Majena language

{{Short description|Extinct unclassified language of Bolivia}}

{{Infobox language

| name = Majena

| nativename =

| region = Llanos de Mojos

| extinct = by 1805

| familycolor = american

| family = unclassified

| iso3 = none

| glotto = none

| ethnicity = Ticomeri

| states = Bolivia

}}

Majena, also known as Majiena or Maxiena, is an unclassified, now-extinct language, originally spoken by the alleged Ticomeri people of the Llanos de Mojos plains in northwestern Bolivia. Nothing is known about the language itself, but sources state that it was unintelligible to speakers of the nearby Arawakan languages Moxo and Baure (the term "Ticomeri" is a Moxo exonym meaning "other-language"Hervás y Panduro 1805, pp. 248-249) and possibly unrelated to any languages of the area.Métraux 1942, p. 79 It may therefore have been a language isolate.

Speakers of the language were identified in the mission settlement of San Borja in the eighteenth century. There is some confusion between the Majena-speaking Ticomeri and another group, also known as "Ticomeri", who spoke a divergent dialect of Moxo. Whether the two groups were related (i.e. whether the Ticomeri had abandoned Majena and acquired Moxo) is unknowable, since both were apparently extinct by 1805.Hervás y Panduro 1805

References

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Sources

  • {{cite book |author=Hervás y Panduro, Lorenzo |title=Catálogo de las lenguas de las naciones conocidas, y numeracion, division, y clases de estas segun la diversidad de sus idiomas y dialectos: Lenguas y naciones americanas |location=Madrid|publisher=Administracion del Real Arbitrio de Beneficencia |year=1805 }}
  • {{cite book|author=Métraux, Alfred|title=The Native Tribes of Eastern Bolivia and Western Mato Grosso|location=Washington|publisher=Smithsonian Institution|year=1942}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Majena Language}}

Category:Languages of Bolivia

Category:Unclassified languages of South America

Category:Unattested languages of South America

Category:Extinct languages of South America

{{South American languages}}{{Languages of Bolivia}}

{{IndigenousAmerican-lang-stub}}