Omurano is a

language isolate A language isolate is a language that has no demonstrable genetic relationship with any other languages. Basque in Europe, Ainu and Burushaski in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, Haida and Zuni in North America, Kanoê in South America, and Tiwi ...

from

Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...

. It is also known as Humurana, Roamaina, Numurana, Umurano, and Mayna. The language was presumed to have become

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

by 1958, but in 2011 a rememberer was found who knew some 20 words in Omurano; he claimed that there were still people who could speak it. The community has otherwise switched to Urarina, another language isolate. It was spoken near the Urituyacu River (a tributary of the Marañón River), or on the Nucuray River according to Loukotka (1968).

Classification

Tovar (1961) linked Omurano to Taushiro (and later Taushiro with Kandoshi); Kaufman (1994) finds the links reasonable, and in 2007 he classified Omurano and Taushiro (but not Kandoshi) as Saparo–Yawan languages. Maynas, once mistaken for a synonym, is a separate language. Despite there being previous proposals linking Omurano with Zaparoan, de Carvalho (2013) finds no evidence for this.

Language contact

Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Urarina, Arawak, Zaparo, and Leko language families due to contact.

Phonology

Consonants

Omurano has 10 consonants. No fricative or velar consonants have been attested. becomes before .

Vowels

Omurano has 5 vowel qualities. Nasal vowel counterparts are only present for . Length is not phonemic.

Tone

Omurano has two surface-level tones, high and low.

Vocabulary

A word list by Tessmann (1930) is the primary source for Omurano lexical data.Tessmann, Günter. 1930. ''Die Indianer Nordost-Perus: grundlegende Forschungen für eine systematische Kulturkunde''. Hamburg: Friederichsen, de Gruyter. Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items. :

References

{{Languages of Peru Indigenous languages of the Andes Languages of Peru Extinct languages of South America Language isolates of South America