Zuruahá language explained

Zuruahá
Also Known As:	Suruahá
States:	Perú, Brazil
Ethnicity:	140 Zuruahã people (2006)
Speakers:	140
Date:	2006
Ref:	e18
Speakers2:	monolingual
Familycolor:	American
Fam1:	Arawan
Iso3:	swx
Glotto:	suru1263
Glottorefname:	Suruaha

Zuruahá (also called Suruaha, Suruwaha, Suruwahá, Zuruwahã, Zuruaha, Índios do Coxodoá ^[1]) is an Arawan language spoken in Brazil by about 130 people.

Zuruahá is mentioned in Kaufman (1994) from personal communication from Dan Everett. He made first contact with the community (a 3-day hike from Dení territory in Amazonas state) in 1980. The language had not been studied as of 1994, but seems most similar to Deni.

Phonology

Phoneme inventory

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	pronounced as /ink/	pronounced as /ink/	pronounced as /ink/¹
Open-mid	pronounced as /ink/		pronounced as /ink/¹
Open	pronounced as /ink/

The vowel /u/ is ambiguous regarding its classification in the system. As in Deni and other languages of the family, it works as if it had an intermediate height between /a/ and /e/. In other words, /u/ is not specified in the terms of the close feature. The asymmetry of the vowel system is also due to the insertion of /i/ in the system. This vowel appears to have been introduced into the system more recently. According to Dixon and Everett, the central vowel was not part of the Proto-Arawá vowel system. In Suruwahá, it has a different behaviour than the other vowels: it is rare in the language of old people; never appears in diphthongs and is the phonetic realization of the neutralisation of the contrast between the other vowels in certain positions.^[2]

Consonants

	Labial	Alveolar	Alveopalatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	pronounced as /ink/	pronounced as /ink/ pronounced as /ink/ pronounced as /ink/ pronounced as /ink/¹		pronounced as /ink/ pronounced as /ink/
Nasal	pronounced as /ink/	pronounced as /ink/ pronounced as /ink/
Tap		pronounced as /ink/ pronounced as /ink/²
Affricate			pronounced as /ink/
Fricative		pronounced as /ink/ pronounced as /ink/	pronounced as /ink/		pronounced as /ink/
Approximant				pronounced as /ink/

Suruwahá's alveolar plosive consonants are slightly backed, resembling retroflex consonants.
The alveolar tap occurs in colloquial speech, but, in careful pronunciation, it is actually pronounced as an alveolar lateral flap.^[3]

References

http://pib.socioambiental.org/pt/povo/zuruaha/984 Zuruahã
http://www.etnolinguistica.org/biblio:suzuki-1995-esboco Esboço preliminar da fonologia Suruwahá
http://www.etnolinguistica.org/biblio:suzuki-1995-esboco Esboço preliminar da fonologia Suruwahá