ISO 639-3 yau | Native speakers 640 (2007) Glottolog yuwa1244 | |
Language family Piaroa–Saliban or Jodï–Saliban? | ||
The Hodï (Jodï, Jotí, Hoti) language, also known as Yuwana (Yoana), Waruwaru, or Chikano (Chicano), is a small unclassified language of Venezuela. Very little is known of it; its several hundred speakers are monolingual hunter-gatherers.
Contents
Classification
No classification of Hodï has yet been established to the satisfaction of linguists.
Attempts have been made to link Hodï with the nearby Piaroa–Saliban languages. A recent proposal classifies Hodï and (Piaroa–)Saliban as the branches of a single Jodï–Saliban macrofamily. However, similarities in vocabulary with the Piaroa–Saliban languages may in fact be due to sprachbunding: Henley, Mattéi-Müller and Reid (1996) argue that the apparent cognates between Hodï and Piaroa–Saliban are rather loanwords.
Limited by poor data, Henley et al. argue that Hodï may be related to the Nadahup languages. The only linguist to speak Hodï and Piaroa, Stanford Zent, has collected more reliable data and argues that it is "probably" related to the Piaroa–Saliban languages.
Since 1985 a relationship to the Yanomaman languages has also been suggested, in part on the grounds that Hodï shares 20% of its vocabulary with this family, but this hypothesis has since been largely rejected.
Phonology
The first phonological analysis is Vilera (1985).
The voiced stops are realized as nasals [m n ɲ] between nasal vowels.