Ashéninka (Ashéninca, Ashéninga) is the name that some

varieties Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...

included in the Ashéninka-

Asháninka The Asháninka or Asháninca are an indigenous people living in the rainforests of Peru and in the State of Acre, Brazil. Their ancestral lands are in the forests of Junín, Pasco, Huánuco and part of Ucayali in Peru. Population The Ashá ...

dialect complex have traditionally received. These varieties belong to the

Campan Campan (; oc, Campan) is a Communes of France, commune in the Hautes-Pyrénées Departments of France, department in the Occitania (administrative region), Occitanie region of south-western France. Geography Campan stands in a valley of the sa ...

branch of the

Arawak The Arawak are a group of indigenous peoples of northern South America and of the Caribbean. Specifically, the term "Arawak" has been applied at various times to the Lokono of South America and the Taíno, who historically lived in the Greater ...

family. ''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensiv ...

'' distinguishes seven languages throughout the whole complex, while Pedrós proposes a division in three languages (Ashéninka, Asháninka and Northern Ashé-Ashá) based on the principle of

mutual intelligibility In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an ...

. The varieties included in Ashéninka and Northern Ashé-Ashá have traditionally been called ''Ashéninka''.

Glottolog ''Glottolog'' is a bibliographic database of the world's lesser-known languages, developed and maintained first at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany (between 2015 and 2020 at the Max Planck Institute for ...

reflects Pedrós’ proposal, although considering the languages proposed by him as groupings of the languages that the ''Ethnologue'' distinguishes. According to the indigenous peoples database of the Peruvian Ministry of Education, there are 15,281 people living in Ashéninka communities, of whom 8,774 (57%) claim to be able to speak the language. ''Ethnologue'' gives much higher figures for the different Ashéninka varieties. The classification of the different varieties was first established by David Payne in his Apurucayali Axininca grammar, but he referred to them as dialects and not as different languages. Ashéninka is a locally official language in Peru, as are all native Peruvian languages. It and its relatives are also known by the allegedly pejorative term ''Campa''.

Alphabet

Ashéninka was recognized as a separate language from Asháninka 2017, and the process to fix an alphabet finished in April 2019 with its approval by the Ministry of Education.

Consonants

Payne (1981) describes the following consonant inventory for Axininca aka Ashéninka Apurucayali: : Judith Payne has the same inventory for the Pichis variety, but without /ç/, and she adds the palatalized consonants /pʲ/, /kʲ/, /hʲ/, /mʲ/ and /βʲ/. Mihas shows a similar inventory for the Alto Perené variety with few differences. These are that Mihas does not include neither /tʰ/ nor /ç/; David Payne's contrast /t͡ʃ/-/t͡ʃʰ/ is considered /t͡ʃ/-/tʲ/ by Mihas, and she does not include any palatalized consonant because she considers them two-consonant clusters (Cj). Payne and Mihas show a four-vowel system (/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/), while, in David Payne's Apurucayali, there are only three (/a/, /i/, /o/). These three varieties are included in Pedrós' Northern Ashé-Ashá group.

References

Languages of Peru Campa languages Languages of Brazil Arawakan languages {{Arawakan-lang-stub