Wirö (also called Itoto, Wotuja, Jojod, or various forms of
Maku) is an indigenous language of
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...
and
Venezuela
Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...
. Until it was documented in 2015, it was attested only by a list of 38 words collected ca. 1900, though even that was enough to show it was closely related to
Piaroa
The Piaroa people, known among themselves as the ''Huottüja'' or ''De'aruhua'', are a South American indigenous ethnic group of the middle Orinoco Basin in present-day Colombia and Venezuela, living in an area larger than Belgium, roughly circ ...
. Speakers of the two understand each other, though not reliably, and consider them to be distinct languages.
Loukotka (1968) reports it as being spoken on the
Ventuari River
The Ventuari River is the largest tributary of the Orinoco in southern Venezuela. The Ventuari flows from south-central Venezuela in the Guiana Highlands southwest into the Orinoco River. It is long and its major tributary is the Manapiare River ...
and
Cunucunuma River.
''Maco'' is not a proper name but a label applied by Arawakan speakers for unintelligible languages. In the case of Wirö, the following forms are found in the literature: ''Maco, Mako, Maku, Makú, Sáliba-Maco,'' and ''Maco-Piaroa'', the latter also for the combination of Wirö and Piaroa.
Further reading
*Rosés Labrada, Jorge E. (2015).
The Mako language: Vitality, Grammar and Classification'. London: University of Western Ontario. (Doctoral dissertation). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository, 2851.
References
Piaroa–Saliban languages
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