| Enxet | |
| Also Known As: | Southern Lengua |
| Pronunciation: | pronounced as /[eːnɬet]/ |
| States: | Paraguay |
| Ethnicity: | 5,840 Enxet Sur people (2002 census)[1] |
| Date: | 2002 census |
| Ref: | e25 |
| Familycolor: | American |
| Fam1: | Mascoian |
| Iso3: | enx |
| Glotto: | sout2989 |
| Glottorefname: | Southern Lengua |
| Region: | Presidente Hayes |
| Nativename: | Énxet nempeywa |
Enxet, also known as Enxet Sur or Southern Lengua, is a language spoken by the Indigenous southern Enxet people of Presidente Hayes Department, Paraguay. It is one of twenty languages spoken by the wider Gran Chaco Amerindians of South America.[2] Once considered a dialect of a broader language, known as Vowak or Powok, Enxet (Southern Lengua) and Enlhet (Northern Lengua) diverged as extensive differences between the two were realized.
Enxet belongs to the Enlhet-Enenlhet (aka Mascoian) language family, a small family of languages spoken in the Paraguayan region of the South American Gran Chaco.[3] Enxet is most closely related to its sister language Enlhet, based on some preliminary analysis, but a substantial historical analysis of the Enlhet-Enenlhet family has not yet been published.
Enxet and Enlhet were once considered dialects of a single language known as Lengua. The Enxet language was first documented in the late nineteenth century by explorers from Spain.[4]
Enxet contains only three phonemic vowel qualities /e,a,o/, each requiring a certain length such to maximize distinction. Bilingual speakers of Spanish and Enxet purportedly utilize shorter spacing between vowels when speaking Enxet compared to Spanish.[5]
| Front | Central | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mid | pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ | ||
| Open | pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ |
| Phoneme | Allophone | |
|---|---|---|
| /e/ | [e], [i], [ɛ] | |
| /o/ | [o], [ʊ], [ɔ] |
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||
| Affricate | pronounced as /link/ | |||||||
| Fricative | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| Nasal | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||
| Lateral | approximant | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| fricative | pronounced as /link/ | |||||||
| Semivowel | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||