Writing System: Kaiwá uses the Latin alphabet without diacritical marks, consisting of 20 letters. It is largely phonemic, meaning the pronunciation of words is closely tied to their written form. The consonants include p, t, k, b, d, g, m, n, ng, h, r, s, and w, while the vowels include a, e, i, o, and u.
Grammar: Kaiwá grammar is agglutinative, meaning that it forms words and expresses grammatical relationships by adding prefixes, suffixes, and infixes to root words. It typically follows a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) word order. The language also utilizes noun classifiers and includes verb conjugations that indicate tense, aspect, and mood.
Phonology: Kaiwá has a phonemic inventory that includes stops like /p, t, k/, nasals like /m, n, ŋ/, and fricatives like /s, h/. Its vowels include /a, e, i, o, u/, and they can occur in nasalized forms. Nasal harmony, where nasality spreads across vowels and consonants within a word, is a distinctive feature of the language’s phonology.
Lexicon: The Kaiwá lexicon is composed of words from the broader Guarani language family, with influences from other Tupi-Guarani languages. Over time, loanwords from Portuguese, Spanish, and other neighboring languages have entered the Kaiwá lexicon, reflecting historical interactions and modern linguistic borrowing.
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