Warao (also known as Guarauno, Guarao, Warrau) is the native language of the

Warao people The Warao are an indigenous Amerindian people inhabiting northeastern Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and Suriname. Alternate common spellings of Warao are Waroa, Guarauno, Guarao, and Warrau. The term ''Warao'' translates as "the boat pe ...

. A

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 nu ...

, it is spoken by about 33,000 people primarily in northern

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

Guyana Guyana ( or ), officially the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, is a country on the northern mainland of South America. Guyana is an indigenous word which means "Land of Many Waters". The capital city is Georgetown. Guyana is bordered by the ...

and

Suriname Suriname (; srn, Sranankondre or ), officially the Republic of Suriname ( nl, Republiek Suriname , srn, Ripolik fu Sranan), is a country on the northeastern Atlantic coast of South America. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the nor ...

. It is notable for its unusual object–subject–verb

word order In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...

. The 2015 Venezuelan film '' Gone with the River'' was spoken in Warao.

Classification

Warao appears to be a

, unrelated to any recorded language in the region or elsewhere. Terrence Kaufman (1994) included it in his hypothetical Macro-Paezan family, but the necessary supporting work was never done. Julian Granberry connected many of the grammatical forms, including nominal and verbal

suffixes In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry g ...

, of Warao to the

Timucua language Timucua is a language isolate formerly spoken in northern and central Florida and southern Georgia by the Timucua peoples. Timucua was the primary language used in the area at the time of Spanish colonization in Florida. Differences among the ...

of North Florida, also a language isolate. However, he has also derived Timucua morphemes from Muskogean, Chibchan, Paezan, Arawakan, and other Amazonian languages, suggesting multi-language

creolization Creolization is the process through which creole languages and cultures emerge. Creolization was first used by linguists to explain how contact languages become creole languages, but now scholars in other social sciences use the term to describe ne ...

as a possible explanation for these similarities.

Waroid hypothesis

Granberry also finds " Waroid" vocabulary items in

Guajiro The Wayuu (also Wayu, Wayúu, Guajiro, Wahiro) are an Amerindian ethnic group of the Guajira Peninsula in northernmost part of Colombia and northwest Venezuela. The Wayuu language is part of the Maipuran (Arawak) language family. Geography ...

(from toponymic evidence it seems that the Warao or a related people once occupied Goajiro country) and in Taino (''nuçay'' or ''nozay'' osái"gold" in Ciboney — cf. Warao ''naséi símo'' "gold" (lit. "yellow pebble") — and ''duho'' "ceremonial stool" in Classic Taino — cf. Warao ''duhu'' "sit, stool"). Granberry & Vescelius (2004) note that toponymic evidence suggests that the pre-Taino

Macorix language Macorix (/maso'riʃ/, also rendered Maçorís and Mazorij) was the language of the northern coast of what is today the Dominican Republic. Spanish accounts only refer to three languages on the island: Taino, Macorix, and neighboring Ciguayo. The ...

of Hispaniola and the Guanahatabey language of Cuba may have been Waroid languages as well.

Language contact

Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the

Cariban The Cariban languages are a family of languages indigenous to northeastern South America. They are widespread across northernmost South America, from the mouth of the Amazon River to the Colombian Andes, and they are also spoken in small pocket ...

, Arutani, Máku, and Sape language families due to contact within an earlier

Guiana Highlands The Guianas, sometimes called by the Spanish loan-word ''Guayanas'' (''Las Guayanas''), is a region in north-eastern South America which includes the following three territories: * French Guiana, an overseas department and region of France * ...

interaction sphere.

Demographics

The language had an estimated 28,100 speakers in

as of 2007. The

live chiefly in the

Orinoco Delta The Orinoco Delta is a vast river delta of the Orinoco River, located in eastern Venezuela. Location The Orinoco Delta is one of the eight natural regions of Venezuela. It covers the whole of Delta Amacuro State and a few square kilometers of ...

region of northeastern Venezuela, with smaller communities in southwestern

Trinidad Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...

(

Trinidad and Tobago Trinidad and Tobago (, ), officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, is the southernmost island country in the Caribbean. Consisting of the main islands Trinidad and Tobago, and numerous much smaller islands, it is situated south of ...

), western

and

. The language is considered endangered by

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international coope ...

Varieties

Loukotka (1968) lists these varieties: *''Guanoco'' - spoken on the Laguna de Asfalto, state of Monagas (unattested) *''Chaguan'' - spoken in the Orinoco Delta on the Manamo branch (unattested) *''Mariusa'' - spoken in the same region on the Cocuina and Macareo branches Mason (1950) lists: *''Waikeri'' (''Guaiqueri'') *''Chaguan'' *''Mariusa''

Grammar

The language's basic

has been analyzed as object–subject–verb, a very rare word order among nominative–accusative languages such as Warao.

Phonology

The Warao consonant inventory is small, but not quite as small as many other South American inventories. It does not contain any notable exotica. and , ɺare allophones of // and /ɾ/. There are five oral vowels and five nasal vowels . /u/ after /k/ within the beginning of words has a sound as �

Vocabulary

Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items for Uarao (Warao) and Mariusa. :

References

Other sources

* * Barral, Basilio de. 1979. Diccionario Warao-Castellano, Castellano-Warao. Caracas: UCAB * Figeroa, Andrés Romero. 1997. A Reference Grammar of Warao. München, Newcastle: Lincom * Ponce, Peter. 2004.
Diccionario Español - Warao
'. Fundación Turismo de Pedernales. * Vaquero, Antonio. 1965. Idioma Warao. Morfología, sintaxis, literatura. Estudios Venezolanos Indígenas. Caracas. * Wilbert, Johannes. 1964. Warao Oral Litrerature. Instituto Caribe de Antropología y Sociología. Fundación La Salle de Ciencias Naturales. Monograph no 9 Caracas: Editorial Sucre. * Wilbert, Johannes. 1969. Textos Folklóricos de los Indios Warao. Los Angeles: Latin American Center. University of California. Latin American Studies Vol. 12.

External links

Warao-Spanish dictionary

{{South American languages Languages of Venezuela Languages of Suriname Languages of Guyana Language isolates of South America Macro-Paesan languages Agglutinative languages Object–subject–verb languages Endangered language isolates Endangered indigenous languages of the Americas