [ᵐb ⁿd ᵑɡ] after nasal vowels. /w/ can be heard as a nasal bilabial semivowel [β̞̃] in the environment of nasal vowels. Allophones of /ɾ/ can be heard as [ɾ̃], [ɺ].^[4][5]

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i ĩ	ɨ ɨ̃	u ũ
Mid	e ẽ		o õ
Low		a ã

See also

• Tucano people

References

1. Tucano at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
   Arapaso at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
2. Endangered Languages Project data for Arapaso.
3. Ramirez, Henri (2019). "uúku͂sehe (ye'pâ-masa yee uúku͂sehé)" (PDF). A Fala Tukano dos Ye’pâ-Masa, Tomo II: Dicionário (versão atualizada, 2019). Manaus: Inspetoria Salesiana Missionária da Amazônia. p. 194.
4. West, Birdie; Welch, Betty (1967). Phonemic system of Tucano. Viola G. Waterhouse (ed.), Phonemic systems of Colombian languages: Norman: Summer Institute of Linguistics of the University of Oklahoma. pp. 11–24.
5. Aikhenvald, 1996.

Spanish

• Tukanos

Bibliography

• A Fala Tukano dos Ye'pâ-Masa: Tomo I: Gramática . Henri Ramirez (1997) · Manaus: Inspetoria Salesiana Missionária da Amazônia, CEDEM.
• Welch, Betty and West, Birdie (2000). In Lenguas indígenas de Colombia: una visión descriptiva edited by González de Pérez, María Stella and Rodríguez de Montes, María Luisa. Instituto Caro y Cuervo.
• Bibliografía de la familia lingüística Tukano (antes Betoya) ( pp. 79-104 ). Marcelino de Castellvi (1939). In Proceedings of the second convention of the Inter American Bibliographical and Library Association 2:2 Washington, D.C.
• Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
• Proto Tucanoan ( pp. 119-149 ). Nathan E. Waltz and Alva Wheeler (1972). In Comparative Studies in Amerindian Languages Mouton de Gruyter.

External links

• Tucanoan Languages Collection of Janet Chernela, housed at AILLA, containing audio recordings, transcriptions, translations and field notes from the 1970s and 1980s.