The Wichàlanguages are an indigenous language family spoken by the Wichàin northwestern Argentina and far-southeastern Bolivia, part of the Matacoan family. They are also known as Mataco, Wichi, WichàLhamtés, Weenhayek, Noctenes, Matahuayo, Matako, WeÃÂwo. The name Mataco is common but pejorative.
Currently, the Argentine government does not have education in indigenous languages in schools. Because the WichÃÂ have to be fluent in Spanish to access government services, and children are only educated in Spanish, WichÃÂ children only speak Spanish among themselves. This has made all WichÃÂ dialects vulnerable to extinction.
In 2010, the province of Chaco in Argentina declared WichÃÂ as one of four provincial official languages alongside Spanish and the indigenous Moqoit and Qom.
The WichÃÂ languages include the following languages:
The Argentine National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC) gives a figure of 36,135 WichÃÂ speakers in Argentina.
In Rosario, the third biggest city of Argentina, there is a community of about 10,000 WichÃÂ people, all of them fluent in WichÃÂ, and some native speakers. There are a couple of bilingual primary schools.
For Bolivia, Alvarsson estimated between 1,700 and 2,000 speakers in 1988; a census reported 1,912, and DÃÂez Astete & Riester (1996) estimated between 2,300 and 2,600 Weenhayek in sixteen communities.
According to Najlis (1968) and Gordon (2005), three main dialects can be distinguished in the Wichàgroup: southwestern or Vejós (Wehwós), northeastern or Güisnay (Weenhayek) and northwestern or Nocten (Oktenay). Tovar (1981) and other authors claim the existence of only two dialects (northeastern and southwestern), while Braunstein (1992âÂÂ3) identifies eleven ethnic subgroups.
WichÃÂ languages are predominantly suffixing and polysynthetic; verbal words have between 2 and 15 morphemes. Alienable and inalienable possession is distinguished. The phonological inventory is large, with simple, glottalized and aspirated stops and sonorants. The number of vowels varies with dialect (five or six).