Akuntsu

Dear colleagues,

Prof. Carolina Aragon, the only person to ever work with the Akuntsú people and who described the language, is a collaborator of mine in the TuLaR (Tupían Language Resources) project. She has just returned from fieldwork and gave us the following update: there are only 3 speakers of Akuntsú at the moment, living under the protection of the Brazilian (FUNAI) in the Omerê indigenous area. the three monolingual women are Babawru, 38; Aiga, 55; and Pugapia 80. The last Akuntsú native speaker father a child with a Kanoe woman. The young man, now about 20 years of age, understands Akuntsú, since he had always had contact with the speakers of the language. Nonetheless, he refuses to cooperate with linguistic work on Akuntsú. He is, because of his mother, fluent in Kanoe and also fluent in Portuguese.

Best wishes,

Fabrício