The Uru language, more specifically known as Iru-Itu, and Uchumataqu, is an extinct language formerly spoken by the

Uru people The Uru or Uros ( ure, Qhas Qut suñi) are an indigenous people of Bolivia. They live on an approximate and still growing 120 self-fashioned floating islands in Lake Titicaca near Puno. They form three main groups: the Uru-Chipaya, Uru-Murat ...

. In 2004, it had 2 remaining native speakers out of an ethnic group of 140 people in the

La Paz Department, Bolivia The La Paz Department of Bolivia comprises with a 2012 census population of 2,706,359 inhabitants. It is situated at the western border of Bolivia, sharing Lake Titicaca with adjacent Peru. It contains the '' Cordillera Real'', which reaches ...

near

Lake Titicaca Lake Titicaca (; es, Lago Titicaca ; qu, Titiqaqa Qucha) is a large freshwater lake in the Andes mountains on the border of Bolivia and Peru. It is often called the highest navigable lake in the world. By volume of water and by surface area, ...

, the rest having shifted to

Aymara Aymara may refer to: Languages and people * Aymaran languages, the second most widespread Andean language ** Aymara language, the main language within that family ** Central Aymara, the other surviving branch of the Aymara(n) family, which today ...

and

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

. The language is close enough to the Chipaya language to sometimes be considered a dialect of that language. Uru is also called Ochosuma (Uchuzuma), a historical name for the Uru ethnic group. Olson (1964) mentions a variety of Uru,

Uru of Ch'imu Uru of Ch'imu is an extinct language of the Uros, an Amerindian people. Speakers lived on reed islands in Puno Bay in western Lake Titicaca in Peru. Ch'imu Uru was discovered in 1929 by Lehmann, whose notes are in the Library of the Ibero-Amer ...

, spoken on the

Isla del Sol Isla del Sol (''Island of the Sun'') is an island in the southern part of Lake Titicaca. It is part of Bolivia, and specifically part of the La Paz Department (Bolivia), La Paz Department. Geographically, the terrain is harsh; it is a rocky, hilly ...

in Lake Titicaca. It is not clear if this was a dialect of Iru Itu or a separate Uru language.

Identifying Uchumataqu

Since one of the Urus' names for their language was "Pukina", Uchumataqu has previously been mistakenly identified with

Puquina Puquina (or Pukina) is a small, putative language family, often portrayed as a language isolate, which consists of the extinct Puquina language and Kallawaya, although it is assumed that the latter is just a remnant of the former mixed with Qu ...

. While the personal and possessive pronouns of the unrelated Puquina bear limited similarities to those of Arawakan languages, Uru differs drastically from Arawakan languages in its person-marking system and its morphology. The pronoun system of Uchumataqu is naturally very similar instead to its close relative Chipaya. Uchumataqu has also borrowed grammatical and lexical morphemes from prolonged exposure to Aymara, with which it is not related, however. Unlike Aymara, Uru is not

polysynthetic In linguistic typology, polysynthetic languages, formerly holophrastic languages, are highly synthetic languages, i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes (word parts that have independent meaning but may or may not be able to ...

and has a phonemic five-vowel system /a e i o u/, while Aymara has a three-vowel system /a i u/. One contrast between Uru and the related Chipaya is that Uru does not identify gender morphologically as Chipaya does.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Uru Language Languages of Bolivia Uru–Chipaya languages Endangered indigenous languages of the Americas