Uru language

Not to be confused with Central Kilimanjaro language.

The Uru language, more specifically known as Iru-Itu, and Uchumataqu, is an extinct language formerly spoken by the Uru people. In 2004, it had 2 remaining native speakers out of an ethnic group of 140 people in the La Paz Department, Bolivia near Lake Titicaca, the rest having shifted to Aymara and Spanish. The language is close enough to the Chipaya language to sometimes be considered a dialect of that language.^{[citation needed]}

Uru
Iru Itu
Uchumataqu
Native to	Bolivia
Region	Lake Titicaca, near the Desaguadero River
Ethnicity	230 Uru people (2007)[1]
Extinct	2010 to 2012[1]
Language family	Uru–Chipaya Uru
Dialects	Uru of Ch'imu Uru of Sun Island
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ure
Glottolog	uruu1244
ELP	Uru
Uru is classified as Extinct be the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger [2]
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Uru is also called Ochosuma (Uchuzuma), a historical name for the Uru ethnic group.^[3]

In 2010, there was 1 single native speaker left of this language. By 2012 the language had no speakers left.

Identifying Uchumataqu

Since one of the Urus' names for their language was "Pukina", Uchumataqu has previously been mistakenly identified with Puquina.^[4] While the personal and possessive pronouns of the unrelated Puquina bear limited similarities to those of Arawakan languages,^[5] Uru differs drastically from Arawakan languages in its person-marking system and its morphology.^[4] The pronoun system of Uchumataqu is naturally very similar instead to its close relative Chipaya.^[6] Uchumataqu has also borrowed grammatical and lexical morphemes from prolonged exposure to Aymara,^[4] with which it is not related, however. Unlike Aymara, Uru is not polysynthetic and has a phonemic five-vowel system /a e i o u/, while Aymara has a three-vowel system /a i u/.^[4] One contrast between Uru and the related Chipaya is that Uru does not identify gender morphologically as Chipaya does.^[6]

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar		Palatal	Velar		Uvular	Glottal
			plain	lab.		plain	lab.
Plosive	voiceless	p	t	tʷ		k	kʷ	q
	aspirated	pʰ	tʰ			kʰ		qʰ
	ejective	pʼ	tʼ			kʼ		qʼ
Affricate	voiceless		t͡s		t͡ʃ	t͡k
	ejective		t͡sʼ		t͡ʃʼ
Fricative			s			x			h
Nasal		m	n		ɲ
Trill			r
Approximant	lateral		l		ʎ
	central				j		w

Vowels

	Front		Back
	short	long	short	long
Close	i	iː	u	uː
Mid	e	eː	o	oː
Open	a	aː

^[7][8]

Dialects

There are mentions of two Uru dialects: Uru of Ch'imu and Sun Island. Though it is unclear whether the former was a dialect or its own language. Uru of Ch'imu was spoken in the town of Ch'imu and was first recorded in 1929 and while not published there are detailed notes of the language in existence. The second variety was spoken on Isla del Sol in Lake Titicaca and was first described in the 1960s though there it is far less documented.^[9]

Orthography

Uru did not have a standardized orthography but when written it used the English Alphabet or the IPA alphabet.^[10][9]

Sample Text

Uru[9]	English[9]
naː nak-ki maxnʸ a-l tʰax-či-ča	They (those women) slept early
Wer-ki laŋ ş-xapa tʰon-in-ča	I have come in order to work
Wir-il xála k'áyǎ pẹ̀k'u čay	I want to buy a llama

References

1. Uru at Ethnologue (19th ed., 2016)
2. Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger (Report) (3rd ed.). UNESCO. 2010. p. 19.
3. Campbell, Lyle (2012). "Classification of the indigenous languages of South America". In Grondona, Verónica; Campbell, Lyle (eds.). The Indigenous Languages of South America. The World of Linguistics. Vol. 2. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 59–166. ISBN 978-3-11-025513-3.
4. Danielsen, Swintha (2010). "Review of "Uchumataqu: The Lost Language of the Urus of Bolivia. A Description of the Language as Documented between 1894 and 1952. Indigenous Languages of Latin America"". Anthropological Linguistics. 52: 107–111. JSTOR 40929741.
5. Adelaar, Willem F. H. (2004). The Language of the Andes. Cambridge, GB: Cambridge Language Surveys. p. 353. ISBN 978-0-511-21050-1 – via Ebrary.
6. Pena, Jaime (2009). "Uchumataqu: The Lost Language of the Urus of Bolivia. A Grammatical Description of the Language as Documented between 1894 and 1952". Studies in Language. 33: 1012–1018. doi:10.1075/sl.33.4.10pen.
7. Hannß, Katja (2008). Uchumataqu: The lost language of the Urus of Bolivia: A grammatical description of the language as documented between 1894 and 1952. Leiden: Research School of Asian, African and Amerindian Studies (CNWS), Universiteit Leiden.
8. Hannss, Katja (2009). Uchumataqu (Uro). In Mily Crevels and Pieter Muysken (eds.), Lenguas de Bolivia, Tomo I: Ambito Andino: La Paz: Plural Editores. pp. 79–115.
9. Adelaar, Willem F. H. (2004). The languages of the Andes. Internet Archive. Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press. pp. 362–372. ISBN 978-0-521-36275-7.
10. "Autopsy of Uru". prezi.com. Retrieved 2024-09-13.