Taruma (''Taruamá'') is a 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
Maruranau (Wapishana: Marora Naawa; also: ''Maruranawa'') is an indigenous village of Wapishana Amerindians in the Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo Region of Guyana. It is located in the Rupununi savannah near the Kwitaro River on the edge of the Kan ...
among the
Wapishana, and is documenting the language. The people and language are known as ''Saluma'' in Suriname.
Classification
Taruma is unclassified.
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 ( or ), officially the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, is a country on the northern mainland of South America. Guyana is an indigenous word which means "Land of Many Waters". The capital city is Georgetown. Guyana is bordered by the ...
. In the 1940s, the
Taruma tribe were reported to no longer exist as a distinct group.
[Campbell, Lyle. 2018. ''Language Isolates''. New York: Routledge.] However, their presence has recently been confirmed in the Wapishana village of Marunarau, where they are recognized as a distinct tribe.
Language contact
Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the
Chibchan
The Chibchan languages (also Chibchan, Chibchano) make up a language family indigenous to the Isthmo-Colombian Area, which extends from eastern Honduras to northern Colombia and includes populations of these countries as well as Nicaragua, Costa ...
,
Katukina-Katawixi,
Arawak
The Arawak are a group of indigenous peoples of northern South America and of the Caribbean. Specifically, the term "Arawak" has been applied at various times to the Lokono of South America and the Taíno, who historically lived in the Greate ...
,
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 who live in some 200–250 villages in the Amazon rainforest on the border between Venezuela and Brazil.
Etymology
The ethnonym ''Yanomami' ...
, and
Kwaza language families due to contact.
The following table illustrates some of the aforementioned borrowing situations:
:
Similarities with
Chibchan
The Chibchan languages (also Chibchan, Chibchano) make up a language family indigenous to the Isthmo-Colombian Area, which extends from eastern Honduras to northern Colombia and includes populations of these countries as well as Nicaragua, Costa ...
(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.
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