Narrativas Mitológicas Arara e Dicionário Karo-Português: documentação de uma língua indígena ameaçada de extinção

Abstract

The Karo language, spoken by the Arara Indians of Rondônia, belongs to the Ramarama linguistic family (Gabas, 2001), Tupi trunk (Rodrigues, 1986). Like other indigenous languages spoken in Brazil, Karo is threatened with disappearance, since the number of individuals speaking it is very small: about 170 individuals. The present research subproject aims to continue the process of documentation of the Karo language through the elaboration of a Karo-Portuguese Dictionary and the organization of a Book of Arara Myths. In this phase, the work was focused on the execution of the following activities: continuing the elaboration process of the Karo-Portuguese dictionary, with the main objective of inserting new lexical items, as well as inserting examples (in sentence context) for each existing word and reviewing the more than 1600 lexical items stored in the database; inserting illustrative images; reviewing the Arara myths, both the literal transcription into Karo and the general translation into Portuguese. As a result of this process, we have 17 revised Arara narratives together with the informant Sebastião Arara, and the Karo Portuguese Dictionary database has approximately 1600 lexical entries distributed in 14 distinct fields. Of these, about 1200 entries have the field \xv (example of occurrence of the lexeme) properly filled out; inclusion of approximately 90 illustrative images of some semantic fields, such as birds, plants and body parts. The Dictionary will enable researchers (linguists, anthropologists, archaeologists, etc.) to know specific terms of the language that can serve in their research, such as the designation of kinship terms, names of animals, plants, manufactured utensils, ceremonies, etc. Through the publication of the Arara Book of Myths, it will be possible to get to know a traditional form of expression of an indigenous people, as well as their cultural conception.