Data collected by the UNICEF

Data on the Itonama language

Alternative names: Sihnipadara, Machato, Saramo

Classification: Itonoma is usually considered as an isolated language. All the studies carried out to try and classify Itonoma with other languages or groups (such as the Paez languages) remain inconclusive at this time.

Geographic area: Bolivia, Department of Beni. Until the sixties, there were speakers in the cities of Magdalena, San Ramón and Huacaraje. It appears the only speakers left live in Magdalena, near the Itonama river.

Number of speakers: The Itonama population is composed of 2,791 people according to PROEIB (2000), but Crevels (2010) suggests there would only be two old speakers left. It is possible that other people partially know the language, but the Itonama population is almost exclusively monolingual in Spanish.

Status of the language: According to the 25894 supreme decree of September 11th, passed in 2000, Itonama is one of the “indigenous languages recognized as official” in Bolivia.

Vitality and transmission: The language is on the verge of disappearing. It might even already be dead, the last speakers being very old. The limited number of speakers don’t even speak the language with each other, the language is no longer used. In the 60s, there were still about a hundred Itonama/Spanish bilingual speakers.

Until recently, Itonama has rarely been studied. The work of Crevels since the beginning of the 21st century is a precious scientific contribution to know the language better. However, the predictable disappearance of the language might leave grey areas, notably regarding the issue of classification.

Historical observations

Before they got in touch with the Jesuits, the Itonoma people were farmers, fishermen and hunters as well as gatherers. In 1704, father Lorenzo Legarda mentioned approximately 6,000 Itonoma spread across about 20 communities.

It is hard to shift responsibility of the alarming state of languages in the east of Bolivia and the Bolivian part of the Amazon to one fact only. The arrival of conquistadors in the region in the 17th century probably marked the beginning of their decline. During the 18th century, the development of Jesuit Missions and their mass converting and denial of the indigenous cultures started the processes of colonization and cultural adaptation. In 1767, their expulsion didn’t make things any better. The indigenous populations were treated in an inhuman way by colonial institutions, then by state institutions with the creation of the Bolivian Republic.

The rubber fever at the beginning of the 20th century led to the destruction of the rain forest and communities who lived there have often suffered from violent conflicts with producers. During the Chaco War in the thirties, young natives from Beni were enrolled by the Bolivian state. This war took a heavy toll on them and cost the lives of 50,000 Bolivians.

The education reform of 1952 was without a doubt the deathblow to the vitality of the indigenous languages of Beni. Mandatory monolingual education in Spanish and the depreciation of native languages led to a complete rejection of the ancestral language to the benefit of the educational language, Spanish. Communities then had to face the denigration (disparagement) of their language and fight against the negative representation imposed on them, to maintain their language and transmit it. Very few of them managed to do so. Unfortunately, the case of Itonama is no exception, but it is one of the languages that suffered the most from it.

For more information on the Itonama, see pages dedicated to them on the Amazonia.bo website (in Spanish).

Sources

Crevels, Mily (2010) Bolivia Amazónica In « Atlas sociolingüístico de pueblos indígenas en América Latina », UNICEF. Tome 1, pp 281-300.

Fabre, Alain. 2005. Diccionario etnolingüístico y guía bibliográfica de los pueblos indígenas sudamericanos. Available online [20/04/2011]

Online sources

Data collected by the UNICEF on Itonama [24/05/2011]

Page dedicated to Itonama on the Linguamón website [24/05/2011]

Additional bibliography

Aulo Malala, Ignacio et al. 2003. Guía del alfabeto itonama. La Paz: Ministerio de Educación, Viceministerio de Educación Escolarizada y Alternativa.

Crevels, Mily. 2002. Itonama o sihnipadara, lengua no clasificada de la Amazonía boliviana. Estudios de Lingüística, 16: 1- 56. Alicante: Universidad de Alicante. Available online.

Crevels, Mily 2002. Why speakers shift and languages die: an account of language death in Amazonian Bolivia. ILLA 3: 9-30. Leiden.

Crevels, Mily 2007. « La jerarquía de indexicalidad y voz en Itonama ». En: A. Romero- Figueroa, A. Fernández-Garay & Ángel Corbera Mori (eds.), Lenguas indígenas de América del Sur. Estudios descriptivo-tipológicos y sus contribuciones para la lingüística teórica. Caracas: UCAB.

See the Atlas sociolingüístico de pueblos indígenas en América Latina and Fabre (2005) for a complete bibliography.