Munichi is an extinct language which was spoken in the village of Munichis, about 10 miles (16 km) west of Yurimaguas, Loreto Region,

Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...

. In 1988, there were two mother-tongue speakers, but they had not met since the 1970s. The last known fluent speaker, Victoria Huancho Icahuate, died in the late 1990s. As of 2009 there were several semi-speakers who retained significant lexical, and partial grammatical, knowledge of the language (Michael et al. 2013). It is also called ''Balsapuertiño'', named after the village of Balsapuerto in the department of Loreto, Peru. Word order in Munichi is VSO.

Other varieties

Unattested "Munichi stock" varieties listed by Loukotka (1968): *Tabaloso - spoken in Loreto department in the village of Tabalosa on the Mayo River *Chasutino (Cascoasoa) - once spoken in the village of Chasuta on the Huallaga River; now only Quechua is spoken. *Huatama (Otanavi) - once spoken in the villages of San José de Sisa and Otanahui in the same region; now only Quechua is spoken. *Lama (Lamista) - extinct language once spoken on the Moyobamba River. The last survivors now speak only Quechua or Spanish. *Suchichi (Suriche) - extinct language once spoken in the village of Tarapoto in the same region *Zapaso - extinct language from the same region, once spoken on the Saposoa River *Nindaso - once spoken on the Huallaga River north of the Zapaso tribe *Nomona - once spoken on the left bank of the Saposoa River Varieties listed by Mason (1950): *Muniche *Muchimo *Otanabe *Churitana

Classification

The language is considered an isolate (Michael et al. 2013), but the pronominal suffixes bear a close resemblance to those reconstructed for proto- Arawakan (Gibson 1996:18-19), and some lexical items are similar to ones in Arawakan languages (Jolkesky 2016:310–317). Although Jolkesky (''id''.) argues that the language belongs to a putative Macro-Arawakan stock, evidence has yet to be provided for placing it either in a sister branch to the Arawakan language family or in a branch within this language family. There is substantial borrowing from the local variety of Quechua, and to a lesser extent from Spanish and Cahuapanan languages (Michael et al. 2013).

Language contact

Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Cholon-Hibito, Kechua, and Mochika language families due to contact.

Phonology

Munichi has six vowels: /a, e, i, ɨ, o, u/.

Vocabulary

Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items for Munichi. :

References

Bibliography

* Gibson, Michael L. 1996. ''El Munichi: Un idioma que se extingue''. Serie Lingüística Peruana, 42. Pucallpa: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano
Available here
* Jolkesky, M. 2016. Estudo arqueo-ecolinguístico das terras tropicais sul-americanas. Brasilia: UnB. PhD Dissertation
Available here
* Michael, Lev, Stephanie Farmer, Greg Finley, Christine Beier, and Karina Sullón Acosta. 2013. A sketch of Muniche segmental and prosodic phonology. International Journal of American Linguistics 79(3):307-347. *Michael, L.; Beier, Ch.; Acosta, K. S.; Farmer, S.; Finley, G.; Roswell, M. (2009). Dekyunáwa: Un diccionario de nuestro idioma muniche. (Manuscript). {{Arawakan languages Extinct languages of South America Language isolates of South America Languages of Peru Indigenous languages of the Americas Languages extinct in the 1990s Verb–subject–object languages