Shipibo language

Shipibo (also Shipibo-Conibo, Shipibo-Konibo) is a Panoan language spoken in Peru and Brazil by approximately 26,000 speakers. Shipibo is a recognized indigenous language of Peru.

Dialects
Shipibo has three attested dialects:


 * Shipibo and Konibo (Conibo), which have merged
 * Kapanawa of the Tapiche River, which is obsolescent

Extinct Xipináwa (Shipinawa) is thought to have been a dialect as well, but there is no linguistic data.

Vowels



 * and are lower than their cardinal counterparts (in addition to being more front in the latter case):, ,  is more front than cardinal : , whereas  is more close and more central  than cardinal .  The first three vowels tend to be somewhat more central in closed syllables, whereas  before coronal consonants (especially ) can be as central as.
 * In connected speech, two adjacent vowels may be realized as a rising diphthong.

Nasal

 * The oral vowels are phonetically nasalized  after a nasal consonant, but the phonological behaviour of these allophones is different from the nasal vowel phonemes.
 * Oral vowels in syllables preceding syllables with nasal vowels are realized as nasal, but not when a consonant other than intervenes.

Unstressed

 * The second one of the two adjacent unstressed vowels is often deleted.
 * Unstressed vowels may be devoiced or even elided between two voiceless obstruents.

Consonants

 * are bilabial, whereas is labialized velar.
 * is most typically a fricative, but other realizations (such as an approximant , a stop and an affricate ) also appear. The stop realization is most likely to appear in word-initial stressed syllables, whereas the approximant realization appears most often as onsets to non-initial unstressed syllables.
 * are alveolar, whereas is dental.
 * The distinction can be described as an apical–laminal one.
 * is velar, whereas is palatal.
 * Before nasal vowels, are nasalized  and may be even realized close to nasal stops.
 * is realized as before, as  before  and as  before . It does not occur before.
 * is a very variable sound:
 * Intervocalically, it is realized either as continuant, with or without weak frication ( or ).
 * Sometimes (especially in the beginning of a stressed syllable) it can be realized as a postalveolar affricate, or a stop-approximant sequence.
 * It can also be realized as a postalveolar flap.