Maipure (Maypure, Mejepure), was a language once spoken along the
Ventuari,
Sipapo, and
Autana rivers of
Amazonas and, as a
lingua franca
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...
, in the Upper
Orinoco
The Orinoco () is one of the longest rivers in South America at . Its drainage basin, sometimes known as the Orinoquia, covers , with 76.3 percent of it in Venezuela and the remainder in Colombia. It is the fourth largest river in the wor ...
region. It became extinct around the end of the eighteenth century. Zamponi provided a grammatical sketch of the language and furnished a classified word list, based on all of its extant eighteenth century material (mainly from the Italian missionary
Filippo S. Gilij
Filippo Salvatore Gilii (Spanish: Felipe Salvador Gilij) (1721–1789) was an Italian Jesuit priest who lived in the Province of Venezuela (in present day central Venezuela) on the Orinoco River. Gilii is a highly celebrated figure in early Sout ...
). It is historically important in that it formed the cornerstone of the recognition of the
Maipurean (Arawakan) language family.
Kaufman (1994) gives its closest relatives as
Yavitero and other languages of the Orinoco branch of
Upper Amazon Arawakan
The Upper Amazon Maipurean languages, a.k.a. North Amazonian or Inland Northern Maipuran, are Arawakan languages of the northern Amazon in Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, and Brazil.
Upper Amazon Arawakan has been surveyed comprehensively by Henri Ra ...
. Aikhenvald places it instead in the Western Nawiki branch.
Notes and references
Arawakan languages
Indigenous languages of the South American Northeast
{{Arawakan-lang-stub