Pemon | |
---|---|
Arecuna | |
Ingarikó, Kapon | |
Native to | Venezuela, Brazil, Guyana |
Ethnicity | Pemon |
Native speakers
|
(6,000 cited 1990–2006) |
Cariban
|
|
Dialects |
|
Latin | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 |
|
Glottolog | pemo1248 |
The Pemon language, or Arekuna, is an indigenous language of the Cariban family spoken by some 30,000 Pemon people, in Venezuela's Southeast, particularly in the Canaima National Park, in the Roraima State of Brazil and in Guyana.
It is one of several closely related languages called Ingarikó and Kapong.
Camaracoto may be a distinct language.
The Pemon language's syntax type is SOV with alternation to OVS.
Pemon was an oral language until the 20th century. Then efforts were made to produce dictionaries and grammars, primarily by Catholic missionaries, specially Armellada and Gutiérrez Salazar. The Latin alphabet has been used, adding diacritic signs to represent some phonemes not existing in Spanish.
Pemon has the following vowels:
There are still texts only using Spanish characters, without distinctive characters for /o/ or /ɵ/.
b, ch, d, k, m, n, ñ, p, r, s, t, v, w, y
Pronouns in Pemon are: