68: Similarities between Chono/Wayteka, Uralic and Indo-European

Written and published by Linden Alexander Pentecost, published in the UK. This article was published on the 13th of August 2025 and only on this website, www.bookofdunbarra.co.uk . This article contains discussions and comparisons between Chono/Wayteka words and Indo-European and Uralic words. The content of this article is completely separate from and unrelated to my other publications which also cover different aspects of these subjects, and linguistic links between Quechua and Finnish for example. I also discuss other aspects of this in relation to Chiloé on another recently published article on this website, titled: 67: Seafaring Finns, floating islands, seamonsters, Chiloé, “The Straight Road” and related points, the aforementioned article (not the article on the page you are currently on) being numerically the one before the article you are currently reading on this website (on the page you are currently on). I have also published other things recently on other websites. In addition I plan to complete a print-only book soon which will be published in the future, and will detail other aspects to some of these things, including yet more Mapuche - Finnish similarities. This article (the article currently in front of you) contains 1707 words. References are given in the text and others are given at the end, and there is also a comment about another publication that will be published soon in Silly Linguistics , a publication not mentioned in this paragraph (which you are currently reading), there is also reference to an unrelated publication on archive.org, a publication on one of my other websites, and more general comments about my other publications. No AI was used in this nor in any of my publications.

 

Chono or Wayteka is an indigenous language of South America, sadly now extinct and only poorly attested. There is, as I will go onto say, debate about whether or not this language actually existed - but indigenous cultures who were not Kawesqar, Huilliche or Mapuche did once inhabit this landscape. Wayteka would have been spoken by the primarily coastal, nomadic people. Chono would have been spoken north of where the Kawesqar language is spoken, and south and west of where most Mapuche speakers are. The closest indigenous language to Chono, geographically, was Huilliche, a close relative of Mapuche, which also has an indigenous presence on these islands. Chono was primarily spoken on the Island of Chiloé and in the Chonos Archipelago. This area has an ancient history. Evidence shows that people were on Chiloé at least 11,000 years ago, and there appears to be a long practice of creating shell middens on these islands, no doubt in part as sacred sites. And on the Chonos island of Traiguén, perhaps itself baring a Chono name, there is evidence of most recent shell middens and fish traps, both of which closely resemble the shell middens and fish traps associated with Europe, especially with the Mesolithic period, but also long before, and long after that period. 

Note that the name “Chono” is not the same as the use of a similar noun to describe a separate possible grouping of languages in Patagonia, known as the Chonan Languages, some of which I have discussed elsewhere in terms of etymologies and other things.

Chono or Wayteka is not the best language for representing this, what I think is a very real connection, between certain indigenous South American, and Uralic and other languages, as Lyle Campbell seems to have proposed that the only wordlist available for the Chono language might be artificial in some way, although I have not read his work where this is mentioned, namely: 2012). "Classification of the indigenous languages of South America". In Grondona, Verónica; Campbell, Lyle (eds.). The Indigenous Languages of South America. The World of Linguistics. Vol. 2. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 59–166.

However, all of the words in the Chono wordlist from Samitier, Liaras. 1967. El grupo chono o wayteka y los demas pueblos fuegopatagonia. Runa 10. 1-2:123-94 (Buenos Aires), - all the words with similarities with Uralic and Indo-European languages, are also to some extent represented by similar words in other indigenous languages of the Americas, and particularly South America. So, below is a small wordlist of 7 Chono words, as attested in: Samitier, Liaras. 1967. El grupo chono o wayteka y los demas pueblos fuegopatagonia. Runa 10. 1-2:123-94 (Buenos Aires). Notes are given after each word, with comments on potential relationships to Uralic, Indo-European, and other indigenous American languages. The comments after word number 7 are especially long.

   1. Kselek - the number three, compare Mapuche küla, Quechua kimsa, Finnish kolme, and many other forms throughout        the Americas and elsewhere which I have discussed; with Uralic languages perhaps preserving this original root word the      most.

2. nenke - “no”, this word shows an obvious similarity to various Indo-European words for “no”, especially to German nein and Dutch nee for example, Danish nej etc. Words in various other unrelated languages also can occasionally show similar negation.
3. Wanéʃe - “woman”, possibly showing some similarity to Finnish vaimo - “wife”, although this root word likely meant “spirit” originally in the Finnic languages, which could itself be an interesting philosophical point pertaining to the idea that women possess spirit, but not heart, and that men possess heart, but not spirit - not that I agree with this idea, but it seems to be a possible idea in ancient Finnic beliefs. 
4. Kíχie - “star”, compare Finnish tähti and many other words for “star”, including for example in Polynesian languages. I have discussed many other examples of this root word elsewhere, and of possible links.
5. Wa or we - “island”, possibly showing similarity to Old Norse ey - “island” and to for example Proto-Samoyedic *woəj - “island” (1). Note that I also discuss this Proto-Samoyedic root and its importance in another sense in my unrelated, upcoming article for Silly Linguistics, titled: The Tundra Nenets language, and its origins, etymologies and the сихиртя - “Sihirtya”
6. Wampus - “canoe”, compare Quechua wampu - “boat”, Kawesqar yemase - boat (2), Selknam yèni - “canoe” (3), Finnish vene - “boat”. I have discussed this root a lot in other publications. I have also discussed both the Kawesqar and Selknam words in other contexts elsewhere.
7. Mékta - “tree”, compare Quechua mast’a - carpet, rug, and mast’ay - to stretch or cover (also discussed in more detail in one of my other publications this year published only on archive.org), Finnish metsä - forest, and other Finnic forms such as White Sea Karelian meččä - “forest”, Veps mec - “forest”. The aforementioned publication I published on archive.org is titled: A discussion on 7 more potential Finnish and Quechuan word similarities found in April 2025 and published in April 2023 and which were not published in my recent print-only book that was published in March 2025 (this April 2025 article includes 7 main Finnish words discussed with 7 possibly related Quechua words and discussions), published only on archive.org, published in the UK. The link to this article can be found in article 66 on the website you are currently on. Another similar word is the Mapuche word mawida, which can mean both “forest” and “mountain”. This word bares a similarity to for example Quechua mast’ay and Finnish metsä, which I have discussed elsewhere, including in the aforementioned article only on archive.org . The word mawida also shows similarities to words for “mountain” in other languages, which is another thing I have discussed elsewhere. Perhaps a shared etymology only makes sense when the concept of “syllabic roots” is taken into account, for more information about “syllabic roots”  see my article on my Clwàideac-na-Cuinne website (not the website you are currently on), titled: s1. Words for "snowflake" across different Gaelic dialects, and etymological comments & other topics. Other details about mawida and its possible connection to Finnish can be found in my unrelated print-only book, titled: Similarities in Quechua and Finnish language words newly noticed in March 2025 and not previously published, and other connected topics not previously published; book published only in print format and not in other formats; book published in the UK.

 

Whilst it is possible that the source material of these words ended up accidentally mixing different sources on different languages, it is also possible that Wayteka or Chono was a kind of “central” language, that shared vocabulary with several surrounding languages. I also personally think it unlikely that some of these words were simply “made up”. The word mékta for example shows similarity to other words, but does not closely resemble the words for “tree” or “forest” in for example Kawesqar, Yaghan and Selknam, and whilst it is similar to the Quechua and Finnic forms given, it is also different enough from the Quechua forms to make it unlikely to be a simply a made up word, or a word taken from another nearby language. 

In conclusion however, there is little to be said further on these potential word similarities, unless further evidence comes to light of this language called Chono or Wayteka. Note that there are far more examples of similarities between Quechua and Finnish, and other related language links, which collectively constitute a much larger work focusing on many many of these connected words, of which there are comparatively only a few in terms of comparing Chono and Finnish. 

 

References:

 

.All Chono/Wayteka words in this article were sourced from: Samitier, Liaras. 1967. El grupo chono o wayteka y los demas pueblos fuegopatagonia. Runa 10. 1-2:123-94 (Buenos Aires),

(1). Proto-Samoyedic *woəj - “island” is sourced from Wiktionary, there are further references on the relevant page, but it is unclear which of those sources this root form comes from; if any of them. 

(2). Kasesqar “yemase” is sourced from: Christos Clairis and José Pedro Viegas Barros. 2023. Qawasqar dictionary. In: Key, Mary Ritchie & Comrie, Bernard (eds.) The Intercontinental Dictionary Series. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at http://ids.clld.org/contributions/313, Accessed on 2025-08-13.)

(3). Selknam “yèni” is sourced from: Elena L. Najlis. 2023. Selknam dictionary. In: Key, Mary Ritchie & Comrie, Bernard (eds.) The Intercontinental Dictionary Series. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at http://ids.clld.org/contributions/311, Accessed on 2025-08-13.)