Yuracaré (also Yurakaré, Yurakar, Yuracare, Yurucare, Yuracar, Yurakare, Yurujuré, Yurujare) is an

endangered An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching and in ...

language isolate of central Bolivia in

Cochabamba Cochabamba ( ay, Quchapampa; qu, Quchapampa) is a city and municipality in central Bolivia in a valley in the Andes mountain range. It is the capital of the Cochabamba Department and the fourth largest city in Bolivia, with a population of 630 ...

and

Beni is a Japanese R&B singer, who debuted in 2004 under the Avex Trax label. In 2008, Arashiro left Avex Trax and transferred to Universal Music Japan where she started to perform as simply Beni (stylized as BENI). She was initially best known fo ...

departments spoken by the Yuracaré people. Loukotka (1968) reports that Yuracaré is spoken at the sources of the

Sécure River The Sécure River is a river of Bolivia. See also *List of rivers of Bolivia *Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (''Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sec ...

, and on the

Chapare River The Chapare River is a river in Bolivia, which is a tributary of the Mamoré River in the Amazon Basin. The river has its source at the confluence of Espíritu Santo River and San Mateo River in the Cochabamba Department at Villa Tunari. It ...

and Chimoré River.

Dialects

Two dialects, now extinct: *''Western'' - Mansiño, Oromo *''Eastern'' - Mage, Soloto ''Coni'', ''Cuchi'', and ''Enete'' are possible dialects (Brinton 1891).Brinton, Daniel G. 1891. ''The American race''. New York: D. C. Hodges.

Demographics

There are approximately 2,500 speakers. These numbers are in decline as the youngest generation no longer learns the language.Documentation of Endangered Languages
(See

Language death In linguistics, language death occurs when a language loses its last native speaker. By extension, language extinction is when the language is no longer known, including by second-language speakers. Other similar terms include linguicide, the de ...

Documentation

Yuracaré is documented with a grammar based on an old missionary manuscript by de la Cueva (Adam 1893). The language is currently being studied by Rik van Gijn. A

Foundation for Endangered Languages The Foundation for Endangered Languages is a non-profit organization, registered as Charity 1070616 in England and Wales, founded in 1996. Its current chairman is Nicholas Ostler. It exists to support, enable, and assist the documentation, protec ...

grant was awarded for a Yuracaré–Spanish / Spanish–Yuracaré dictionary project in 2005.

Genealogical relations

Suárez (1977) suggests a relationship between Yuracaré and the Mosetenan,

Pano–Tacanan Pano-Tacanan (also Pano-Takana, Pano-Takánan, Pano-Tacana, Páno-Takána) is a proposed family of languages spoken in Peru, western Brazil, Bolivia and northern Paraguay. There are two close-knit branches, Panoan and Tacanan (Adelaar & Muyske ...

, Arawakan, and

Chon CHON is a mnemonic acronym for the four most common elements in living organisms: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. The acronym CHNOPS, which stands for ''c''arbon, ''h''ydrogen, ''n''itrogen, ''o''xygen, ''p''hosphorus, ''s''ulfur, r ...

families. His earlier ''Macro-Panoan'' proposal is the same minus Arawakan (Suárez 1969). Jolkesky (2016) also notes that there are lexical similarities with the

Moseten-Tsimane languages Chimané (Tsimané) is a South American language isolate. Some dialects are known as Mosetén (Mosetén of Santa Ana, Mosetén of Covendo). Chimane is a language of the western Bolivian lowlands spoken by the Tsimane peoples along the Beni River ...

Grammar

* Verb-initial *

agglutinating An agglutinative language is a type of synthetic language with morphology that primarily uses agglutination. Words may contain different morphemes to determine their meanings, but all of these morphemes (including stems and affixes) tend to remai ...

* prefixes, suffixes * reduplication

Vocabulary

Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items. :

Notes

Bibliography

* Adam, Lucien. (1893). ''Principes et dictionnaire de la langue Yuracaré ou Yurujuré composés par le R. P. de la Cueva et publiés conformément au manuscrit de A. d’Orbigny''. Bibliothèque linguistique américaine (No. 16). Paris: Maisonneuve. * Adelaar, Willem F. H.; & Muysken, Pieter C. (2004). ''The Languages of the Andes''. Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge University Press. * Campbell, Lyle. (1997). ''American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America''. New York: Oxford University Press. . * Kaufman, Terrence. (1990). Language History in South America: What We Know and How To Know More. In D. L. Payne (Ed.), ''Amazonian Linguistics: Studies in Lowland South American languages'' (pp. 13–67). Austin: University of Texas Press. . * Kaufman, Terrence. (1994). The Native Languages of South America. In C. Mosley & R. E. Asher (Eds.), ''Atlas of the World's Languages'' (pp. 46–76). London: Routledge. *Ribera, J.; Rivero, W.; Rocha, A. (1991). Vocabulario yuracaré-castellano, castellano-yuracaré. Trinidad: MISEREOR. * Suárez, Jorge. (1969). Moseten and Pano–Tacanan. ''Anthropological Linguistics'', ''11'' (9), 255-266. * Suárez, Jorge. (1977). La posición lingüística del pano-tacana y del arahuaco. ''Anales de Antropología'', ''14'', 243-255. * van Gijn, Rik. (2004). Number in the Yurakaré Noun Phrase. In L. Cornips & J. Doetjes (Eds.), ''Linguistics in the Netherlands 2004'' (pp. 69–79). Linguistics in the Netherlands (No. 21). John Benjamins. * van Gijn, Rik (2005). Head Marking and Dependent Marking of Grammatical Relations in Yurakaré. In M. Amberber & H. de Hoop (eds.) Competition and Variation in Natural Languages: The Case for Case. (pp. 41–72) Elsevier. * van Gijn, Rik (2006) A Grammar of Yurakaré. Ph.D. dissertation Radboud University Nijmegen.

External links

* Proel
Lengua Yurakare

(Foundation for Endangered Languages) * DoBeS
General presentation of the Yurakaré language and people

Lenguas de Bolivia
(online edition)
Yurakaré DoReCo corpus
compiled by Sonja Gipper and Jeremías Ballivián Torrico. Audio recordings of narrative texts, with transcriptions time-aligned at the phone level and translations. {{DEFAULTSORT:Yuracare language Language isolates of South America Indigenous languages of the South American Southern Foothills Languages of Bolivia Endangered language isolates Endangered indigenous languages of the Americas Mamoré–Guaporé linguistic area