The Tupi or Tupian language family comprises some 70 languages spoken in

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sou ...

, of which the best known are Tupi proper and Guarani.

Homeland and ''urheimat''

Rodrigues (2007) considers the Proto-Tupian urheimat to be somewhere between the Guaporé and

Aripuanã Aripuanã is a municipality in the state of Mato Grosso in the Central-West Region of Brazil. It is located on the banks of the Aripuanã River. The city is served by Aripuanã Airport. The municipality contains the Rio Flor do Prado Eco ...

rivers, in the

Madeira River The Madeira River ( pt, Rio Madeira, link=no ) is a major waterway in South America. It is estimated to be in length, while the Madeira-Mamoré is estimated near or in length depending on the measuring party and their methods. The Madeira is ...

basin. Much of this area corresponds to the modern-day state of

Rondônia Rondônia () is one of the 26 states of Brazil, located in the northern subdivision of the country (central-western part). To the west is a short border with the state of Acre, to the north is the state of Amazonas, in the east is Mato Grosso ...

, Brazil. 5 of the 10 Tupian branches are found in this area, as well as some

Tupi–Guarani languages Tupi–Guarani () is the most widely distributed subfamily of the Tupian languages of South America. It consists of about fifty languages, including Guarani and Old Tupi. The words ''petunia, jaguar, piranha, ipecac, tapioca, jacaranda, a ...

(especially Kawahíb), making it the probable urheimat of these languages and maybe of its speaking peoples. Rodrigues believes the Proto-Tupian language dates back to around 3,000 BC.

Language contact

Tupian languages have extensively influenced many language families in South America. Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Arawa, Bora-Muinane, Guato, Irantxe, Jivaro, Karib, Kayuvava, Mura-Matanawi, Taruma, Trumai,

Yanomami The Yanomami, also spelled Yąnomamö or Yanomama, are a group of approximately 35,000 indigenous people who live in some 200–250 villages in the Amazon rainforest on the border between Venezuela and Brazil. Etymology The ethnonym ''Yanomami' ...

, Harakmbet, Katukina-Katawixi,

Arawak The Arawak are a group of indigenous peoples of northern South America and of the Caribbean. Specifically, the term "Arawak" has been applied at various times to the Lokono of South America and the Taíno, who historically lived in the Greate ...

, Bororo, Karaja, Macro-Mataguayo-Guaykuru,

Takana Takana is a forum of prominent personalities with the objective of fighting sexual abuse in the National Religious sector in Israel. The forum came to the spotlight in February 2010 when it published a statement claiming that Rabbi Mordechai El ...

, Nadahup, and Puinave-Kak language families due to contact.

History, members and classification

When the Portuguese arrived in

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

, they found that wherever they went along the vast coast of this newly discovered land, most natives spoke similar languages.

Jesuit , image = Ihs-logo.svg , image_size = 175px , caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits , abbreviation = SJ , nickname = Jesuits , formation = , founders ...

missionaries took advantage of these similarities, systematizing common standards then named '' línguas gerais'' ("general languages"), which were spoken in that region until the 19th century. The best known and most widely spoken of these languages was

Old Tupi Old Tupi, Ancient Tupi or Classical Tupi (also spelled as Tupí) is an extinct Tupian language which was spoken by the aboriginal Tupi people of Brazil, mostly those who inhabited coastal regions in South and Southeast Brazil. It belongs to ...

, a modern descendant of which is still used today by

indigenous peoples Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...

around the Rio Negro region, where it is known as '' Nheengatu'' (), or the "good language". However, the Tupi family also comprises other languages. In the neighbouring Spanish colonies, Guarani, another Tupian language closely related to Old Tupi, had a similar history, but managed to resist the spread of Spanish more successfully than Tupi resisted Portuguese. Today, Guarani has 7 million speakers, and is one of the official languages of

Paraguay Paraguay (; ), officially the Republic of Paraguay ( es, República del Paraguay, links=no; gn, Tavakuairetã Paraguái, links=si), is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to t ...

. The Tupian family also includes several other languages with fewer speakers. These share irregular morphology with the Je and Carib families, and Rodrigues connects them all as a Je–Tupi–Carib family.Rodrigues A. D., 2000, "‘Ge–Pano–Carib’ X ‘Jê–Tupí–Karib’: sobre relaciones lingüísticas prehistóricas en Sudamérica", in L. Miranda (ed.)
''Actas del I Congreso de Lenguas Indígenas de Sudamérica,'' Tome I
Lima, Universidad Ricardo Palma, Facultad de lenguas modernas, p. 95-104.

Rodrigues & Cabral (2012)

Rodrigues & Cabral (2012) list 10 branches of Tupian, which cluster into Western Tupian and Eastern Tupian.Rodrigues, Aryon Dall'Igna, and Ana Suelly Arruda Câmara Cabral (2012). "Tupían". In Campbell, Lyle, and Verónica Grondona (eds)
''The indigenous languages of South America: a comprehensive guide''
Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Within Western and Eastern Tupian, the most divergent branches are listed first, followed by the core branches. *Western Tupian ** Arikém (2 languages) ** Tuparí (6 languages) ** Mondé (6 languages) ** Puruborá ** Ramaráma (Rondônia) (2 languages) *Eastern Tupian ** Yurúna (Jurúna) (3 languages) ** Mundurukú (2 languages) ** Mawé ** Awetï ** Tupi–Guarani (50 languages:

Tupí Tupí, also known as ''formatge de tupí'', is a fermented cheese of a certain area of the Pyrenees and Pre-Pyrenees made from cows' or sheep's milk. It is a cheese traditionally prepared in the mountainous Pallars region, as well as in the Cerd ...

xtinct Guaraní (5 million speakers), etc.) Meira and Drude (2015) posit a branch uniting Mawé and Aweti with Tupi-Guarani, also known as Maweti-Guarani.Meira, Sérgio and Sebastian Drude (2015). "A preliminary reconstruction of proto-Maweti-Guarani segmental phonology". ''Boletim do Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi, série Ciências Humanas'', 10(2):275-296. Purubora may form a branch together with Ramarama.

Jolkesky (2016)

Internal classification by Jolkesky (2016):Jolkesky, Marcelo Pinho De Valhery. 2016.
Estudo arqueo-ecolinguístico das terras tropicais sul-americanas
'. Ph.D. dissertation,

University of Brasília The University of Brasília ( pt, Universidade de Brasília, UnB) is a federal public university in Brasília, the capital of Brazil. It was founded in 1960 and has since consistently been named among the top five Brazilian universities and the ...

. († = extinct) ;Tupi family * Arikem **'' Arikem'' † **''

Karitiana The Karitiana or Caritiana are an indigenous people of Brazil, whose reservation is located in the western Amazon. They count 320 members, and the leader of their tribal association is Renato Caritiana. They subsist by farming, fishing and hunt ...

'' *

Monde A ''monde'', meaning 'world' in French, is an orb located near the top of a crown. It represents, as the name suggests, the world that the monarch rules. It is the point at which a crown's half arches meet. It is usually topped off either w ...

**'' Paiter'' **Monde, Nuclear ***''

'' ***Cinta-Larga-Zoro ****''

Arua Arua is a city and commercial centre within the Arua District in the Northern Region of Uganda. Location Arua is approximately , by road, north-west of Kampala, the capital and largest city of Uganda, Arua is about , by road, west of Gulu, th ...

'' ****'' Cinta-Larga'' ****'' Gavião''; '' Zoro'' *Ramarama-Purubora **'' Purubora'' ** Ramarema: ''

Karo Karo may refer to: Ethnic groups * Karo people (East Africa), a group of tribes in East Africa * Karo people (Ethiopia), an ethnic group from Ethiopia * Karo people (Indonesia), the indigenous people of the Karo Plateau in North Sumatra Languag ...

''; '' Urumi'' * Tupari **'' Makurap'' **Tupari, Nuclear ***Sakurabiat-Akuntsu ****'' Akuntsu'' ****'' Sakurabiat'' ***'' Kepkiriwat'' † ***'' Tupari'' ***'' Wayoro'' *Tupi, Nuclear ** Juruna ***'' Juruna'' ***'' Manitsawa'' † ***'' Shipaya'' ** Munduruku ***'' Kuruaya'' ***'' Munduruku'' ** Mawe-Aweti-Tupi-Guarani ***'' Satere-Mawe'' ***Aweti-Tupi-Guarani ****'' Aweti'' **** Tupi-Guarani (see)

Galucio et al. (2015)

Galucio et al. (2015) give the following

phylogenetic tree A phylogenetic tree (also phylogeny or evolutionary tree Felsenstein J. (2004). ''Inferring Phylogenies'' Sinauer Associates: Sunderland, MA.) is a branching diagram or a tree showing the evolutionary relationships among various biological spec ...

of Tupian, based on a

computational phylogenetic Computational phylogenetics is the application of computational algorithms, methods, and programs to phylogenetic analyses. The goal is to assemble a phylogenetic tree representing a hypothesis about the evolutionary ancestry of a set of genes, spe ...

analysis. ;Tupian *Western (40.6% probability) **''

''; '' Puruborá'' ** Mondé ***'' Suruí'' ***Nuclear Mondé ****'' Salamãy'' ****'' Aruá''; '' Gavião'', '' Zoró'' *Eastern (40.6% probability) ** Arikém ***'' Karitiána'' ** Tuparí ***'' Makuráp'' ***Nuclear Tuparí ****'' Akuntsú'', '' Mekéns'' ****'' Wayoró'', '' Tuparí'' ** Mundurukú ***'' Mundurukú'' ***'' Kuruáya'' ** Jurúna ***'' Jurúna'' ***'' Xipáya'' ** Mawetí–Guaraní ***'' Mawé'' ***Awetí–Guaraní ****'' Awetí'' **** Tupí–Guaraní *****'' Parintintín'' *****'' Tapirapé''; '' Urubú-Ka'apór'', '' Paraguayan Guaraní''

Vocabulary

Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items.

References

External links

TuLaR (Tupían Language Resources)
* Swadesh lists of Tupi–Guarani basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)
"A Arte da Língua Brasílica", grammar of Tupi, by Father Luiz Figueira, in Portuguese
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tupian Languages Language families Indigenous languages of Central Amazonia Indigenous languages of Western Amazonia