Movima language
Language isolate of Bolivia
title: "Movima language" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["language-isolates-of-south-america", "languages-of-bolivia", "mamoré–guaporé-linguistic-area"] description: "Language isolate of Bolivia" topic_path: "linguistics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movima_language" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary Language isolate of Bolivia ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox language"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | Movima |
| nativename | Chosineɬ di' mowi:maj |
| states | Bolivia |
| region | Beni Department |
| speakers | |
| date | 2012 |
| ref | e25 |
| familycolor | American |
| family | Language isolate |
| nation | Bolivia |
| iso3 | mzp |
| glotto | movi1243 |
| glottorefname | Movima |
| notice | IPA |
| map | Pueblos originarios de Bolivia.png |
| mapcaption | Map of indigenous groups in Bolivia, with Movima in light green |
| ethnicity | Movima people |
| :: |
| name = Movima | nativename = Chosineɬ di' mowi:maj | states = Bolivia | region = Beni Department | speakers = | date = 2012 | ref = e25 | familycolor = American | family = Language isolate | nation = Bolivia | iso3 = mzp | glotto = movi1243 | glottorefname = Movima | notice = IPA | map = Pueblos originarios de Bolivia.png | mapcaption = Map of indigenous groups in Bolivia, with Movima in light green | ethnicity = Movima people
Movima is a language that is spoken by about 1,400 (nearly half) of the Movima, a group of Native Americans that resides in the Llanos de Moxos region of the Bolivian Amazon, in northeastern Bolivia. It is considered a language isolate, as it has not been proven to be related to any other language.
Locations
Movima is spoken in the locations of 18 de Noviembre, 20 de Enero, Bella Flor, Buen Día, Carmen de Iruyañez, Carnavales, Ipimo, Miraflores, Navidad, San Lorenzo, and the town of Santa Ana del Yacuma.
Phonology
Movima has five vowels: ::data[format=table title="The vowels of Movima"]
| Front | Central | Back | Close | Mid | Open | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| :: |
and more closely resemble and , respectively, than the close-mid vowels and . Vowels have a phonemic length distinction, although some prosodic processes can lengthen otherwise short vowels. Movima does not have tone.
::data[format=table title="The consonants of Movima"]
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | median | lateral | plain | lab. | Nasal | Stop | pulmonic | implosive | Fricative | Approximant | Trill | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| () | () | |||||||||||||||
| () | ||||||||||||||||
| :: |
The plosive is realized as in the syllable onset but as (which contrasts with the simple nasal phoneme ) in the coda. Similarly, and are realized as and (i.e., as a glottal stop with a vocalic release), respectively, in the syllable coda. In vowel-initial words and between adjacent vowels, an epenthetic glottal stop appears.
The phonemes and are only present in Spanish loanwords.
Morphology
In Movima, compounding and incorporation are productive derivational processes. Reduplication and affixation, including some processes (such as the irrealis marker *(k)a''') that resemble infixation, are also common. Typical examples of inflection, such as number, case, tense, mood, and aspect, are not obligatorily marked in Movima. Many derivational processes can be applied to a single Movima word. The same morpheme may appear multiple times in one word this way, for instance, *tikoy-na-poj-na'' "I make X kill Y."
Vocabulary
Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items.
:{| class="wikitable sortable" ! gloss !! Movima |- | one || sotaru |- | two || oira |- | three || taxra |- | tooth || söichlan |- | tongue || rulkua |- | hand || chopa |- | woman || kukya |- | water || tomi |- | fire || vé |- | moon || yekcho |- | maize || kuaxta |- | jaguar || rulrul |- | house || roya |}
Further vocabulary:
:{| class="wikitable sortable" ! gloss !! Movima |- | to sit || as |- | to stand || en |- | to come || jiwa |- | dust || vuskwa |- | Movima || mowi:maj |- | language || chonsineɬ |- | of || di' |}
References
References
- Katharina Haude. (2006). "A grammar of Movima". Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen.
- "Constitution of Bolivia, Article 5. I.".
- (2023). "Amazonian Languages: Language Isolates. Volume II: Kanoé to Yurakaré". Walter de Gruyter.
- "WALS – Movima". World Atlas of Language Structures Online.
- Loukotka, Čestmír. (1968). "Classification of South American Indian languages". UCLA Latin American Center.
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