Talk:Carabayo language

Collapse with Yuri (Amazon)
Oppose in lieu of better evidence. Campbell lists Yuri and Carabayo separately, although Carabayo does not have a full entry, but has the note "Migliazzi lists this". Carabayo is not included in Campbell's maps and Yuri just barely crosses the border of Colombia from Brazil. Ethnologue does not include Yuri, but includes Carabayo, which it places fully in Colombia. The maps in Atlas of the World's Languages show the region of Yuri encompassing the Carabayo region in Ethnologue and the Yuri region in Campbell, but the maps in that atlas are notoriously questionable when it comes to the languages of Native America. So the evidence to collapse these two languages is ambiguous at best. --Taivo (talk) 02:24, 22 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Given what I've found below, It would appear that: Words from a language named "Yuri" were collected in the 19th century. There is an uncontacted people called "Carabayo" in the approximate area of the Yuri today. It's often assumed they are the same, and the Columbian govt. speaks of the Yuri (Carabayo) or the pueblo Yuri, Aroje o Carabayo. We can cover that two articles. — kwami (talk) 08:00, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

first linguistic paper I've seen that addresses this

 * Harald Hammarström, 2010, 'The status of the least documented language families in the world'. In Language Documentation & Conservation, v 4, p 183
 * 2.1.4. Yurí [cby? ]. The first mention of an ethnic group Yuri between the Putumayo and the Marañon Rivers is probably the conversation record of two Yuri in Ruiz de Quijano et al. (1765:228). The first report with linguistic data is Wallace 1853:510, which locates the Yuri at the Solimões River between the Iça (Putumayo) and Japurá (Caquetá) Rivers.
 * The vocabularies bear no significant resemblance to any other language in the region (Ortiz 1965; Loukotka 1968), and the possibility that Yurí and Ticuna are related (Nimuendajú 1977:62) still awaits explicit comparisons.
 * The only certain Yurí vocabularies are those collected by Wallace (1853:fold-out appendix) and Martius (1867:268–272), reproduced in Ortiz 1965:232–244. An additional wordlist which may or may not be Yurí (see below) is mentioned in Vidal y Pinell 1970:108, of which three words are reproduced there.
 * The language has not been sighted since the nineteenth century and therefore was suspected to be extinct (cf. Ortiz 1965). However, there are uncontacted peoples at the Rio Puré in Colombia, touching the historical territory of the Yurí. Lewis 2009 has the name Carabayo [cby] for an uncontacted group at the Rio Puré. Given the geographical proximity, the Rio Puré uncontacted groups (or one the groups, if there are several), are often suspected to be the descendants of the century-old Yurí (Trupp 1974; Patiño Rosselli 2000; Fabre 2005; Landaburu 2000:30). Vidal y Pinell (1970) makes the strongest version of this case and is the only author in a position to adduce linguistic evidence. In 1969, a brief episode of contact allowed the collection of a wordlist[4] (which presumably contains a fair number of misunderstandings) of an uncontacted Rio Puré group (Font 1969). Vidal y Pinell (1970:108), finds 21% cognation between the 1969 Rio Puré list and Yurí of Wallace (1853:fold-out appendix), as opposed to 0–8% to various surrounding Tucano and Arawak languages. This is taken to be decisive evidence (“parece acertada”) that the 1969 Rio Puré list is Yurí. However, the three example comparisons given contain semantic and formal discrepancies, and even if the 21% figure is correct, it seems too large a divergence from the Yurí of a century and a half earlier. If the 1969 Rio Puré language nevertheless is Yurí, or a different language forming a small family with Yurí, then the Yurí (family) is still alive. Otherwise, the 1969 Rio Puré language is a non-extinct language attested in only a wordlist with no known relatives (and the Yurí language of Wallace 1853 may be presumed extinct).
 * If the entry for Carabayo [cby] of the Rio Puré turns out to be Yurí, then the number of speakers is estimated, from aerial observations, at 150 (Lewis 2009).
 * [4] Not seen by the present author since the publication in which it appears is very difficult to access—the relevant issue is missing from archives both in Leticia and Bogotá (p.c. Frank Seifart 2010).

— kwami (talk) 07:39, 22 April 2011 (UTC)


 * This is certainly intriguing. I'm out of town for the next day, so I'll check it out on Sunday when I get back.  The Hammarstrom conclusion leaves the door open for a small family rather than simply synonyms.  --Taivo (talk) 07:42, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I removed the merge tags, but noted that they may be synonyms. — kwami (talk) 05:51, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Probably the best approach for now. --Taivo (talk) 19:16, 25 April 2011 (UTC)


 * new paper: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0094814


 * Abstract: "This paper provides evidence for the identification of the language of the uncontacted indigenous group called Carabayo, who live in voluntary isolation in the Colombian Amazon region. The only linguistic data available from this group is a set of about 50 words, most of them without reliable translations, that were collected in 1969 during a brief encounter with one Carabayo family. We compare this material with various languages (once) spoken in the region, showing that four attested Carabayo forms (a first person singular prefix and words for ‘warm’, ‘father’, and ‘boy’) display striking similarities with Yurí and at least 13 Carabayo forms display clear correspondences with contemporary Tikuna. Tikuna and Yurí are the only two known members of the Tikuna-Yurí linguistic family. Yurí was documented in the 19th century but has been thought to have become extinct since. We conclude that the Carabayo – directly or indirectly – descend from the Yurí people whose language and customs were described by explorers in the 19th century, before they took up voluntary isolation, escaping atrocities during the rubber boom in the early 20th century."


 * – ishwar  (speak)  01:55, 19 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that! Though half the Yuri correspondences are rather dubious.  "Warm me" and "boy/son" are the only good ones, but that's enough, given how poor the data is.  — kwami (talk) 20:37, 19 April 2014 (UTC)