Itonama language

❧

Wikipedia

Itonama
sihni pandara
Native toBolivia
RegionBeni Department
Ethnicity2,900 Itonama people (2006)[1]
Extinct2012–2023[1][2]
Latin
Official status
Official language in
 Bolivia
Language codes
ISO 639-3ito
Glottologiton1250
ELPItonama
Itonama is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Itonama (Itonama: sihnipadara[2]) is a language isolate once spoken by the Itonama people in the Amazonian lowlands of north-eastern Bolivia. It was spoken on the Itonomas River and Lake[3] in Beni Department.

In Magdalena town on the western bank of the Itonama River (a tributary of the Iténez River), located in Iténez Province, only a few elderly people remember a few words and phrases.[4]: 483 

Language contact

Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Nambikwaran languages due to contact.[5]

An automated computational analysis (ASJP 4) by Müller et al. (2013)[6] found lexical similarities between Itonama and Movima, likely due to contact.

Phonology

Vowels

Front Central Back
High i ɨ ⟨ï⟩ u
Mid e ~ ɛ ⟨e⟩ o
Low a ⟨a⟩

Diphthongs are /ai au/ ⟨ay aw⟩.

Consonants

Bilabial Alveolar Post-
alveolar		 Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal m n
Plosive/
Affricate		 plain p t tʃ ~ ts ⟨ch⟩ tʲ ⟨ty⟩ k ⟨k⟩ ʔ ⟨’⟩
ejective tʼ tʃʼ ~ tsʼ ⟨chʼ⟩ kʼ ⟨kʼ⟩
voiced b d
Fricative s h
Liquid lateral l
rhotic ɾ ⟨r⟩
Semivowel w ~ β ⟨w⟩ j ⟨y⟩

The postalveolar affricates /tʃ tʃʼ/ have alveolar allophones [ts tsʼ]. Variation occurs between speakers, and even within the speech of a single person.

The semivowel /w/ is realized as a bilabial fricative [β] when preceded and followed by identical vowels.[2]

Morphology

Itonama is a polysynthetic, head-marking, verb-initial language with an accusative alignment system along with an inverse subsystem in independent clauses, and straightforward accusative alignment in dependent clauses.

Nominal morphology lacks case declension and adpositions and so is simpler than verbal morphology (which has body-part and location incorporation, directionals, evidentials, verbal classifiers, among others).[7]

Vocabulary

Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items for Itonama.[3] They are shown here alongside the forms cited in the Intercontinental Dictionary Series (IDS),[8] which takes its data from Camp and Liccardi (1967).

glossItonama (Loukotka)Itonama (IDS)
onechash-kániu-kʼaʔne
twochash-chupa-tʃupa
toothhuomóteoh-womotʼe
tonguepáchosnílaoh-potʃosnila
handmapárauh-maʔpara
womanubíkawabɨʔka
waterhuanúhuewanuʔwe
fireubáriu-bari
moonchakakáshkau-ʔtʲahka-ʔkaʔka
maizeudámeu-tʃuʔu, kanasbɨstʃa
jaguarótgu
houseúkuu-ku

See also

Further reading

  • Camp, E. L.; Liccardi, M. R. (1967). Itonama, castellano e inglés. (Vocabularios Bolivianos, 6.) Riberalta: Summer Institute of Linguistics.

References

  1. 1 2 Itonama at Ethnologue (28th ed., 2025) Closed access icon
  2. 1 2 3 Crevels, Mily (2023-01-30), Epps, Patience; Michael, Lev (eds.), "11 Itonama", Volume 1 Language Isolates I: Aikanã to Kandozi-Shapra: An International Handbook, De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 483–546, doi:10.1515/9783110419405-011, ISBN 978-3-11-041940-5, retrieved 2025-10-20
  3. 1 2 Loukotka, Čestmír (1968). Classification of South American Indian languages. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center.
  4. ↑ Epps, Patience; Michael, Lev, eds. (2023). Amazonian Languages: Language Isolates. Volume I: Aikanã to Kandozi-Chapra. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-041940-5.
  5. ↑ Jolkesky, Marcelo Pinho de Valhery (2016). Estudo arqueo-ecolinguístico das terras tropicais sul-americanas (Ph.D. dissertation) (2 ed.). Brasília: University of Brasília.
  6. ↑ Müller, André, Viveka Velupillai, Søren Wichmann, Cecil H. Brown, Eric W. Holman, Sebastian Sauppe, Pamela Brown, Harald Hammarström, Oleg Belyaev, Johann-Mattis List, Dik Bakker, Dmitri Egorov, Matthias Urban, Robert Mailhammer, Matthew S. Dryer, Evgenia Korovina, David Beck, Helen Geyer, Pattie Epps, Anthony Grant, and Pilar Valenzuela. 2013. ASJP World Language Trees of Lexical Similarity: Version 4 (October 2013).
  7. ↑ Crevels, M. Who did what to whom in Magdalena. p. 3.
  8. ↑ Key, Mary Ritchie (2023). Key, Mary Ritchie; Comrie, Bernard (eds.). "Itonama dictionary". Intercontinental Dictionary Series. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Retrieved 2025-10-20.