Urarina is a

language isolate A language isolate is a language that has no demonstrable genetic relationship with any other languages. Basque in Europe, Ainu and Burushaski in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, Haida and Zuni in North America, Kanoê in South America, and Tiwi ...

spoken in

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 ...

, specifically in the

Loreto Region Loreto () is Peru's northernmost department and region. Covering almost one-third of Peru's territory, Loreto is by far the nation's largest department, slightly smaller than Japan; it is also one of the most sparsely populated regions due to ...

of Northwest Peru, by the Urarina people. There are around 3,000 speakers in Urarinas District (along the Chambira River). It uses the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Gree ...

. It is also known as Itucali, Simacu or Shimacu. It has the rare canonical word order of object–verb–subject.

Classification

The classification of Urarina remains contentious: academics have placed the language in at least four language families including Panoan, Tupian, Macro-Tucanoan, and Amerind. However, the proposed language families share few similarities with Urarina, meaning it is likely best described as either “unclassified” or as a

. It is usually assumed that it is a language isolate given Urarina’s complete lack of lexical overlap with any languages surrounding Urarina territory.

Dialects

There are four Urarina dialect zones: *Zone A (western area, including Tigrillo and Espejo) *Zone B (Lower Chambira dialects, including the Asna and Airico Rivers) *Zone C (Upper Chambira and all of its tributaries) *Zone D (Corrientes)

Language contact

Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the

Arawak The Arawak are a group of Indigenous peoples of northern South America and of the Caribbean. The term "Arawak" has been applied at various times to different Indigenous groups, from the Lokono of South America to the Taíno (Island Arawaks), w ...

Leko Leko may refer to: * Leko (surname) * Leko languages, a small group of African Savanna languages * Leco language, a moribund isolate language of Bolivia * Lekolite or Leko, a type of stage spotlight * Alexandro da Silva Santos or Leko, Brazilian fo ...

, and Omurano language families due to contact.

Status

Urarina is currently spoken by the 2,000-3,000 members of the Urarina tribe, the majority of whom have retained the ability to speak the language. However, bilingualism and use of Spanish in everyday life is on the rise, as more and more Spanish-speaking mestizos have immigrated to the valley where the Urarina live. While there is a bilingual education system, most bilingual schools almost exclusively use Spanish, as the majority of the teachers do not speak Urarina. The version of Urarina that is spoken by younger generations has lost a substantial degree of grammatical complexity and vocabulary, as correlated to the loss of traditional cultural practices and beliefs. The language is considered potentially endangered.

Phonology

The following is the phonology of Urarina as described by Olawsky.

Consonants

Vowels

Orthography is only written where it differs from IPA

Grammar

Urarina has several rare grammatical characteristics. The language follows the OVS word order: of all the languages that use OVS word order, Urarina is among the strictest adherents to this word order in speech. Another feature of Urarina is its complex system on all verbs (excluding borrowings). Every verb is marked according to one of three paradigms, as determined by a complicated set of pragmatic and syntactic conditions. Urarina follows a similarly unique word class system. Numerals and adjectives that are borrowed from Quechua and

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 countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

are placed in a completely separate class from indigenous Urarina words. Urarina also follows syntactic rules wherein the pitch-accent system changes the tone of a word, based on the preceding word class. The language's set of unique features has recently garnered special attention from linguists. However, Urarina's distinctive grammatical features are gradually disappearing as younger generations speak a Urarina that is being influenced by a growing bilingualism in Spanish. Like many other Amazonian languages, Urarina follows a

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 t ...

, agglutinative word morphology in relating to verbs.

Vocabulary

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

Flora and fauna

List of selected plant and animal names in Urarina: