Chiquitano is an indigenous language of eastern Bolivia

Bolivia

Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...

, spoken in the central region of the Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz Department

Santa Cruz, with an area of 370,621 km², is the largest of the nine constituent departments of Bolivia. In the 2001 census, it reported a population of 2,029,471. The capital is the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. The state is one of the wealthiest states in Bolivia with huge reserves of...

 province.

It is a language isolate

Language isolate

A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical relationship with other languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common with any other language. They are in effect language families consisting of a single...

. Greenberg linked it to the Macro-Jê languages, but this was never substantiated.

Nasal assimilation

Chiquitano has regressive assimilation triggered by nasal nuclei / ɨ̃ ĩ ũ õ ã ẽ/ and targeting consonant

Consonant

In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...

  onsets

Onset

Onset may refer to:*Onset , the beginning of a musical note or sound*Interonset interval, a term in music*Syllable onset, a term in phonetics and phonology*Onset, Massachusetts, village in the United States...

within a morpheme. → [suˈmũ] 'parrot (sp.)'

Syllable structure

The language has CV, CVV, and CVC syllables. It does not allow complex onsets or codas. The only codas allowed are nasal consonants.