Yurumanguà is an extinct language that was spoken along the
Yurumanguà River of
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...
. 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. 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
Santiago de Cali (), or Cali, is the capital of the Valle del Cauca department, and the most populous city in southwest Colombia, with 2,280,522 residents estimate by National Administrative Department of Statistics, DANE in 2023. The city span ...
), ''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
Santiago de Cali (), or Cali, is the capital of the Valle del Cauca department, and the most populous city in southwest Colombia, with 2,280,522 residents estimate by National Administrative Department of Statistics, DANE in 2023. The city span ...
*Yolo (Paripazo) - San JoaquÃn River
*Jamundi -
Cauca River
*Puscajae (Pile) - left bank of the Dagila River
Vocabulary
Below are selected entries from the 1768 Yurumanguà vocabulary given in Ortiz (1946), with original Spanish glosses and translated English glosses.
[Ortiz, Sergio Elias (1946) Los Indios YurumanguÃes. ''BoletÃn de Historia y Antigüedades'' XXXII.731-748.]
Bibliography
*
Loukotka, ÄŒestmÃr (1968) ''Classification of South American Indian Languages''. University of California, Los Angeles.
*Ortiz, Sergio Elias (1946) Los Indios YurumanguÃes. ''BoletÃn de Historia y Antigüedades'' XXXII.731-748.
*
Poser, William J. (1992) The Salinan and Yurumanguà Data in ''Language in the Americas''. ''International Journal of American Linguistics'' 58.2.202-22
PDF*
Rivet, Paul (1942) Un dialecte Hoka Colombien: le YurumangÃ. ''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