Zoʼé language

Zoʼé
Poturu, Poturujara, Buré
Jo'é
Native toBrazil
RegionPará, Obidos Municipality, Cuminapanema River
EthnicityZoʼé
Native speakers
(150 cited 1998)
Tupian
Language codes
ISO 639-3pto
Glottologzoee1240
ELPZo'é
Linguasphere88-AAD-aa

Zoʼé (Joʼé) is a Tupian language spoken by the indigenous Zoʼé people of Pará, Brazil. It is close to the Emerillon language.

Zoʼé is also known as Zoé, Buré, Poturu, Poturujara, and Tupí of Cunimapanema.

Phonology

Zo’é has the following vowels and consonants as depicted in the tables below.

Consonants

Consonant phonemes
Bilabial Dental/
Alveolar		 Palatal
(-alveolar)		 Velar Glottal
plain pal. plain sib./pal. plain lab. plain pal. lab. plain pal.
Nasal m mʲ n nʲ ŋ ŋʲ
Stop/
Affricate		 voiceless p pʲ t t͡ʃ t͡ʃʷ k kʲ kʷ
voiced b bʲ d d͡ʒ ɡ ɡʲ gʷ ʔ
Fricative voiceless ɸ θ s h hʲ
voiced β ð
Sonorant w ɾ j

Vowels

Vowel and nasal phonemes
FrontCentralBack
Close iɨu
Close-mid eo
Open-mid ɛɔ
Open a

All oral vowel qualities have nasal vowel counterparts.

References

  1. ↑ Zoʼé at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ↑ de Castro, Onesimo M.; Hitotuzi, Nilton V.; Tatagiba, Alessandro B.; Vale, Maria da Conceiçao Q. (2024-09-24). "Interpretation of Ambiguous Segments in the Zo'é Language" (PDF). Education and Linguistics Research. 10 (2): 17–43. ISSN 2377-1356. Retrieved 2025-03-28.