Machiguenga (Matsigenka) is a major

Arawakan language Arawakan (''Arahuacan, Maipuran Arawakan, "mainstream" Arawakan, Arawakan proper''), also known as Maipurean (also ''Maipuran, Maipureano, Maipúre''), is a language family that developed among ancient indigenous peoples in South America. Branc ...

in the Campa sub-branch of the family. It is spoken in the

Urubamba River The Urubamba River or Vilcamayo River (possibly from Quechua ''Willkamayu'', for "sacred river") is a river in Peru. Upstream it is called Vilcanota River (possibly from Aymara ''Willkanuta'', for "house of the sun"). Within the La Convención ...

Basin and along the

Manu River Manu may refer to: Geography *Manú Province, a province of Peru, in the Madre de Dios Region ** Manú National Park, Peru **Manú River, in southeastern Peru * Manu River (Tripura), which originates in India and flows into Bangladesh *Manu Temp ...

in the

Cusco Cusco, often spelled Cuzco (; qu, Qusqu ()), is a city in Southeastern Peru near the Urubamba Valley of the Andes mountain range. It is the capital of the Cusco Region and of the Cusco Province. The city is the seventh most populous in Peru ...

and Madre de Dios

departments Department may refer to: * Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility Government and military *Department (administrative division), a geographical and administrative division within a country, ...

Peru , image_flag = Flag of Peru.svg , image_coat = Escudo nacional del Perú.svg , other_symbol = Great Seal of the State , other_symbol_type = Seal (emblem), National seal , national_motto = "Fi ...

by around 6,200 people. According to Ethnologue, it is experiencing pressure from

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: ** Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Ca ...

and

Quechua Quechua may refer to: *Quechua people, several indigenous ethnic groups in South America, especially in Peru *Quechuan languages, a Native South American language family spoken primarily in the Andes, derived from a common ancestral language **So ...

in the Urubamba region, but is active and healthy in the Manu region (most speakers are monolingual in Matsigenka). It is close enough to

Nomatsiguenga The Machiguenga (also Matsigenka, Matsigenga) are an indigenous people who live in the high jungle, or''montaña'', area on the eastern slopes of the Andes and in the Amazon Basin jungle regions of southeastern Peru. Their population in 2020 a ...

that the two are sometimes considered dialects of a single language; both are spoken by the

Machiguenga people The Machiguenga (also Matsigenka, Matsigenga) are an indigenous people who live in the high jungle, or''montaña'', area on the eastern slopes of the Andes and in the Amazon Basin jungle regions of southeastern Peru. Their population in 2020 amou ...

Nanti Nanti is an Arawakan language Arawakan (''Arahuacan, Maipuran Arawakan, "mainstream" Arawakan, Arawakan proper''), also known as Maipurean (also ''Maipuran, Maipureano, Maipúre''), is a language family that developed among ancient indigeno ...

is partially mutually intelligible but ethnically distinct. There is extensive morphological inflection in Matsigenka; it is considered to be

polysynthetic In linguistic typology, polysynthetic languages, formerly holophrastic languages, are highly synthetic languages, i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes (word parts that have independent meaning but may or may not be able to ...

and features an

agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative lang ...

morphology, where both suffixes and prefixes are used to mark various

inflectional In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, an ...

categories.

Phonology

Consonants

* Sounds /p, t, tʲ/ are heard as voiced , d, dʲafter nasal consonants. They may also be heard as prenasalized ��b, ⁿdin word-initial positions. * /β/ can be heard as approximant sounds , β̞intervocalically between /a/. It can also be heard as a voiced plosive after nasals, and as prenasal ��bin word-initial position. * Sounds /ɣ, ɣʲ/ can be heard as approximant sounds �, ɰʲintervocalically in syllable-initial position, and /ɣʲ/ as in free variation in word-initial position. They are also heard as �, ɡʲafter nasal sounds. /ɣ, ɣʲ/ can be heard as prenasal ��ɡ, ᵑɡʲin word-initial position. * /n/ can be heard as �before velar sounds.

Vowels

* /i, u/ can be heard as semivowels

, j The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline o ...

when preceding vowels.

References

Languages of Peru Campa languages {{Arawakan-lang-stub