Language name and locationː Muniche, Loreto region, Peru [Refer to Ethnologue]

语言名称和分布地区: 穆尼切语, 秘鲁东北部洛雷托大区帕拉納普拉河流域亚马逊热带雨林  

1. wuítsaa ~ wü'tsa'a

2. ǔ'tspa

3. ūtšuma

Linguist providing data and dateː Mr. David Zacharia Baxter and Ms. Ken-Terika Zellner (students who founded BABEL, Building Awareness for the Benefit of Endangered Languages, at University of West Georgia), Mrs. Anna Luisa Daigneault (Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages), June 14, 2012.

提供资料的语言学家: Dr. Anna Luisa Daigneault, Mr. David Zacharia Baxter and Mr. Ken-Terika Zellner, 2012 年 6 月 14 日

Other comments: Muniche or Munichino is an endangered language isolate or extinct language spoken in Loreto region: Paranapura river, Peru. This language might have few traditional words for numbers. Muniche is an indigenous language historically spoken on the Paranapura river in the Peruvian Amazon. It seems to be a linguistic isolate, meaning that it is not related to any living language. The Muniche people and their language have been known by several names. The name 'Muniche' dates to the earliest colonial records in the 17th century, and corresponds with the name used by current semispeakers.

   Variants and other names include Munichi(s), Otonabes, Otonavis, and Otonahuis. Some authors have identified 'Paranapura' as an alternate name because the Muniches live on the Paranapura River, yet this appears to conflate the Muniche language with another, extinct language.

   The last fully fluent speakers of Muniche were born between 1915 and 1925; the language was moribund by the early 1930s. Language shift was probably taking place from Muniche to both Quechua and Spanish from the beginning of the 20th century.
Previous linguistic work on Muniche is extremely limited. The most important work is Gibson (1996), a sketch of Muniche phonology and verbal morphology based on the author's undergraduate thesis. Other than Gibson's work, documentation of Muniche is restricted to four brief wordlists.”

  Additional notes about the counting system in this language:

Muniche speakers have had contact with Quechuan languages, which may have influenced their numeral system. At the time of collecting data, more research needs to be done to find out which variety of Quechua that Muniche speakers have been in contact with. Numerals 7 and 8 in Muniche bear resemblance to Proto-Quechua forms, loosely transcribed here:

Proto-Quechua+

1. *suk

2. *ishkay

3. *kimsa

4. *çusku,

5. *tawa

6. *pichqa

7. *suqta

8. *qançis