Itonama language

Itonama
Itonama
sihni pandara
Native to	Bolivia
Region	Beni Department
Ethnicity	2,900 Itonama people (2006)
Extinct	2012–2023
Language family	Language isolate
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Official language in	Bolivia
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ito
Glottolog	iton1250
ELP	Itonama
	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
Liquid	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).

gloss	Itonama (Loukotka)	Itonama (IDS)
one	chash-káni	u-kʼaʔne
two	chash-chupa	-tʃupa
tooth	huomóte	oh-womotʼe
tongue	páchosníla	oh-potʃosnila
hand	mapára	uh-maʔpara
woman	ubíka	wabɨʔka
water	huanúhue	wanuʔwe
fire	ubári	u-bari
moon	chakakáshka	u-ʔtʲahka-ʔkaʔka
maize	udáme	u-tʃuʔu, kanasbɨstʃa
jaguar	ótgu
house	úku	u-ku

References

^ ^a ^b Itonama at Ethnologue (28th ed., 2025)
^ ^a ^b ^c 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
^ ^a ^b Loukotka, Čestmír (1968). Classification of South American Indian languages. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center.
^ 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.
^ Jolkesky, Marcelo Pinho de Valhery (2016). Estudo arqueo-ecolinguístico das terras tropicais sul-americanas (Ph.D. dissertation) (2 ed.). Brasília: University of Brasília.
^ 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).
^ Crevels, M. Who did what to whom in Magdalena. p. 3.
^ 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.

Crevels, Mily (2002). "Itonama o Sihnipadara, Lengua no clasificada de la Amazonía Boliviana" (PDF). Estudios de Lingüística (in Spanish). 16.

External links

Sample of Itonama fragment
Lenguas de Bolivia Archived 2019-09-04 at the Wayback Machine (online edition)

[e28-1] Itonama at Ethnologue (28th ed., 2025)

[crev23-2] 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

[Loukotka-3] Loukotka, Čestmír (1968). Classification of South American Indian languages. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center.

[Amazonian_isolates_1-4] 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.

[Jolkesky-2016-5] Jolkesky, Marcelo Pinho de Valhery (2016). Estudo arqueo-ecolinguístico das terras tropicais sul-americanas (Ph.D. dissertation) (2 ed.). Brasília: University of Brasília.

[ASJP-4-6] 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.

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