The Wichí languages are an indigenous language family spoken by the Wichí in northwestern Argentina and far-southeastern Bolivia, part of the

Matacoan Matacoan (also ''Mataguayan, Matákoan, Mataguayo, Mataco–Mataguayo, Matacoano, Matacoana'') is a language family of northern Argentina, western Paraguay, and southeastern Bolivia. Family division Matacoan consists of four clusters of languag ...

family. They are also known as Mataco, Wichi, Wichí Lhamtés, Weenhayek, Noctenes, Matahuayo, Matako, Weʃwo. The name ''Mataco'' is common but pejorative.

Status

Currently, the Argentine government does not have education in indigenous languages in schools. Because the Wichí have to be fluent in Spanish to access government services, and children are only educated in Spanish, Wichí children only speak Spanish among themselves. This has made all Wichí dialects vulnerable to extinction. In 2010, the province of Chaco in Argentina declared Wichí as one of four provincial official languages alongside Spanish and the indigenous Moqoit and

Qom Qom (also spelled as "Ghom", "Ghum", or "Qum") ( fa, قم ) is the seventh largest metropolis and also the seventh largest city in Iran. Qom is the capital of Qom Province. It is located to the south of Tehran. At the 2016 census, its popul ...

Languages

They include the following languages: * Noktén (a.k.a. Noctén,

Wichí Lhamtés Nocten Wichí Lhamtés Nocten, or Weenhayek, is a Wichí language primarily spoken in Bolivia, where an estimated 1,810 Wichí people spoke it in 1994. An additional one hundred people spoke the language in Argentina in 1994. In Bolivia, the language is ...

), spoken in Bolivia and Argentina * Vejoz (a.k.a. Vejo, Pilcomayo, Bermejo,

Wichí Lhamtés Vejoz Wichí Lhamtés Vejoz is a Mataco-Guaicuru language of Argentina and Bolivia. Speakers are concentrated in northern parts of Chaco, Formosa, Salta, Jujuy Provinces, as well as west of Toba, the upper Bermejo River valley, and Pilcomayo River. Th ...

), spoken in Argentina and Bolivia * Wiznay (a.k.a. Güisnay,

Wichí Lhamtés Güisnay Wichí Lhamtés Güisnay or Wiznay is a Wichí language. Wichí Lhamtés Güisnay had an estimated 15,000 speakers in 1999 in Argentina. The language is centered in the Pilcomayo River region. Other names for the language include Güisnay, Mataco ...

), spoken in Argentina. The Argentine National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC) gives a figure of 36,135 Wichí speakers in Argentina. In Rosario, the third biggest city of Argentina, there is a community of about 10,000

Wichí people The Wichí are an indigenous people of South America. They are a large group of tribes ranging about the headwaters of the Bermejo River and the Pilcomayo River, in Argentina and Bolivia. Notes on designation This ethnic group was named by the En ...

, all of them fluent in Wichí, and some native speakers. There are a couple of bilingual primary schools. For Bolivia, Alvarsson estimated between 1,700 and 2,000 speakers in 1988; a census reported 1,912, and Díez Astete & Riester (1996) estimated between 2,300 and 2,600 Weenhayek in sixteen communities. According to Najlis (1968) and Gordon (2005), three main dialects can be distinguished in the Wichí group: southwestern or Vejós (Wehwós), northeastern or Güisnay (Weenhayek) and northwestern or Nocten (Oktenay). Tovar (1981) and other authors claim the existence of only two dialects (northeastern and southwestern), while Braunstein (1992–3), citing . identifies eleven ethnic subgroups. Wichí languages are predominantly

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...

ing and

polysynthetic In linguistic typology, polysynthetic languages, formerly holophrastic languages, are highly synthetic languages, i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes (word parts that have independent meaning but may or may not be able to ...

; verbal words have between 2 and 15 morphemes. Alienable and inalienable

possession Possession may refer to: Law * Dependent territory, an area of land over which another country exercises sovereignty, but which does not have the full right of participation in that country's governance * Drug possession, a crime * Ownership * ...

is distinguished. The phonological inventory is large, with simple, glottalized and aspirated

stop Stop may refer to: Places * Stop, Kentucky, an unincorporated community in the United States * Stop (Rogatica), a village in Rogatica, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina Facilities * Bus stop * Truck stop, a type of rest stop for truck d ...

s and

sonorant In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels are ...

s. The number of

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...

s varies with dialect (five or six).

Notes

References

* * * * * * * * * *

External links

Argentinian Languages Collection of Lucía Golluscio
containing audio recordings of Wichí, at the

Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America The Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA) is a digital repository housed in LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections at the University of Texas at Austin. AILLA is a digital language archive dedicated to the digi ...

.
Wichí
(

Intercontinental Dictionary Series The Intercontinental Dictionary Series (commonly abbreviated as IDS) is a large database of topical vocabulary lists in various world languages. The general editor of the database is Bernard Comrie of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary An ...

) {{DEFAULTSORT:Wichi Language Languages of Argentina Languages of Bolivia Languages of Chile Indigenous culture of the Gran Chaco Matacoan languages Chaco linguistic area