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Munichi
Muniche, Balsapuertiño
Native to	Peru
Region	Loreto
Extinct	late 1990s, with the death of Victoria Huancho Icahuate 1-2 semispeakers (2023)[1]
Language family	Language isolate
Dialects	see below
Writing system	Latin[2]
Language codes
ISO 639-3	myr
Glottolog	muni1258
ELP	Munichi
Location of Munichi

Munichi is an extinct language which was spoken in the village of Munichis, about 10 miles (16 km) west ofYurimaguas,Loreto Region,Peru. In 1988, there were two mother-tongue speakers, but they had not met since the 1970s. The last known fluent speaker, Victoria Huancho Icahuate, died in the late 1990s, but the language was already moribund by the 1930s. As of 2009, there were several semi-speakers who retained significant lexical, and partial grammatical, knowledge of the language (Michael et al. 2013).^[1]

It is also calledBalsapuertiño, named after the village ofBalsapuerto in thedepartment of Loreto, Peru.^[3]

Word order in Munichi isVSO.^[4][5]

The language is considered an isolate (Michael et al. 2013), but thepronominalsuffixes bear a close resemblance to those reconstructed for proto-Arawakan (Gibson 1996:18-19), and some lexical items are similar to ones in Arawakan languages (Jolkesky 2016:310–317).^[6] Although Jolkesky (id.) argues that the language belongs to a putativeMacro-Arawakan stock, evidence has yet to be provided for placing it either in a sister branch to the Arawakan language family or in a branch within this language family. There is substantial borrowing from the local variety ofQuechua, and to a lesser extent fromSpanish andCahuapanan languages (Michael et al. 2013).

Unattested "Munichi stock" varieties listed by Loukotka (1968):^[3]

• Tabaloso - spoken in Loreto department in the village of Tabalosa on theMayo River
• Chasutino (Cascoasoa) - once spoken in the village of Chasuta on theHuallaga River; now only Quechua is spoken.
• Huatama (Otanavi) - once spoken in the villages ofSan José de Sisa and Otanahui in the same region; now only Quechua is spoken. Is a variety of Muniche proper.^[1]
• Lama (Lamista) - extinct language once spoken on theMoyobamba River. The last survivors now speak only Quechua or Spanish.
• Suchichi (Suriche) - extinct language once spoken in the village ofTarapoto in the same region
• Zapaso - extinct language from the same region, once spoken on theSaposoa River
• Nindaso - once spoken on theHuallaga River north of the Zapaso tribe
• Nomona - once spoken on the left bank of theSaposoa River

Varieties listed byMason (1950):^[7]

• Muniche
• Muchimo
• Otanabe
• Churitana

Currently, there are two distinguished varieties of Muniche. One of the dialects merges certain phonemes that the other dialect does not.^[1]

Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with theCholon-Hibito,Kechua, andMochika language families due to contact.^[8]

A number of Spanish loanwords may have passed throughShiwilu, aCahuapanan language.^[1]

Munichi has six vowels: /a, e, i, ɨ, o, u/.^[9]Michael et al. (2023) reduce this to five vowels, these being/i,ɨ,u,e,a/.^[1]

1. The two nasals listed here are treated as one placeless nasal by Michael et al. (2023). It assimilates to the position of the following stop or affricate; otherwise it is realized as [n] in onsets and [ŋ] in codas.^[1] This may be seen in the following examples:

Note that[m] does not exhibit this assimilation.

1. [t͡ʃ] and [ʈʂ] lose their contrast before /i/, /e/, and /ɨ/, with only [t͡ʃ] occurring before /i/ and /e/, and [ʈʂ] before /ɨ/.
2. /h/ becomes [x] immediately before other consonants.

The maximal syllable in Muniche is C₁C₂VC₃, with the following restrictions for the consonants. Syllables without onset are permitted.^[1]

1. C₁ must be voiceless.
2. C₂ cannot be a fricative.
3. C₁ and C₂ cannot be a glottal stop.
4. C₁ and C₂ cannot be both fricatives or both affricates.

Many consonant clusters in Muniche are suspected to arise from vowel reduction.

Muniche has adesiderative suffix-çu ~-cu, used to express that the subject of a verb to which the suffix is attached desires the outcome of the clause.^[1]

The subject must be the one desiring the realization of an action and the realizer of the action. To express the desire of someone else realizing an action, the complement-taking verbaçta must be used.

Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items for Munichi.^[3]

gloss	Munichi
one	wuítsa
two	utspa
three	uchuma
head	óke
ear	épue
tooth	dé
fire	chúshe
stone	sögte
sun	xowá
moon	spáltsi
maize	sáa
dog	xíno
boat	niasúta

• Kichwa-Lamista people

Wiktionary has a word list atAppendix:Munichi word list

• Gibson, Michael L. 1996.El Munichi: Un idioma que se extingue. Serie Lingüística Peruana, 42. Pucallpa: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.Available here.
• Jolkesky, M. 2016. Estudo arqueo-ecolinguístico das terras tropicais sul-americanas. Brasilia: UnB. PhD Dissertation.Available here.
• Michael, Lev, Stephanie Farmer, Greg Finley, Christine Beier, and Karina Sullón Acosta. 2013. A sketch of Muniche segmental and prosodic phonology. International Journal of American Linguistics 79(3):307-347.
• Michael, L.; Beier, Ch.; Acosta, K. S.; Farmer, S.; Finley, G.; Roswell, M. (2009).Dekyunáwa: Un diccionario de nuestro idioma muniche. (Manuscript).

• Extinct languages of South America
• Language isolates of South America
• Languages of Peru
• Indigenous languages of the Americas
• Languages extinct in the 1990s
• Verb–subject–object languages

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