Madí language
Arawan language
Madí—also known as Jamamadí after one of its dialects, and also Kapaná or Kanamanti (Canamanti)—is an Arawan language spoken by about 1,000 Jamamadi, Banawá, and Jarawara people scattered over Amazonas, Brazil.
Dialects
Madí (meaning simply "people") has three extant dialects, corresponding to three distinct tribal groups. Dialectal differences are an important part of tribal self-identification, and although all three dialects are mutually intelligible Madí speakers refer to them as separate languages. The dialects and the tribes they represent are as follows:
Jamamadí, spoken by 250 people to the northwest. As the most widely spoken dialect, "Jamamadí" is sometimes used to refer to the whole Madí-speaking population by outsiders and the neighboring Paumarí. The term, used by the Jamamadí people themselves, is a compound of jama "forest" and madi "people". This tribe is occasionally confused with another self-identified "Jamamadí" living further up the Purus River, who in fact speak a dialect of Kulina. The Jarawara use the word wahati and the Banawá wati to refer to the Jamamadí, both possibly meaning "liver".
Jarawara, spoken by about 170 in seven villages to the south. This term - which was originally used only by outsiders, but today used in self-reference when speaking to non-Madí - is a compound of the Lingua Geral jara "white person" and wara "to eat".
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This entry incorporates text from “Madí language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.