Chamicuro ( , referring to a type of worm) is a nearly extinct South American language spoken in Peru. The language was used by the Chamicuro people, who number around one hundred people. The Chamicuros currently live on a tributary of the Huallaga river, in Peru, in an area called Pampa Hermosa, though many had been dislocated to the Yavarí and Napo Rivers and to Brazil.

Status

As with all native languages in Peru, Chamicuro was by default an official language in the area in which it was spoken. A dictionary has been published by the Chamicuro, however no children can speak the language as the community has shifted to Spanish.

Classification

Chamicuro is an Arawakan language. However, it has been historically claimed to be a member of the Panoan language family instead; Julian Steward, writing in the Handbook of South American Indians, claimed that Chamicuro was linguistically close to Shipibo, a Panoan language.

There is dispute as to whether the unattested language of the Aguano people was the same language as, or related to, Chamicuro. Čestmír Loukotka (1968) had identified it as a relative of Chamicuro, but the Chamicuro report that the Aguano people spoke Quechua.

Phonology

Vowels

Chamicuro has five vowels: /a, e, i, o, u/. All vowels have both short and long forms, though long vowels are rare. It is not a tonal language.

Consonants

devoice to at the end of a syllable:

1. 'man, husband'

   'smoke'

A laminal alveolar fricative occurs in Chamicuro as a realization of underlying .

Typology

Chamicuro is an agglutinative language and has basic verb–subject–object word order. It distinguishes inalienable and alienable possession but not gender.

References