Wayuu ( Wayuu : Wayuunaiki [waˈjuːnaiki] ), or Guajiro , is a major Arawakan language spoken by 400,000 indigenous Wayuu people in northwestern Venezuela and northeastern Colombia on the Guajira Peninsula and surrounding Lake Maracaibo .
45-478: The La Guajira Desert [la ɣwaˈxiɾa] ( Wayuu : Woumainkat Wajiira , Spanish : Desierto de La Guajira ) is a desert located in northern Colombia and Venezuela , approximately 1,100 km (680 mi) north of Bogotá , covering most of the La Guajira Peninsula at the northernmost tip of South America . It is the continent's largest desert north of the equator. Most of the region
90-591: A geminate vowel (VV) or a consonant followed by a geminate vowel (CVV) or with a closed syllable (CVC), in which case the accent falls on the first syllable. vocal. In words with an irregular accent that do not comply with these rules, the accent is marked when writing with an accent. Nasalization occurs phonetically in Wayu, but does not have a phonemic character. It occurs in vowels next to nasal consonants or as an emphasizing feature of certain words such as aa "yes", ma'i "very" or eejuu "smell". Nouns are expressed with
135-462: A group of mixed gender; these are dealt with according to the conventions of the language in question (in French, for example, the masculine ils "they" is used for a group containing both men and women or antecedents of both masculine and feminine gender). A pronoun can still carry gender even if it does not inflect for it; for example, in the French sentence je suis petit ("I am small") the speaker
180-717: A root that indicates whether it is masculine singular (chi-), not masculine singular (tü-) or plural (na-), which is used in the basic form to indicate the closest presence (this, this, these) and to which a suffix is added to indicate degrees of greater distance (-ra/ --la, -sa, -a/-ia/-ya), like this: this (masc.) this (non-masculine) these that (masc.) that (non-masc.) those that over there (masc.) that over there (non-masc.) those over there that far away (masc.) that far away (non-masc.) those far away The personal pronouns in Wayuunaiki are shia/jia (she) Wayuunaiki uses personal prefixes derived from
225-550: A similar pattern); German, where the third-person plural sie (capitalized as Sie ) is used as both singular and plural in the second person in non-familiar uses; and Polish, where the noun pan ("gentleman") and its feminine and plural equivalents are used as polite second-person pronouns. For more details, see T–V distinction . Some languages, such as Japanese , Korean and many Southeast Asian languages like Vietnamese , Thai , and Indonesian , have pronouns that reflect deep-seated societal categories. In these languages there
270-409: A suffix that indicates the plural number (-kana) or the singular depending on whether it is masculine (-kai) or non-masculine (-kat). The classification plural, masculine singular, feminine singular affects the entire language and in particular the pronouns and conjugations of verbs. All nouns that do not have a determined gender are assumed to be non-masculine. Demonstrative pronouns, for example, have
315-660: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Wayuu language There were an estimated 300,000 speakers of Wayuunaiki in Venezuela in 2012 and another 120,000 in Colombia in 2008, approximately half the ethnic population of 400,000 in Venezuela (2011 census) and 400,000 in Colombia (2018 census). Smith (1995) reports that a mixed Wayuu—Spanish language is replacing Wayuunaiki in both countries. However, Campbell (1997) could find no information on this. To promote bilingual education among Wayuu and other Colombians,
360-530: Is distinctive. ⟨l⟩ is a lateral flap pronounced with the tongue just behind the position for the Spanish ⟨r⟩ , and with a more lateral airflow. The length of plosive consonants (p, t, k) and nasal consonants (m, n) can be long, in which case they are written double (pp, tt, kk, mm, nn). The accent in Wayuu generally falls on the second syllable of the word, except when it begins with
405-408: Is formed by taking the root of the verb, adding an indefinite prefix following those rules if it is an active verb, and lengthening the final vowel. If the final vowel is already doubled in the root (-aa, -ee, -ii, -oo, -uu, -üü), then it gets cut in half, and -waa is added to the end. Sets of infinitives with a common root, but with different aspects and moods may be formed by adding an affix between
450-560: Is generally a small set of nouns that refer to the discourse participants, but these referential nouns are not usually used ( pronoun avoidance ), with proper nouns, deictics, and titles being used instead (and once the topic is understood, usually no explicit reference is made at all). A speaker chooses which word to use depending on the rank, job, age, gender, etc. of the speaker and the addressee. For instance, in Japanese, in formal situations, adults usually refer to themselves as watashi or
495-671: Is home to a large variety of flora and fauna. The National Natural Park of Macuira , established in 1977, is a tropical oasis located in the La Guajira Desert. The park covers 25,000 hectares (62,000 acres) in La Guajira's only mountain chain and ranges in altitude from sea level to 450 metres (1,480 ft). It has a warm climate that averages about 27 °C (81 °F). 12°04′18″N 71°35′52″W / 12.07167°N 71.59778°W / 12.07167; -71.59778 This La Guajira Department location article
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#1732765650654540-445: Is male and so the pronoun je is masculine, whereas in je suis petite the speaker is female and the pronoun is treated as feminine, the feminine ending -e consequently being added to the predicate adjective. On the other hand, many languages do not distinguish female and male in the third person pronoun. Some languages have or had a non-gender-specific third person pronoun: Some of these languages started to distinguish gender in
585-475: Is more common to say you should hold your oar in both hands . In many languages, personal pronouns, particularly those of the third person, differ depending on the gender of their antecedent or referent. This occurs in English with the third-person singular pronouns, where (simply put) he is used when referring to a man, she to a woman, singular they to a person whose gender is unknown or unspecified at
630-554: Is true of both German and English, and also of the Romance languages , which (with the exception of Romanian ) have lost the Latin grammatical case for nouns, but preserve certain distinctions in the personal pronouns. Other syntactic types of pronouns which may adopt distinct forms are disjunctive pronouns , used in isolation and in certain distinct positions (such as after a conjunction like and ), and prepositional pronouns , used as
675-410: Is used here purely to signify the grammatical sense; personal pronouns are not limited to people and can also refer to animals and objects (as the English personal pronoun it usually does). The re-use in some languages of one personal pronoun to indicate a second personal pronoun with formality or social distance – commonly a second person plural to signify second person singular formal – is known as
720-556: Is within Colombia's La Guajira Department , though a small portion is in the Venezuelan state of Zulia . The area holds immense coal reserves which are exploited in a zone known as El Cerrejón . It is also home to the indigenous Wayuu people. The Wayuu are mostly herders but also master deep-sea divers, known for collecting pearls from the Caribbean Sea . The peninsula is populated chiefly by xeric scrubland , which
765-412: The -aya ending pronouns typically follow the beginning vowel of the mentioned word classes, while the ones that correspond with the -ia ending pronouns almost always go through vocalic mutation. There are rules to what vowel is used when, but typically, - aya pronoun derived and the 4 non-pronoun derived prefixes use a, e, or o, while the remaining 3 -ia pronoun derived use ü, i, and u respectively to
810-609: The T–V distinction , from the Latin pronouns tu and vos . Examples are the majestic plural in English and the use of vous in place of tu in French . For specific details of the personal pronouns used in the English language , see English personal pronouns . Pronoun is a category of words. A pro-form is a type of function word or expression that stands in for (expresses
855-466: The subject of a verb, from the oblique form ( me , you , him , her , it , us , them ), used principally as the object of a verb or preposition. Languages whose nouns inflect for case often inflect their pronouns according to the same case system; for example, German personal pronouns have distinct nominative, genitive, dative and accusative forms ( ich , meiner , mir , mich ; etc.). Pronouns often retain more case distinctions than nouns – this
900-433: The 0 person ( a- , e- , o- ) prefix of the latter is removed and fully mixed with the former, with necessary vocalic and consonantal mutations. Another form of this is combining any noun or preposition with a verb, the verb going first, to for a new word that could either be a noun or verb. The latter form of this requires a suffix from triad F (chi, lü ~ rü, chii) to be added at the end of the new word. The verb infinitive
945-485: The 3rd person feminine, and jia as the second person plural. There are minor vocabulary differences, but the main one is only related to the pronouns, and their respective prefixes. The vowels of Wayuu are as follows: Note: ⟨e⟩ and ⟨o⟩ are more open than in English. ⟨a⟩ is slightly front of central, and ⟨ü⟩ is slightly back of central. All vowels can either occur in short or long versions, since vowel length
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#1732765650654990-656: The Kamusuchiwoꞌu Ethno-educative Center ( Spanish : Centro Etnoeducativo Kamusuchiwoꞌu ) came up with the initiative of creating the first illustrated Wayuunaiki–Spanish, Spanish–Wayuunaiki dictionary . In December 2011, the Wayuu Taya Foundation and Microsoft presented the first ever dictionary of technology terms in Wayuunaiki, after having developed it for three years with a team of technology professionals and linguists. The two main dialects are Wüinpümüin and Wopumüin, spoken in
1035-901: The complement of a preposition. Some languages have strong and weak forms of personal pronouns, the former being used in positions with greater stress . Some authors further distinguish weak pronouns from clitic pronouns, which are phonetically less independent. Examples are found in Polish, where the masculine third-person singular accusative and dative forms are jego and jemu (strong) and go and mu (weak). English has strong and weak pronunciations for some pronouns, such as them (pronounced /ðɛm/ when strong, but /ðəm/ , /ɛm/ , /əm/ or even /m̩/ when weak). Some languages—for instance, most Australian Aboriginal languages —have distinct classes of free and bound pronouns. These are distinguished by their morphological independence/dependence on other words respectively. In Australian languages, it
1080-403: The definite article suffixes, or in the case of triad G, the negative ma- verb prefix’s suffixes. The most common triad of suffixes in verbs is triad A (shi/sü/shii), the general time suffixes, also named as “present-past time”, where it combines the English and Spanish equivalents of the basic present and the basic past tense. Whichever equivalent is being implied depends on the context of
1125-438: The end of a verb. There are alienable and inalienable nouns, where the former requires possessive suffixes to express possession, while the latter is seen as inherently possessed by something, does not require possessive suffixes, and is usually accompanied by the pronoun derived prefixes. Words can be combined together to form new ones, with the typical 2 patterns being alienable + inalienable or inalienable + inalienable , where
1170-472: The even more polite watakushi , while young men may use the student-like boku and police officers may use honkan ("this officer"). In informal situations, women may use the colloquial atashi , and men may use the rougher ore . Pronouns also often take different forms based on their syntactic function, and in particular on their grammatical case . English distinguishes the nominative form ( I , you , he , she , it , we , they ), used principally as
1215-404: The feminine. A phonological shift occurs in the conjugation of active verbs whose infinitives end in laa, raa, loo and roo. By shortening the vowels, their thematic suffixes remain la, ra, lo and ro, but when they undergo vowel harmony they change to lü, rü, lu and ru. By adding the suffixes –shi, -sü, -shii, ü and u disappear, and l and r become t. In general, the verb precedes the subject and
1260-407: The gender inflection of the verb. Present-past and remote past use triads A. Immediate future, general future, and imminent future use triads B. Future intentive uses triads C. Near past, current past, and former past use triads E, and all other tenses use triads J. triads conjugations are as follows. Not that while there is no specific feminine plural, the plural suffix -irua may be added to indicate
1305-487: The inanimate pronoun it to refer to a person (except in some cases to a small child), and although it is traditional to use the masculine he to refer to a person of unspecified gender, the movement towards gender-neutral language requires that another method be found, such as saying he or she . A common solution, particularly in informal language, is to use singular they . For more details see Gender in English . Similar issues arise in some languages when referring to
1350-459: The latter precedes the object or predicate (VSO type). However, word order is not restricted and there can be sentences in other word orders. Two predication schemes are presented: a bifurcated predicate-subject one and a synthetic one, predicate-centered or compact, in which the sentence is composed of only one phrase with a verbal nucleus. Conjugation is done through personal prefixes, infixes and suffixes of mode, time and aspect and number-gender of
1395-406: The northeast and southwest of the peninsula, respectively. These dialects are mutually intelligible , as they are minimally distinct. The extinct Guanebucan language may actually have been a dialect of Wayuunaiki. . The main difference between Wüinpümüin and Wopümüin is that Wüinpümüin uses jia as the 3rd person feminine pronoun, and jaya for the second person plural, while Wopümüin uses shia as
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1440-444: The object. Negation is indicated with the prefix m-, although there is also the negative verb nnojolaa ("not to be", "not to be", "not to have"), and also "not to have" or "not to have" can be expressed with the prefix ma- followed by the respective noun. The numerals from 1 to 10 are as follows. Numerals procede the noun. The following are examples of Wayuunaiki. Wayuunaiki itself comes from wayuu 'human being/people' and
1485-460: The plurals ils and elles ). Sometimes natural and grammatical gender do not coincide, as with the German noun Mädchen ("girl"), which is grammatically neuter but naturally feminine. (See Grammatical gender § Grammatical vs. natural gender for more details.) Issues may arise when the referent is someone of unspecified or unknown gender. In a language such as English, it is derogatory to use
1530-415: The previous. These prefixes are used when expressing a verb with the objective construction, or, for the pronoun-derived prefixes, when expressing someone’s ownership of something. There are 9 triads of suffixes for the singular masculine animate, singular feminine animate/general inanimate, and the general plural. These suffixes can manifest in tense, aspect, and mood suffixes for verbs, derivational words,
1575-444: The pronouns, along with 3 extra non-pronoun derived prefixes ( ka- - possessive, ma- - negative, pa- - dual (not commonly used)). There also exists a 10th personal prefix for the unspecified/indefinite, labeled as the “zero person”, a- . The vowels in the personal prefixes change depending on the first vowel and consonants of the verb, noun, or preposition it is placed on, dubbed vocalic mutation . The prefixes that correspond with
1620-427: The root and infinitive ending, such as the causative - ira , the passive - na and - uu , the imperfective - iraa , and the desiderative - ee. For example, from the root kache ("hang"), one can derive the desiderative a - kache - r-ee - waa "to want to hang". There is debate about whether said derived words should be considered verbs in their own right, or as inflections of the root verb. In most simple verbs,
1665-407: The root is also followed by a 'thematic suffix'. Verbs are conjugated for gender, tense, and number. There are ten tenses: the present-past, the near future, the general future, the future intentive, the past perfect, the near past, the current past, the former past, the remote past, and the frequentative past. There are also nine 'triads', general time categories, lettered A through J, which changed
1710-427: The same content as) another word , phrase , clause or sentence where the meaning is recoverable from the context. Pronouns mostly function as pro-forms, but there are pronouns that are not pro-forms and pro-forms that are not pronouns. In [1], the pronoun it "stands in" for whatever was mentioned and is a good idea. In [2], the pronoun it doesn't stand in for anything. No other word can function there with
1755-1118: The same meaning; we don't say "the sky is raining" or "the weather is raining". So, it is a pronoun but not a pro-form. Finally, in [3], did so is a verb phrase, not a pronoun, but it is a pro-form standing for "help". Languages typically have personal pronouns for each of the three grammatical persons : As noted above, within each person there are often different forms for different grammatical numbers , especially singular and plural. Languages which have other numbers, such as dual (e.g. Slovene ), may also have distinct pronouns for these. Some languages distinguish between inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronouns – those that do and do not include their audience. For example, Tok Pisin has seven first-person pronouns according to number (singular, dual, trial, plural) and clusivity, such as mitripela ("they two and I") and yumitripela ("you two and I"). Some languages do not have third-person personal pronouns, instead using demonstratives (e.g. Macedonian ) or full noun phrases. Latin used demonstratives rather than third-person pronouns (in fact
1800-424: The second person, depending on the degree of formality or familiarity. It is common for different pronouns to be used when addressing friends, family, children and animals than when addressing superiors and adults with whom the speaker is less familiar. Examples of such languages include French, where the singular tu is used only for familiars, the plural vous being used as a singular in other cases (Russian follows
1845-403: The situation, and sometimes can be interpreted or translated as a completely different tense, the present-continuous (named “future imminent” in the studies done over Wayuunaiki), which has its own suffix triad, using triad B and combining it with -i- (-ichi, -irü, -ina). Wayuunaiki is agglutinative , with the majority of ways of expressing aspect and mood being used with suffixes, attached to
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1890-516: The suffix -naiki , from anüiki 'speech' ('word' or 'language'), literally meaning '[the] people’s speech'. Personal pronouns Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as I ), second person (as you ), or third person (as he , she , it ). Personal pronouns may also take different forms depending on number (usually singular or plural), grammatical or natural gender , case , and formality. The term "personal"
1935-525: The third person pronoun due to influence from European languages. Mandarin , for example, introduced, in the early 20th century a different character for she (她), which is pronounced identically as he (他) and thus is still indistinguishable in speech (tā). Korean geunyeo (그녀) is found in writing to translate "she" from European languages. In the spoken language it still sounds awkward and rather unnatural, as it literally translates to "that female". Many languages have different pronouns, particularly in
1980-423: The third-person pronouns in the Romance languages are descended from the Latin demonstratives). In some cases personal pronouns can be used in place of indefinite pronouns , referring to someone unspecified or to people generally. In English and other languages the second-person pronoun can be used in this way: instead of the formal one should hold one's oar in both hands (using the indefinite pronoun one ), it
2025-418: The time that the pronoun is being used or to a person who does not identify as either a man or a woman, and it to something inanimate or an animal of unspecific sex. This is an example of pronoun selection based on natural gender; many languages also have selection based on grammatical gender (as in French , where the pronouns il and elle are used with masculine and feminine antecedents respectively, as are
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