Guató Language
Guató is a possible language isolate spoken by 1% of the Guató people of Brazil.
| Guató | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Brazil, Bolivia |
| Region | Mato Grosso do Sul state: Paraguay River banks and up São Lourenço River, along Bolivian border; also Santa Cruz Department (Bolivia): Uberaba Lake |
| Ethnicity | 370 Guató people (2006) |
Native speakers | 5 (2012) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | gta |
| Glottolog | guat1253 |
| ELP | Guató |
 | |
Classification
Kaufman (1990) provisionally classified Guató as a branch of the Macro-Jê languages, but no evidence for this was found by Eduardo Ribeiro. Martins (2011) also suggests a relationship with Macro-Jê.
Language contact
Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Bororo, Tupi, and Karib language families due to contact.
An automated computational analysis (ASJP 4) by Müller et al. (2013) found lexical similarities between Guató and the Zamucoan languages. However, since the analysis was automatically generated, the grouping could be either due to mutual lexical borrowing, genetic inheritance, or chance resemblances.
Distribution
Today, Guató is spoken in Guató Indigenous Territory and Baía dos Guató Indigenous Territory.
Loukotka (1968) reported that in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, Guató is spoken on the banks of the Paraguay River and up the São Lourenço River, along the Bolivian border. It is also spoken at Uberaba Lake in Santa Cruz Department (Bolivia).
Phonology
The Guató vowel system, like that of Macro-Jê languages, collapses a three-way distinction of height in oral vowels to two in nasal vowels.
| Oral | Nasal | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front | Central | Back | Front | Central | Back | |
| Close | i | ɨ | u | ĩ | ɨ̃ | ũ |
| Mid | e | o | ẽ | ã | ||
| Open | ɛ | a | ɔ | |||
| Labial | Denti- alveolar | Post- alveolar | Velar | Labio- velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | |||||
| Plosive | voiced | b | d | dʒ | ɡ | ɡʷ | |
| voiceless | p | t | tʃ | k | kʷ | ||
| Fricative | f | h | |||||
| Sonorant | w | ɾ | j | ||||
Vocabulary
Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items for Guató.
gloss Guató one chenéhe two dúni three chumó tooth makuá tongue mundokuír hand mara woman muazya water mágũ fire matá moon múpina maize madzyéro jaguar mépago house movír
For more extensive vocabulary lists of Guató by Palácio (1984) and Postigo (2009), see the corresponding Portuguese article.
References
Further reading
- Fabre, Alain (2020-12-16) [2005]. "Diccionario etnolingüístico y guía bibliográfica de los pueblos indígenas sudamericanos: GUATÓ" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2023-10-07.
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