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Modern Bokuchi linguists have reconstructed their language and, using comparative research, a proto-language from which its linguistic family derived, which has been named the Itrumi family (Itrumi meaning 'of the gulf'). The proto-language is referred to as Proto-Itrumi, and is supposed to have been spoken about 3000 years ago.
The Itrumi family has eight languages (some linguists favour a smaller number, taking groups of languages to be mere dialects): Yivokuchi, Mini'an, Wöl, Gayat, Iikyat, Uphod, Hytsu, and Bharm. Of these, Wöl and Iikyat are extinct, but a great deal of written and oral records exist and permit their reconstruction.
The Itrumi languages have a series of characteristic features, which have helped in the reconstruction of Proto-Itrumi. In most cases, one or more features have been lost, but the change may in all cases be traced back a few hundreds of years ago. The typical Itrumi features are:
Most members of the Itrumi family show a contrast between aspirated and plain (non-aspirated) unvoiced stops, with some also having clusters of voiced stop plus /h/ that are functionally aspirated voiced stops. Yivokuchi has lost aspiration altogether, conflating all aspirated stops (voiced and unvoiced) with the plain unvoiced ones.
The proto-language has been reconstructed as having nine vowels, tenseness being the main contrast. Most modern Itrumi languages have partially lost tenseness as a distinction. Yivokuchi has five vowels, distinguished only by height, frontness and roundedness. The proto-language also had phonemic length at least for vowels, and the daughter languages have preserved it or (as in the case of Yivokuchi) transformed long vowels into diphthongs.
Proto-Itrumi had some complicated consonant clusters that did not survive in the daughter languages. Most of them show backwards or mutual assimilation, if not simple deletion, often producing regular consonant mutation patterns (of which Yivokuchi fricative mutation is just one example).
Gayat is a major language in the area surrounding the Yivokuchi speakers. Most of the loanwords in Yivokuchi come from Gayat, like beit 'dying', direa 'glicerine', and fein 'desire' (from Gayat /bejt/, /dira@/, /Pejn/).
Gayat has a typical seven vowel arrangement, having lost the high lax vowels of Proto-Itrumi. Vowel length has been lost, long vowels becoming diphthongs, as in Yivokuchi (though not necessarily the same diphthongs).
Gayat has also experienced a well-known phenomenon of stop-series shifting: unvoiced aspirated stops become fricatives, and voiced aspirated stops become unvoiced aspirated. In addition, an alveolar affricate series has emerged, as is rather common in this family, from velar-palatal clusters (in the same context, Yivokuchi produced a palatal stop series).
Hytsu (pronounce /h@t_su/) is another major language of the Itrumi family. It has provided a few loanwords to Yivokuchi, such as dasat 'oblivious' (from H /d@s@t/, from PI /dExjEt/, also giving Y /deCet/ 'enjoying') and iz 'short' (H /i:d_z/, from PI /?i:gj/).
Hytsu has six vowels, having turned all four lax vowels of Proto-Itrumi into one (a schwa). However, unlike Yivokuchi, it preserves phonemic vowel length (long lax vowels become diphthongs).
Like Gayat, Hytsu has an alveolar affricate series and a three-series stop system, though its origin is different: Hytsu preserves the original unvoiced aspirated stops, and turns Proto-Itrumi voiced aspirated stops into unvoiced ones.