Yanomam languages

Yanomaman
Ethnicity:	Yąnomamö
Geographic distribution:	Amazon
Linguistic classification:	One of the world's primary language families
Glottolog:	yano1260
Yanomaman languages in Venezuela

Yanomaman (also Yanomam, Yanomáman, Yamomámi, Yanomamana, Shamatari, Shirianan) is a language spoken by about 20,000 Yanomami people in southern Venezuela and northwestern Brazil (Roraima, Amazonas).

Yanomaman consists of five languages, very similar to each other, sometimes classified as a dialect continuum:

Sunumá is the most lexically distinct. Yanomamö has the most speakers (20,000), while Yanam and Yaroame have the fewest (400 apiece).

Yanomaman is usually not connected with any other language family. Joseph Greenberg has suggested a relationship between Yanomaman and Macro-Chibchan. Migliazza (1985) has suggested a connection with Panoan and Chibchan. Neither proposal has been accepted.

Yanomami is not what the Yanomami call themselves (an autonym), but rather it is a word in their language meaning "man" or "human being". The American anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon adopted this term to use as an exonym to refer to the culture and, by extension, the people. The word is correctly pronounced thorough nasalisation. As the phonetic sound 'ö' does not occur in English, variations in spelling and pronunciation of the name have developed, with Yanomami, Yanomamö, Ya̧nomamö, and Yanomama all being used. Some anthropologists had published the spelling Yanomamɨ to indicate the correct vowel [ɨ], but because many presses and typesetters eliminate the diacritical marks, an incorrect pronunciation of the name has emerged.

Yanomami languages have a distinction between oral and nasal vowels. There are seven basic vowels: a, e, i, o, u, ɨ (also spelled y), ə. In the Yanam language, u has merged with ɨ.

In the Yanomaman languages, if a vowel is phonetically nasalized, then all vowels after it in the word are also nasalized. So if the ogonek—the symbol denoting nasalized vowels—is written under the first vowel, the whole word is nasalized. All the vowels in the Yanomaman language can be made nasal, but it is unclear whether they are phonemically nasal or nasal just because of the nasal consonants.