Ecuadorian Siona

Ecuadorian Siona (also known as Baicoca) is a spoken language by the Siona people of Ecuador, and can be considered a dialect or variety of a larger Baicoca-Siecoca, or Siona-Secoya, language cluster. Ecuadorian Siona is part of the Western Tukanoan language family.

Ecuadorian Siona is closely related to Secoya and Colombian Siona (see Siona language); the three represent a language cluster spoken near the borders of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. The variety spoken in Ecuador differs from the one spoken in Colombia with regard to some lexical, morphological, and phonological characteristics. Some properties of Ecuadorian Siona are actually closer to Secoya. The three varieties show a high level of mutual intelligibility. Bruil views them as three different varieties of the same Siona-Secoya dialect continuum, with Ecuadorian Siona in the middle.

The Ecuadorian variety is spoken in the Eastern jungle area of Ecuador in the Sucumbíos province. Speakers of Ecuadorian Siona mostly reside in six villages: Puerto Bolívar and Tarabëaya are located on the Cuyabeno river, and Sototsiaya, Orahuëaya, Aboquëhuira and Bi'aña on the Aguarico River. Ecuadorian Siona is also spoken outside of Ecuador, however, it is minimal. As of 2020, there were 25 native speakers in Buenavista, Nuevo Amanecer, and Mocoa in Colombia.