Tamanaku language explained

Tamanaku
States:	Venezuela
Extinct:	20th century
Ref:	e25
Familycolor:	American
Fam1:	Cariban
Fam2:	Venezuelan Carib
Fam3:	Mapoyo–Tamanaku
Iso3:	tmz
Linglist:	tmz.html
Glotto:	tama1338
Glottorefname:	Tamanaku

Tamanaku (Tamañkú) is an extinct Cariban language of Venezuela.

The earliest word list of Tamanaku was published by Gilij in 1780, from his 20-year stay among the Tamanku beginning around 1750.^[1]

Phonology

Consonants

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	p	t		k	ʔ
Affricate			ts (dz)
Fricative	[β]				[h]
Nasal	m	n	[ɲ]
Liquid		r [l]
Approximant	w		j

Stops may have voiced allophones of [b d ɡ]. Allophones of /p, n, r/ include [β h ɲ l].^[2]

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i ĩ	ɨ ɨ̃	u ũ
Mid	e ẽ	ə ə̃	o õ
Low		a ã

Notes and References

1. Meira S, Birchall J, Chousou-Polydouri S. 2015. A character-based internal classification of the Cariban family. Talk presented at the 48th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguisticae Europaea, Leiden, Netherlands, Sept. 4.
2. Book: Melles, Gavin. Reseña: Marie Claude Mattéi-Muller y P. Henley - Los tamanaku: su lengua, su vida. 1991.