Andoque is a language spoken by a few hundred Andoque people in Colombia, and is in decline. There were 10,000 speakers in 1908, down to 370 a century later, of which at most 50 are monolingual. The remaining speakers live in four residential areas in the region of the Anduche River, downstream from Araracuara, Solano, Caquetá, Colombia; the language is no longer spoken in Peru. Most speakers shifted to Spanish.

Classification

Andoque may be related to the extinct Urequena language (also Urekena or Arequena) which is known only from a single 19th century wordlist. Kaufman's (2007) Bora–Witótoan stock includes Andoque in the Witótoan family, but other linguists, such as Richard Aschmann, consider Andoque an isolate.

Phonology

Andoque has been analyzed to have the lowest consonant-to-vowel ratio of any language in the world, with ten consonants and nine vowel qualities. However, other studies (see below) have reported other numbers of consonants and vowels.

Vowels

Landaburu (2000) reports nine oral vowels and six nasal vowels.

Consonants

The phoneme // is represented orthographically as ⟨ñ⟩ and the phoneme /j/ is written ⟨y⟩.

Tone

Andoque vowels have one of two phonological tones, low or high, with the low tone being far more frequent. Landaburu (2000) marks high tone vowels with a tilde and leaves low tone vowels unmarked. While some lexemes are distinct only in tone (such as -ka- 'mix' and -ká- 'distribute'), Landaburu notes that many grammatical distinctions are made solely through differences in tone, as in the examples below which differ in tense. dã-bɤ̃ʌ baʝa REAL.INGRESSIVE-cry 3M 'he comes to cry' dã́-bɤ̃ʌ baʝa IRR-cry 3M 'he will cry'

Grammar

Classifiers

The subject noun does not appear alone, but is accompanied by markers for gender or noun classifiers (which are determined by shape). These noun classifiers are as follows: Person markers include o- ("I"), ha- ("you (singular)"), ka- ("we") and kə- ("you (plural)"). The adjectival or verbal predicate has a suffix which agrees with the subject: -ʌ for animate subjects and flexible or hollow ones; -ó for rigid or elongated ones; -i for others. Adjectival and verbal predicates are also marked with prefixes indicating mood, direction or aspect, and infixes for tense. The nominal predicate (What something is) does not have a suffix of agreement nor a dynamic prefix, but it can take infixes for tense and mood, like the verb. Other grammatical roles (benefactive, instrumental, locative) appear outside the verb in the form of markers for case. There are 11 case suffixes.

Evidentials

In addition, the sentence has markers for the source of knowledge, or evidentials indicating whether the speaker knows the information communicated firsthand, heard it from another person, has deduced it, etc. There is also a focus marker -nokó, which draws attention to the participants or indicates the highlight of a story. In the language there are means of representing action from the point of view of the subject or other participants, or from the point of view of an external observer.

Vocabulary

Landaburu (2000)

Landaburu (2000) gives the following Swadesh list table for Andoque: ! no. !! Spanish gloss !! English gloss !! Andoque

Loukotka (1968)

Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items for Andoque. ! gloss !! Andoque