Kunza language

Kunza
Atacama
Likanantaí
Native to	Atacama Desert
Ethnicity	Atacama people
Extinct	ca. 1950s
Language family	language isolate
Language codes
ISO 639-3	kuz
Glottolog	kunz1244

Kunza a.k.a. Cunza, also known as Likanantaí, Lipe, Ulipe, or Atacameño, is an extinct language isolate once spoken in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile and southern Perú (specifically in Peine, Socaire (Salar de Atacama), and Caspana) by the Lickan-antay people, who have since shifted to Spanish.

The last Kunza speaker was found in 1949, although some have been found since according to anthropologists. There are 2,000 Atacameños (W. Adelaar). A dictionary was made for Kunza.

Kaufman (1990) found a proposed connection between Kunza and the likewise unclassified Kapixaná to be plausible; however, when that language was more fully described in 2004, it turned out to be an isolate.

Kunza contains a typical 5-vowel inventory: /a, e, i, o, u/. All vowels have long counterparts, and Kunza displays contrastive vowel length.

Consonants

		Bilabial		Alveolar		Postalveolar		Palatal	Velar		Uvular		Glottal
		plain	ejective	plain	ejective	plain	ejective		plain	ejective	plain	ejective
Stop	voiceless	p	pʼ	t	tʼ				k	kʼ	q	qʼ	ʔ
	voiced	b
Affricate				t͡s		t͡ʃ	t͡ʃʼ
Fricative	voiceless			s					x		χ		h
	voiced								ɣ
Nasal		m		n
Approximant				l				j
Flap				ɾ

See also

• Macro-Paesan languages

External links

• Kunza Swadesh vocabulary list (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)
• Spanish-Kunza dictionary online
• Bibliography about Kunza
• Alain Fabre, 2005, Diccionario etnolingüístico y guía bibliográfica de los pueblos indígenas sudamericanos: KUNZA[1]