Wirö (also called Itoto, Wotuja, Jojod, or various forms of
Maku) is an indigenous language of
Colombia and
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 ...
. 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 pre-Columbian South American indigenous ethnic group of the middle Orinoco Basin in present-day Colombia and Venezuela, living in an area larger than Belgiu ...
. 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 Rive ...
and
Cunucunuma River
Cunucunuma River is a river of 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 l ...
.
''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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