Rikbaktsa language
language
The Rikbaktsa language, also spelled Aripaktsa, Erikbatsa or Erikpatsa and known ambiguously as Canoeiro, is a language spoken by 40 of the Rikbaktsa people of Mato Grosso, Brazil, that forms its own branch of the Macro-Gê languages, or is a language isolate.
Most Rikbaktsa can speak both Rikbaktsa and Portuguese. Younger individuals tend to speak Portuguese more frequently and fluently than their elders, but older individuals generally struggle with Portuguese and use it only with non-indigenous Brazilians.
Jolkesky (2016) also notes that there are lexical similarities with the Cariban languages.
Locations
The 22nd edition of Ethnologue reports that it is spoken around confluence of the Sangue River and Juruena River in:
Japuira on the east bank of the Juruena River, between the Arinos River and Sangue River
Posto Escondido on the west bank of the Juruena River (9 villages, 14 settlements)
Phonology
/i, u/ can be heard as [ɪ, ʊ] when in syllable-final position.
/e, o/ can be heard as [ɛ, ɔ] when in unstressed syllables.
/a/ is heard as [ʌ] in final unstressed syllables, as [æ] when following /tʃ/ heard as [tʃʲ], and as [ɑ] when occurring after the sequence /ku/.
A glottal stop [ʔ] can also be heard in initial and final position when before and after vowels.
/d/ can be palatalized as [dʲ] when before /i/.
/t͡ʃ/ can be palatalized as [t͡ʃʲ] when in front of /a/.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rikbaktsa language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.