WIA LANGUAGES PROJECT

[Day 5/221]

Tinigua

Tiniguas

Table of Contents

“The Language Spoken Only to God and Chickens”

A quiet revolution, 221 languages’ digital archive • We’re not saving languages. We’re saving humanity.

🎵 The Last Whisper in the Jungle

“Tinigua janiniye”
[tee-nee-gwah hah-nee-nee-yeh]
“God of the Tinigua”

Every morning, Sixto Muñoz, now over 90 years old, speaks Tinigua to his chickens. He prays to his god ‘Tinigua janiniye’. Because in this world, they are the only beings left who can understand his language. Since his brother Criterio passed away in 2005, he has been completely alone.

Every 14 days, a language falls silent forever.
Today, Day 5/221, we guide Tinigua into digital eternity.

Today’s Discovery

Last Single Speaker La Macarena Jungle Tiniguan Family

🌊 Songs of Lost Time

The Tinigua people once roamed the Yarí plains and areas of Caquetá Department in Colombia. In their language, ‘Tinigua’ means ‘words of the ancestors.’ Their tragedy, which began with the 19th-century rubber boom, reached its peak in the mid-20th century.

In 1949, during Colombia’s civil war, a massacre wiped out most of the Tinigua people. Sixto Muñoz recalls that time: “When they came, we had nowhere to hide. The river ran red, and the jungle was filled with screams.” The few survivors fled to the Serranía de la Macarena in Meta Department, but the community was already shattered.

Sixto’s father was a renowned shaman, and he himself gained a reputation as a healer. He learned not only Tinigua medicine but also the Guayabero language and culture during his years living with them. Yet he chose not to teach Tinigua to his five children. “Why learn a useless language?” His words carry deep resignation.

[Image: Deep in the La Macarena jungle, Sixto’s small house stands alone by a lake. In the misty dawn, the silhouette of an old man speaking Tinigua to his chickens]

🕊️ Between Hope and Despair

📍 Region	Meta Department, Serranía de la Macarena, Colombia
👥 Speakers	1 (Sixto Muñoz, approximately 95 years old)
📚 Language Family	Tiniguan family (isolate)
🌐 Current Status	Critically Endangered (single speaker)

Sixto lives in a remote area, 5-7 hours by boat from La Macarena. The lake near his house is now known as ‘Sixto’s Lake.’ His granddaughter lives across the lake, but she identifies as Guayabero and doesn’t understand Tinigua. Sixto communicates with her in Guayabero.

“I speak to Tinigua janiniye (the god of Tinigua) and my chickens in our language every day so I don’t forget,” Sixto’s words were recorded by linguists Katherine Bolaños and Ricardo Palacio in 2017. They spent years visiting Sixto to create the final record of the Tinigua language.

💎 Untranslatable Beauty

Tinigua is an independent South American language family with a complex phonological system of 22 consonants and 6 vowels. It features a series of aspirated voiceless stops (/ph/, /th/, /kh/), glottalized vowels, and long vowels.

Sɨsɨthio

[suh-suh-thee-oh]

Sixto’s Tinigua name, meaning ‘knife’ – symbolizing sharp wisdom and survival

tini

[tee-nee]

‘Words of the ancestors’ – showing that language itself is the connection to ancestors

janiniye

[hah-nee-nee-yeh]

The god of the Tinigua, guardian of jungle and rivers, protector of language

🌐 WIA’s Promise – Records Made by Technology

“We don’t simply translate.
We preserve records digitally.
We make language materials permanently accessible.
We build digital archives for future generations.”

✅ Digitizing audio and video materials stored in ELAR (Endangered Languages Archive)
✅ Integrating materials from Bolaños-Palacio’s “El hombre sin miedo” (The Man Without Fear) project
✅ Permanently preserving Sixto’s oral history and Tinigua cultural records
✅ Providing phonological analysis of the 22 consonant and 6 vowel system

[Image: Sixto sitting with researchers in front of recording equipment, documenting Tinigua. Sound waves appear on the screen, with the language being transformed into digital archives in the background]

🔥 Why It Must Not Disappear

Tinigua is more than just a communication tool. This language contains deep knowledge about Colombia’s jungle ecosystems, information about medicinal plants, and survival techniques accumulated over thousands of years. Sixto preserves medical knowledge gained from living with multiple ethnic groups, all encoded in Tinigua.

“Sixto’s story is the story of many indigenous groups in Colombia who have suffered exclusion and violence,” as Ricardo Palacio states. The extinction of Tinigua is not merely the death of a language but the result of historical injustice. Recording this language is also about restoring forgotten history.

🌅 The Tomorrow We Will Create

“Since my brother died, I have no one to talk to in our language. But I keep speaking. To god, to the chickens, to the wind… I hope someday someone will hear these recordings and remember we existed.”
– Sixto Muñoz, 2019 interview

Sixto is now estimated to be over 95 years old. No one knows how long he will remember and be able to speak Tinigua. But through the dedicated efforts of Katherine Bolaños and Ricardo Palacio, Tinigua will be preserved forever in digital form.

After 221 days, when all languages are digitally recorded,
we will finally have a complete record of humanity.
We create a world where even one lonely voice
can echo forever.

“Tini”

[tee-nee]

“Words of the ancestors”

This word that Sixto repeats every morning
is his solitary connection to his ancestors.

Though he has no one to converse with,
his voice in digital eternity
transmits thousands of years of wisdom.

With WIA, every voice is eternal.