Social:Querandí language

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Short description: Indigenous South American language


Querandí
Didiuhet (?)
Native toArgentina
RegionPatagonian pampas
EthnicityQuerandí etc.
Extinctlate 18th century
Revival2020s
unclassified ("Het"
Chonan?)
Language codes
ISO 639-3None (mis)
Glottologquer1237  Querandi[1]
Approximate distribution of the Het, Puelche, and Chon peoples prior to their genocide

The Querandí language is an Indigenous language of Argentina believed by some to be a member of the Het language family. It is almost entirely unknown, mainly on the basis of a few phrases and words, as well as on the basis of onomastics.

Classification

It has been linked with Gününa Küne and Chon, but the lack of material makes confirming such a connection impossible. In particular, only two sentences and a few words recorded by French sailors around 1555 are known from the Querandí language. This evidence is too scarce to be able to conclusively identify a relationship, although on the basis of this little data, Viegas-Barros shows that the language of the Querandíes could have been related to Gününa Küne.[2] It was said in 1637 that Father Alonzo de Barcena has written a book, titled Arte y Vocabulario de la lengua de los Querandíes, about the Querandí language. No trace of this book has been found so far.[3]

Revival

Based on the limited documentary evidence, the Querandí have begun to revive the use of their language.[3]

Vocabulary

Loukotka (1968) lists the following vocabulary items for Querandi:[4]

gloss Querandí

(Didiuhet)

moon zobá
bow afia

Querandi zoba '(likely) moon' may be related to Tehuelche sheewen 'sun' or sheewen-on 'moon'

Some maledictions in Querandí are:

Assaganoup o zoba 'the moon will make you regret it'

Caudy caudy vvuahiph gomálat 'Oh traitor, traitor, you must be killed'

References

  1. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds (2017). "Querandi". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. http://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/quer1237. 
  2. Viegas-Barros, José Pedro (1992). "La familia lingüística tehuelche" (in es). Revista Patagónica (54): 39–46. https://www.bfa.fcnym.unlp.edu.ar/catalogo/doc_num.php?explnum_id=2653. 
  3. 3.0 3.1 Gómez, Guillermo Luciano; Gorbalán, Carla Hebe; Viegas Barros, José Pedro; Domínguez, Luisa; Mauro, Sofía De; Malvestitti, Marisa (2023-09-28). "Ejhu Taluhet bajiná. Caminos colaborativos para la recuperación de la lengua querandí het". Cuadernos de Literatura (21): e2108. doi:10.30972/clt.0216893. ISSN 2684-0499. https://revistas.unne.edu.ar/index.php/clt/article/view/6893. 
  4. Loukotka, Čestmír (1968). Classification of South American Indian languages. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center. https://archive.org/details/classificationof0007louk. 

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