Aguaruna language

Aguaruna (or as native speakers prefer to call it, Awajún [ɑwɑhʊ́n̪]) is an indigenous American language of the Chicham family spoken by the Aguaruna people in Northern Peru. According to Ethnologue, based on the 2007 Census, 53,400 people out of the 55,700 ethnic group speak Aguaruna, making up almost the entire population. It is used vigorously in all domains of life, both written and oral. It is written with the Latin script. The literacy rate in Aguaruna is 60-90%. However, there are few monolingual speakers today; nearly all speakers also speak Spanish. The school system begins with Aguaruna, and as the students progress, Spanish is gradually added. There is a positive outlook and connotation in regard to bilingualism. 50 to 75% of the Aguaruna population are literate in Spanish. A modest dictionary of the language has been published.

The speakers live in the Eastern foothills of the Andes, along the upper Marañón River and its tributaries. More specifically, its location includes the Amazonas, Cajamarca, Loreto, and San Martin regions, as well as the Cahuapanas, Mayo, and Potro rivers. There are two major varieties of Aguaruna: one spoken around the Nieva River, considered the more conservative variety, and the other spoken around the Marañón River. Within the Chicham family, there are four languages: Aguaruna, Huambisa, Shuar, and Achuar-Shiwiar. Speakers of Aguaruna claim mutual intelligibility with speakers of Huambisa, so there is speculation that the Chicham family may better be described as a dialect continuum. This language family shares many similarities to both the Amazonian and Andean languages, likely due to their close proximity and contact with one another. The language contains twelve consonants and four vowels that each have both oral and nasal forms. It has SOV typology, meaning the sentence structure is verb-final.