Yurí (Jurí) is, or was, a language previously spoken near a stretch of the Caquetá River in the Brazilian Amazon, extending slightly into Colombia. It was spoken on the Puré River of Colombia, and the Içá River and

Japurá River The Japurá River or Caquetá River is a river about long in the Amazon basin. It rises in Colombia and flows eastward through Brazil to join the Amazon River. Course The river rises as the Caquetá River in the Andes in southwest Colombia. Th ...

of Brazil. A small amount of data was collected on two occasions in the 19th century, in 1853 and 1867. Kaufman (1994:62, after Nimuendajú 1977:62) notes that there is good lexical evidence to support a link with Ticuna in a Ticuna–Yurí language family, though the data has never been explicitly compared (Hammarström 2010). It is commonly assumed that the Yuri people and language survive among the uncontacted people or peoples of the Rio Puré region, now the Río Puré National Park. Indeed, "Yuri" is often used as a synonym for the only named people in the area, the

Carabayo The Carabayo (who perhaps call themselves Yacumo) are an uncontacted people of Colombia living in at least three long houses, known as ''malokas'', along the Rio Puré (now the Río Puré National Park) in the southeastern corner of the country. ...

. A list of words collected in 1969 from the Carabayo, only recovered in 2013, suggests the language is close to Yuri, though perhaps not a direct descendant.

Vocabulary

Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items. :

References

* *Harald Hammarström, 2010, 'The status of the least documented language families in the world'. In ''Language Documentation & Conservation'', v 4, p 18

{{Languages of Brazil Extinct languages of South America Ticuna–Yuri languages Languages of Brazil Languages of Colombia Languages attested from the 19th century Languages extinct in the 20th century