Cholón language

Cholón (Spanish: lengua cholona), natively known as Seeptsá and Tsinganes, is a language of Peru. It was spoken near Uchiza, from Tingo María to Valle in the Huallaga River valley of Huanuco and San Martín regions.

The language was previously thought to be extinct but a native speaker was discovered in 2021, in the city of Juanjuí. Martha Pérez Valderrama is believed to be the last remaining speaker of Cholón. However, her cousin Clemente also speaks Cholón, and she reports that there are more speakers in the area. Despite the last fully fluent speakers dying in the 1990s, the current speakers can produce brief texts, not being limited to basic words and phrases.

Phonology

Due to the amateur Spanish pronunciation spellings used to transcribe Cholon, its sound inventory is uncertain. The following is an attempt at interpreting them.

Consonants

Consonants in (brackets) are only found in loanwords. /g/ is exclusive to one word, pangala 'forest turkey'.

[h] and [ʃ] are analyzed as allophones of /x/ and /s/, respectively.

Vowels

The vowels appear to be similar to Spanish [ae~ɪio~ʊu].

Grammar

Cholon distinguishes masculine and feminine grammatical gender in the second person. That is, one uses different forms for "you" depending on whether one is speaking to a man or a woman:

• Adelaar, Willem (2004). The Languages of the Andes. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-36275-7.
• Fabre, Alain. 2005. Diccionario etnolingüístico y guía bibliográfica de los pueblos indígenas sudamericanos: