Kashibo language

Cashibo (Caxibo, Cacibo, Cachibo, Cahivo), Cacataibo, Cashibo-Cacataibo, Managua, or Hagueti is an indigenous language of Peru in the region of the Aguaytía, San Alejandro, and Súngaro rivers. It belongs to the Panoan language family.

Cashibo
Cacataibo
Native to	Peru
Ethnicity	Cashibo people
Native speakers	1,200 (2007)[1]
Language family	Panoan Mainline Panoan Cashibo
Dialects	Cashibo Cacataibo Rubo / Isunbo Nocaman
Language codes
ISO 639-3	cbr
Glottolog	cash1251
ELP	Cashibo

Dialects are Kashibo (Kaschinõ), Rubo/Isunbo, Kakataibo, and Nokamán,^[2] which until recently had been thought to be extinct.

Phonology

Consonants

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar		Glottal
					plain	lab.
Plosive	p	t			k	kʷ	ʔ
Nasal	m	n		ɲ
Tap/Flap		ɾ
Affricate		t͡s		t͡ʃ
Fricative		s	ʂ	ʃ
Approximant	β̞			j		w

The consonant inventory includes both a bilabial approximant, realized as [β̞], and a labial-velar approximant /w/.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ	u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

Back vowels /o/ and /u/ are phonetically realized as less rounded; [o̜], [u̜].^[3]

Statistics

The language is official along the Aguaytía, San Alejandro, and Súngaro rivers in Peru where it is most widely spoken. It is used in schools until third grade. There are not many monolinguals, although some women over the age of fifty are.

There is five to ten percent literacy compared to fifteen to twenty-five percent literacy in Spanish as a second language. A Cashibo-Cacataibo dictionary has been compiled, and there is a body of literature, especially poetry.