Yucuna (Jukuna), also known as Matapi, Yucuna-Matapi, and Yukunais, is an Arawakan language spoken in several communities along the Mirití-Paraná River in Colombia. Extinct Guarú (Garú) was either a dialect or a closely related language. Yucuna is a polysynthetic language, and it uses SVO word order.
The Matapi, a Tucanoan people, lived at the headwaters of the Popeyacá and Yapiyá, tributaries to the Miriti River and Apaporis River but most may have been sold as slaves or moved to Brazil. The remainder joined the Yucuna.
Phonology The Yucuna phoneme inventory consists of 16 consonants and 5 vowels.
+ VowelsFrontCentralBackCloseMidOpen
+ ConsonantsBilabialAlveolarPalatalVelarGlottalNasal ()Plosive Fricativeh Approximant Tap
See also Cariban languages
Notes and references Notes
Bibliography
External links Resources by ethnographer Laurent Fontaine: Audio recordings in the Yucuna language, in open access (source: Pangloss Collection of CNRS). The Yucuna Indians Corpus of myths and tales (in Yucuna and French) Ethnographic films of the Yucuna Indians with texts of dialogues
Resources by linguist Magdalena Lemus Serrano: Documentation of Yucuna (source: Endangered Languages Archive).