How many speakers does Kanakanavu have?

Four, according to the 2012 census.

Which language is Kanakanavu closest to?

Saaroa. Both are Southern Tsouic. Saaroa oral tradition says the Southern Tsou split into the Kanakanabu and the Saaroa about 800 years ago.

Kanakanavu language: four speakers in Kaohsiung

Kanakanavu

Language · official in 1 country

Four people spoke Kanakanavu in the 2012 census, and the language is moribund. It is a Southern Tsouic language of the Kanakanavu, an indigenous people of Taiwan who live in the villages of Manga and Takanua in Namasia District, the former Sanmin Township, in Kaohsiung.

How Takanua was assembled

After the Dutch colonial period of the 17th century, Han Chinese immigration came to dominate the island's population. Takanua itself is a village put together by the Japanese, who relocated several indigenous groups there to rule them more easily. The Kanakanavu share territory with an Isbukun Bunun group and have adopted Bunun as their everyday language.

Why its words run long

Kanakanavu has 14 consonants, and all its plosives are voiceless. Its liquid consonants have been hard to describe. There are 6 vowels. Where two or more meet they are pronounced as diphthongs or triphthongs, and it is often unclear whether vowel length is distinctive. Syllables are consonant plus vowel, and very few words, even simple ones, have fewer than three or four syllables. /s/ sounds as [ʃ] before /i/.

Who has written it down

Several texts have been transcribed by outsiders in the orthography of the Council of Indigenous Peoples, and a dictionary exists. The spelling uses c for /ts/, ng for /ŋ/, r and l for two different flaps, ꞌ for the glottal stop and ʉ for the central vowel.