Migueleño Chiquitano

Migueleño Chiquitano is a variety of the Chiquitano language of the Macro-Jê family, which is remembered by several dozen people of the Chiquitano ethnicity in San Miguel de Velasco, Bolivia, as well as in neighboring villages.
Migueleño is closely related to other varieties of the Chiquitano language, such as Bésɨro and Eastern Chiquitano. Its most salient phonological features include the occurrence of the voiceless velar fricative corresponding to the retroflex of the other dialects and the merger of the palatalized counterparts of and as. It is also the only variety of Chiquitano in which distinct first person singular prefixes have been documented for the male and female genderlects.

Phonology

The consonant inventory of Migueleño Chiquitano is shown below.

The vowel inventory of Migueleño Chiquitano is shown below.

In Migueleño Chiquitano, male speech is distinct from female speech in exhibiting extra morphological complexity. In particular, the male genderlect distinguishes between three grammatical genders, whereas the female genderlect has no grammatical gender distinctions at all.
In addition, the first person singular prefixes are distinct in the male genderlect and in the female genderlect.

Female and male speech further differ in using different suffixes when deriving content interrogative/relative words.

translation	female speech	male speech
Who is that behind whom you are going?	¿Ũka na’a si’iki aɨrotɨ́?	¿Ti’i naki si’iche aɨrotɨ́?
Whose son?	¿aɨtokí?	¿aɨtoché?
Where from?	¿aukikí?	¿aukiché?
Whose?	¿ezakí?	¿ezaché?

There are also differences in the choice of the demonstratives.

In San Miguel de Velasco, Catholic homilies are traditionally recited in an early form of Migueleño Chiquitano on certain religious occasions. This practice can be traced back to the Jesuit reductions of the 18th century, and the texts of the homilies have been transmitted across generations. The homilies have been extensively studied by Severin Parzinger, who has published a compilation thereof.