Wirö language
Wirö (also called Itoto, Wotuja, Jojod, or various forms of Maku) is an indigenous language of Colombia and Venezuela. It is attested only by a list of 38 words collected ca. 1900, but this is enough to show it is closely related to Piaroa, perhaps even a dialect. Speakers of the two understand each other, but not reliably, and consider them to be distinct languages.
| Wirö | |
|---|---|
| Maco | |
| Native to | Colombia and Venezuela |
Native speakers | 2,500 (2002)[1] |
Piaroa–Saliban
| |
| Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | wpc |
| Glottolog | maco1239[2] |
Loukotka (1968) reports it as being spoken on the Ventuari River and Cunucunuma River.[3]
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
- Wirö at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
- Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Maco". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- Loukotka, Čestmír (1968). Classification of South American Indian languages. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center.
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