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Mocoví
Native to	Argentina
Ethnicity	Mocoví (2004)
Native speakers	3,000 (2011)
Language family	Guaicuruan Southern Mocoví
Official status
Recognised minority language in	Argentina Chaco Province
Language codes
ISO 639-3	moc
Glottolog	moco1246
ELP	Mocoví

The Mocoví language is a Guaicuruan language of Argentina spoken by about 3,000 people, mostly in Santa Fe, Chaco, and Formosa provinces.

In 2010, the province of Chaco in Argentina declared Mocoví as one of four provincial official languages alongside Spanish and the indigenous Qom and Wichí.

The Mataco-Guicurú language family is a group of 11 indigenous languages of the Americas spoken in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay, comprising two subfamilies with a total of approximately 100,000 speakers distributed in the Bermejo, Pilcomayo and Paraguay river basins. Other languages of the family are extinct and some others are threatened with extinction.

In the province of Santa Fe, it is used mostly by the elderly Mocoví population. Among adults, bilingualism is widespread and among young people Spanish is preferred. In the province of Chaco, the Mocoví language and culture are carefully preserved.

Writing in the Mocoví language was non-existent until the 1950s, when a group of missionaries developed a Latin alphabet writing system for the Toba language, which was later adapted to Mocoví for the translation of the Bible by Alberto Buckwater. This writing system is still based on correspondence with Spanish orthography, so it contains some of its irregularities.

Phonology

Consonants

The following are the consonants of Mocoví:

Vowels

Gualdieri (1998) gives the following vowels:

Notes

1. ^ Mocoví at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. Ley No. 6604 de la Provincia de Chaco, 28 de julio de 2010, B.O., (9092), Link Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine
3. ^ Gualdieri (1998), p. 27

References

• Grondona, Verónica María (1998). A grammar of Mocoví (PDF) (Doctor of Philosophy thesis). University of Pittsburgh.
• Gualdieri, Cecilia B. (1998). Mocovi (Guaicuru): fonologia e morfossintaxe (Thesis). Universidade Estadual de Campinas.

External links

• https://web.archive.org/web/20041211212213/http://www.mpi.nl/DOBES/INFOpages/Posters/Argentina/Argentina.pdf
• Mocoví Indians - The Catholic Encyclopedia
• Argentinian Languages Collection of Salvador Bucca at the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America, including audio recordings of stories and word lists in Mocoví.
• Mocoví (Intercontinental Dictionary Series)
• http://mocovilanguage.weebly.com/people-and-culture.html
• https://ri.conicet.gov.ar/handle/11336/13436
• Carrió, Cintia (November 2015). "Alternancias Verbales en Mocoví (Familia Guaycurú, Argentina)" [Verbal alternations in Mocoví (Guaycuruan family, Argentina)]. Lingüística (in Spanish). 31 (2): 9–26. hdl:11336/55718.
• Califa, Martín (24 July 2014). "La Estructura Argumental Preferida en mocoví (guaycurú): Proyecciones teórico-metodológicas" [The Preferred Argument Structure in Mocoví (Guaycurú): Theoretical-methodological projections]. Signo y seña (in Spanish) (25): 9–34. doi:10.34096/sys.n25.3065 (inactive 2024-11-02).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link)
• http://ffyl1.uncu.edu.ar/IMG/pdf/Censabella_y_Messineo_eds_2013.pdf#page=39

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• Guaicuruan languages
• Endangered Guaicuruan languages
• Languages of Argentina
• Chaco linguistic area
• Indigenous languages of the Americas stubs
• Santa Fe, Argentina
• Formosa, Argentina