Yaminawa language
language
Yaminawa (Yaminahua) is a Panoan language of western Amazonia. It is spoken by the Yaminawá and some related peoples.
Yaminawa constitutes an extensive dialect cluster. Attested dialects are two or more Brazilian Yaminawa dialects, Peruvian Yaminawa, Chaninawa, Chitonawa, Mastanawa (=Nastanawa), Parkenawa (= Yora or "Nawa"), Shanenawa (Xaninaua, = Katukina de Feijó), Sharanawa (= Marinawa), Shawannawa (= Arara), Yawanawá, Yaminawa-arara (obsolescent; very similar to Shawannawa/Arara), Nehanáwa†). Xinane Yura, a recently discovered variety, is spoken by a group contacted in Kampa and Envira River Isolated Peoples Indigenous Territory, Acre, Brazil during the 2010s.
Very few Yaminawá speak Spanish or Portuguese, though the Shanenawa have mostly shifted to Portuguese. Other sources report that the Yamináwa have switched entirely to Portuguese and no longer use their original language.
Phonology
The vowels of Yaminawa are /a, i, ɯ, u/. /i, ɯ, u/ can also be heard as [ɪ, ɨ, o]. Sharanawa, Yaminawa, and Yora have nasalized counterparts for each of the vowels, and demonstrate contrastive nasalization.
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This entry incorporates text from “Yaminawa 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.