Munichi is a recently extinct language which was spoken in the village of Munichis, about 10 miles (16 km) west of
Yurimaguas,
Loreto Region,
Peru. 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.[1]
The language is considered an isolate (Michael et al. 2013), but the
pronominalsuffixes 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).[5] 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.[6]
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).