Irantxe language

Irántxe, also known as Mỹky or still as Irántxe-Münkü, is an indigenous language spoken by the Irántxe and Mỹky peoples in the state of Mato Grosso in Brazil. Recent descriptions of the language analyze it as a language isolate, in that it "bears no similarity with other language families". Monserrat is a well-reviewed grammar of the language.

Vitality

According to the UNESCO, Irántxe-Mỹky is currently not thriving. While the Mỹky dialect is considered "vulnerable", the Irántxe variety is deemed "considerably endangered", with only 10 fluent speakers out of the 356 ethnic Irántxe-Mỹky in the 2006 report. As of 2011, the 280 Irántxe have largely assimilated to Brazilian culture. Most are monolingual in Portuguese, and the remaining Irántxe speakers are over 50 years old. A splinter group, the Mỹky, however, moved to escape assimilation, and were isolated until 1971. As of 2011, there were 80 ethnic Mỹky, all of whom spoke the language.

Dialects

Dialects and location:

Irántxe dialect: spoken in Cravari village, on the Cravari River in the municipality of Diamantino, Mato Grosso.
Mỹky dialect: spoken at an isolated village at the headwaters of the Escondido Creek, in the municipality of Brasnorte, Mato Grosso state.

Language contact

Jolkesky notes that there are lexical similarities with languages from the Arawak, Tupi, Chapakura-Wañam, Nambikwara, and Yanomami families, likely due to contact.
An automated computational analysis by Müller et al. also found lexical similarities between Irántxe-Mỹky and Nambikwaran.

Phonology

No instrumental phonetic data pertaining to the Irántxe-Mỹky language is available. The phonological description of Inrátxe-Mỹky is based on auditory analyses by the authors cited.

Consonants

Irántxe-Mỹky has a small consonant inventory. Voicing is not contrastive for any consonant. In the Monserrat analysis shown in the table, there is a series of palatalized stops /pʲ tʲ kʲ/ and nasals /mʲ nʲ/, which reviewer D’Angelis analyzes as /Cj/ sequences. In Monserrat's analysis, /ʃ/ is a separate phoneme from /sʲ/.

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	p pʲ	t tʲ		k kʲ	ʔ
Nasal	m mʲ	n nʲ
Fricative		s	ʃ		h
Trill		r
Approximant	w		j

Allophonic variation

The bilabial /m/ may occur as word initially, especially among the Irántxe: muhu, mjehy .
The sibilant /s/ is pronounced before /j/.
The trill /r/ may also occur as .
The palatal approximant /j/ occurs as before nasal vowels.

Vowels

The vowel inventory of Irántxe-Mỹky is large, with 21 phonemic vowels. Vowel length and nasalization are contrastive in the language. The role of tone is not clear.

	Front	Mid	Back
Close	i ĩ iː	ɨ ɨ̃ ɨː	u ũ uː
Mid	ɛ ɛ̃ ɛː	ə ə̃ əː	ɔ ɔ̃ ɔː
Open		a ã aː

In many words, /ə/ alternates with /ɛ/.
The maximal syllable shape may be CVC or CjVC word-medially, depending on the analysis. Word-finally, only CV ~ CʲV syllables occur.

Orthography

The linguist Ruth Monserrat, along with native speaker Beth Jurusi, developed a system for spelling the Mỹky dialect.

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	p pj	t tj		k kj	ʼ
Nasal	m mj	n nj
Fricative		s	x		h
Trill		r
Approximant	w		j

Lexicon

Words in the Irántxe dialect are taken from Loukotka and Holanda's larger vocabulary list. The Mỹky words derive from the dictionary compiled by Monserrat.