Name: Works in Progress Jens Van Gysel
Start: 2025-11-07T12:00:00-08:00
Location: Humanities Center, California State University, Chico 400 West First St, Chico, CA, United States, California 95929

Jens Van Gysel, English and Languages and Cultures Faculty
Language Shift and Revitalization in Sanapaná
Sanapaná is an Indigenous language of Paraguay, spoken by around 1000 people. Over the last 100 years, it has undergone a gradual process of language shift towards Paraguayan Guarani and Spanish: ever more children acquire these two socio-economically dominant languages in the home rather than their ancestral language. In this talk, I will discuss two ways in which this language shift process has influenced the phonetics and phonology of Sanapaná as well as present an ongoing documentation project aiming to result in the first dictionary of the language.