Yurumanguí is an extinct language that was spoken along the
Yurumanguí River of
Colombia. It is known only through a short list of words and phrases recorded by Father Christoval Romero and given by him to Captain Sebastián Lanchas de Estrada, who included them in the report of his travels of 1768. Thereafter the language and its speakers disappear from the historical record.
Father Romero's word list was discovered in the archives and published, with analysis and commentary, by Rivet (1942), who argued that the language was a member of the
Hokan language family
The Hokan language family is a hypothetical grouping of a dozen small language families that were spoken mainly in California, Arizona and Baja California.
Etymology
The name ''Hokan'' is loosely based on the word for "two" in the various Hoka ...
. This claim is considered poor and unconvincing; a critique is given by Poser (1992). Swadesh (1963) saw connections with
Opaye and
Chamicura (Maipurean). Adelaar notes similarities with
Esmeralda (Takame). However, it is generally considered unclassifiable due to the paucity of data.
Varieties
Loukotka (1968) included a number of purported languages from the same region in a Yurimangui stock in his language classification. These are ''Timba, Lili'' (at
Cali), ''Yolo/Paripazo, Jamundi,'' and ''Puscajae/Pile.'' However, he notes that nothing is known of any of them. Their locations were:
*Timba - Canambre River
*Lili - around
Cali
*Yolo (Paripazo) - San Joaquín River
*Jamundi -
Cauca River
The Cauca River () is a river in Colombia that lies between the Occidental and Central cordilleras. From its headwaters in southwestern Colombia near the city of Popayán, it joins the Magdalena River near Magangue in Bolivar Department, and ...
*Puscajae (Pile) - left bank of the Dagila River
Vocabulary
Below are selected entries from the 1768 Yurumanguí vocabulary given in Ortiz (1946), with original Spanish glosses and translated English glosses.
[Ortiz, Sergio Elias (1946) Los Indios Yurumanguíes. ''Boletín de Historia y Antigüedades'' XXXII.731-748.]
Bibliography
*
Loukotka, Čestmír (1968) ''Classification of South American Indian Languages''. University of California, Los Angeles.
*Ortiz, Sergio Elias (1946) Los Indios Yurumanguíes. ''Boletín de Historia y Antigüedades'' XXXII.731-748.
*
Poser, William J. (1992) The Salinan and Yurumanguí Data in ''Language in the Americas''. ''International Journal of American Linguistics'' 58.2.202-22
PDF*
Rivet, Paul (1942) Un dialecte Hoka Colombien: le Yurumangí. ''Journal de la Société des Américanistes de Paris'' 34.1-59.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yurumangui language
Extinct languages of South America
Language isolates of South America
Languages of Colombia
Indigenous languages of the Americas
Languages attested from the 18th century