It’s hard to imagine just how many languages make up our vast and highly diverse world. It’s far more than the few dozen that make up the majority languages of the world’s nations, far more than the few hundred that have official status in their local country. Altogether, there are more than 7,000 languages spoken in the world, although most are small, minority languages that face severe threats for their continued survival. South America is a particular hotspot for linguistic diversity, which is where we find Awa Pit.
Most of the 15,000 Awa-Kwaiker people speak the Awa Pit language as their mother tongue, with the total number of estimated speakers standing at about 13,000. However, despite the high proportion of speakers among the ethnic group, Awa Pit is classified as a severely endangered language, with the number of speakers decreasing year by year. That said, the language retains a high number of monolinguals, with the majority of Awa-Kwaiker women speaking only the indigenous language. In an effort to support the Awa Pit community, we at TranslationServices.com are proud to introduce our new Awa Pit translation services.
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A quick exploration of the Awa Pit language
Awa Pit, which literally means “tongue of the people” in the language itself, hails from high atop the Andes Mountains of southwestern Colombia and northwestern Ecuador, with the majority of speakers living on the Colombian side of the border. Awa-Kwaiker may even refer to themselves as inkal awa, or “mountain people,” to distinguish themselves from other nearby tribes. The Awa Pit language comes from the Barbacoan language family, which includes other indigenous languages from Colombia and Ecuador, such as Guambiano, Cha’palaa, and Tsáfiki.
In terms of its structure, Awa Pit constructs sentences in a subject-object-verb word order, as do around 45% of the world’s languages. The language features a number of enclitic markers, including one to mark the topic, another for emphasis, and a temporal marker, with enclitics functioning similarly to suffixes except that they can be appended to different elements of a full noun phrase, such as an adjective instead of the noun itself. Awa Pit also treats human and non-human nouns grammatically differently, marking human nouns in the object position but leaving non-human objects unmarked. It’s tricky to translate to and from Awa Pit, which is why it’s always worth it to work with experienced native speakers, such as ours.
Translating to and from Awa Pit the way you want
Awa Pit translation services are hard to find, and it’s easy to see why, given the severely endangered nature of the language and the relatively high rates of monolingualism in the community. But we’re happy to take on the challenge. We’ve gone to the Awa-Kwaiker communities in Colombia and Venezuela to find the best Awa Pit translators we could, building a robust and passionate team of translators eager to help you with your project. Whether you’re looking for translation services to or from Awa Pit, let us help.
Naturally, the scope of our Awa Pit translation services is limited to the relatively small pool of translators available, but within these restrictions, we aim to offer the most flexible translation services we can. Our translators boast a wide range of competencies and areas of expertise, which allows them to translate different types of texts to and from the language, including those for academic purposes, business goals, or literary objectives. We can help Awa Pit speakers transmit their messages all around the world or outsiders connect with local Awa Pit speakers through tailored marketing materials or enthralling stories. Whatever you need, we’ll do our best to provide it.
Don’t wait to start your Awa Pit translation project. Place your first order today and put our team to work!