Taruma (''Taruamá'') is a nearly extinct, divergent language of northeastern South America. It has been reported to be extinct several times since as far back as 1770, but Eithne Carlin discovered the last three speakers living in
Maruranau among the
Wapishana, and is documenting the language. The people and language are known as ''Saluma'' in Suriname.
Classification
Taruma is unclassified.
[Carlin 2011 (p. 11 12)] It has been proposed to be distantly related to
Katembri (Kaufman 1990), but this relationship has not been repeated in recent surveys of South American languages (Campbell 2012).
History
Taruma was spoken around the mouth of the
Rio Negro during the late 1600s, but the speakers later moved to southern
Guyana
Guyana, officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, is a country on the northern coast of South America, part of the historic British West Indies. entry "Guyana" Georgetown, Guyana, Georgetown is the capital of Guyana and is also the co ...
. In the 1940s, the
Taruma tribe were reported to no longer exist as a distinct group.
However, their presence has recently been confirmed in the Wapishana village of
Marunarau, where they are recognized as a distinct tribe.
Only one of the three knows Taruma well enough to produce "coherent texts", and the other two have "a much weaker knowledge" of Taruma.
Language contact
Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the
Chibchan,
Katukina-Katawixi,
Arawak,
Jeoromitxi,
Tupi,
Arawa,
Jivaro,
Karib,
Mura-Matanawi,
Tukano,
Yanomami
The Yanomami, also spelled Yąnomamö or Yanomama, are a group of approximately 35,000 indigenous people of the Americas, indigenous people who live in some 200–250 villages in the Amazon rainforest on the border between Venezuela and Brazil. ...
, and
Kwaza language families due to contact.
The following table illustrates some of the aforementioned borrowing situations:
:
Similarities with
Chibchan (especially with the Magdalena and Dorasque-Changena subgroups) may be due to the former presence of Chibchan speakers in the Northeast Amazons.
Similarities with Tucanoan suggest that Taruma had originated in the
Caquetá basin.
Phonology
Consonants
Vowels
Vocabulary
Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items.
:
For a list of Taruma words from Jolkesky (2016),
see the corresponding
Portuguese article.
Further reading
*
Meira, Sérgio. (2015). ''Taruma wordlist''. (Manuscript).
Notes
References
* Eithne B. Carlin (2011) "Nested Identities in the Southern Guyana Surinam Corner". In Hornborg & Hill (eds.) ''Ethnicity in Ancient Amazonia''.
* Eithne B. Carlin (2006) "Feeling the Need: The Borrowing of Cariban Functional Categories into Mawayana (Arawak)". In Aikhenvald & Dixon (eds.) ''Grammars in Contact: A Cross-Linguistic Typology'', pp. 313–332. Oxford University Press.
{{South American languages
Katembri–Taruma languages
Indigenous languages of South America
Languages of Brazil
Extinct languages of South America
Articles citing ISO change requests
Language isolates of South America