Shipibo language

Shipibo is a Panoan language spoken in Peru and Brazil by approximately 26,000 speakers. Shipibo is a recognized indigenous language of Peru.

Dialects

Shipibo has three attested dialects:

Extinct Xipináwa is thought to have been a dialect as well, but there is no linguistic data.

Image:Shipibo monophthongs chart.svg|thumb|250px|Monophthongs of Shipibo, from

and are lower than their cardinal counterparts :,, is more front than cardinal :, whereas is more close and more central than cardinal. The first three vowels tend to be somewhat more central in closed syllables, whereas before coronal consonants can be as central as.
In connected speech, two adjacent vowels may be realized as a rising diphthong.

The oral vowels are phonetically nasalized after a nasal consonant, but the phonological behaviour of these allophones is different from the nasal vowel phonemes.
Oral vowels in syllables preceding syllables with nasal vowels are realized as nasal, but not when a consonant other than intervenes.

The second one of the two adjacent unstressed vowels is often deleted.
Unstressed vowels may be devoiced or even elided between two voiceless obstruents.

are bilabial, whereas is labial–velar.
* is most typically a fricative, but other realizations also appear. The stop realization is most likely to appear in word-initial stressed syllables, whereas the approximant realization appears most often as onsets to non-initial unstressed syllables.
are alveolar, whereas is dental.
The distinction can be described as an apical–laminal one.
is velar, whereas is palatal.
Before nasal vowels, are nasalized and may be even realized close to nasal stops.
is realized as before, as before and as before. It does not occur before.
is a very variable sound:
* Intervocalically, it is realized either as continuant, with or without weak frication.
* Sometimes it can be realized as a postalveolar affricate, or a stop-approximant sequence.
* It can also be realized as a postalveolar flap.