Yurumanguí is an extinct language that was spoken along the

Yurumanguí River The Yurumanguí River is a river of Colombia. It drains into the Pacific Ocean. See also *List of rivers of Colombia References

Rivers of Colombia {{Colombia-river-stub ...

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...

. 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 Hokan ...

. 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 2,227,642 residents according to the 2018 census. The city spans with of urban area, making Cali the second ...

), ''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

*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 th ...

*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
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* 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