Taushiro, also known as Pinche or Pinchi, is a
nearly extinct possible
language isolate
Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families. Korean and Basque are two of the most common examples. Other language isolates include Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, and Haida in North America. The num ...
of the Peruvian
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...
near
Ecuador
Ecuador ( ; ; Quechua: ''Ikwayur''; Shuar: ''Ecuador'' or ''Ekuatur''), officially the Republic of Ecuador ( es, República del Ecuador, which literally translates as "Republic of the Equator"; Quechua: ''Ikwadur Ripuwlika''; Shuar: ''Eku ...
. In 2000
SIL
SIL, Sil and sil may refer to:
Organizations
* Servis Industries Limited, Pakistan
* Smithsonian Institution Libraries
* SIL International, formerly Summer Institute of Linguistics
* Apex Silver Mines (former American Stock Exchange ticker symb ...
counted one speaker in an ethnic population of 20. Documentation was done in the mid-1970s by Neftalí Alicea. The last living speaker of Taushiro, Amadeo García García, was profiled in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' in 2017.
The first glossary of Taushiro contained 200 words and was collected by Daniel Velie in 1971.
Classification
Following Tovar (1961), Loukotka (1968),
and Tovar (1984),
Kaufman
Kaufman or Kauffman may refer to:
People
*Kaufmann (surname) ''Includes Kaufman, Kauffman, Kauffmann''
Places
* Kaufman, Illinois, an unincorporated community in Madison Count
* Kaufman, Texas, a city in Kaufman County
* Kaufman County, Texas, ...
(1994) notes that while Taushiro has been linked to the
Zaparoan languages
Zaparoan (also Sáparoan, Záparo, Zaparoano, Zaparoana) is an endangered language family of Peru and Ecuador with fewer than 100 speakers. Zaparoan speakers seem to have been very numerous before the arrival of the Europeans. However, their grou ...
, it shares greater lexical correspondences with
Kandoshi and especially with
Omurano. In 2007 he classified Taushiro and Omurano (but not Kandoshi) as
Saparo–Yawan languages
Saparo–Yawan (Zaparo–Yaguan, Zaparo–Peba) is a language family proposal uniting two small language families of the western Amazon. It was first proposed by Swadesh (1954), and continues through Payne (1984) and Kaufman (1994).Kaufman, Terre ...
.
Jolkesky (2016) also notes that there are lexical similarities with
Tequiraca and
Leco.
Grammar
Word order in Taushiro is
Verb–subject–object
A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...
.
[Alicea, Neftalí. 1975. ''Análisis preliminar de la gramática del idioma Taushiro''. (Datos Etno-Lingüísticos, 24.) Datos Etno-Lingüísticos. Lima: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.]
Amadeo García García
In June 2015, the sole remaining native speaker, Amadeo García García was residing in "Intuto on the
Tigre River
The Tigre River () is a Peruvian tributary of the Marañón River west of the Nanay River. It is navigable for from its confluence with the Marañón. It forms from the confluence of the Ecuadorian rivers Cunambo and Pintoyacu at the Peruvian ...
in the northeastern Peruvian region of
Loreto." Zachary O’Hagan did targeted field work with him on topics such as
ethnohistory, genealogy, sociocultural practices, lexicon, and grammar.
As of December 2017 government linguists from Peru’s
Ministry of Culture, working with Amadeo, have created a database of 1,500 Taushiro words, 27 stories, and three songs.
Further reading
*Alicea Ortiz, N. (1975). Vocabulario taushiro (Datos Etno-Lingüísticos, 22). Lima: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
References
{{South American languages
Languages of Peru
Language isolates of South America
Critically endangered languages
Endangered language isolates