The Borôroan languages of Brazil and Bolivia are Borôro and the extinct Umotína, Kovareka, Kuruminaka and Otuke. They are sometimes considered to form part of the proposed Macro-Jê language family,[1][2]: 547  though this has been disputed.[3]: 64–8 

They are called the Borotuke languages by Mason (1950), a portmanteau of Bororo and Otuke.[4]

Languages

The relationship between the languages is,[5]

Gorgotoqui may have also been a Bororoan language.[6][7]

Bororo of Cabaçal, which has been documented by Johann Natterer[8] and Francis de Castelnau,[9] has been identified by Camargo (2014) as a separate language distinct from Bororo proper.[10]

Loukotka (1968)

Loukotka (1968) lists the following languages of the Boróro stock:[11]

  • Boróro / Coroados / Biribocone - extinct language once spoken on the Cabaçal and Jauru Rivers, state of Mato Grosso.
  • Aravirá – extinct language once spoken on the Cabaçal River and Sepotuba River in Mato Grosso. [Is a synonym of Bororo of Cabaçal.[12]]
  • Orari / Eastern Boróro / Orarimugodoge - language spoken by an ancient warlike tribe on the Valhas River, Garças River, and Madeira River, Mato Grosso. [Is a dialect of Bororo proper.]
  • Umutina / Barbudo - spoken by a few families between the Paraguai and Bugres Rivers, Mato Grosso.
  • Otuque / Loushiru - spoken at the ancient mission of Santo Corazon in the Bolivian Chaco, now by a few individuals.
  • Covare - extinct language once spoken at the ancient mission of Santa Ana de Chiquitos, Bolivia.
  • Curumina - extinct language from the ancient mission of Casalvasco.
  • Curucane / Carruacane - extinct language once spoken at the ancient mission of San Rafael, Bolivia. (Unattested.)
  • Curave / Ecorabe - extinct language once spoken at the ancient mission of Santo Corazon, Bolivia. (Unattested.)
  • Tapii - extinct language from the ancient mission of Santiago de Chiquitos, Bolivia. (Unattested.)

Mason (1950)

The following are listed as Bororo varieties by Mason (1950):

Bororo
  • Eastern: Orarimugudoge
  • Western: Cabasal; Campanya
  • Acioné
  • Aravira
  • Biriuné
  • Coroa (?)
  • Coxipo (?)

Proto-language

For a list of Proto-Bororo reconstructions by Camargos (2013), see the corresponding Portuguese article.

External relations

The Bororoan languages are commonly thought to be part of the Macro-Jê language family.[1][2]: 547 

Ceria & Sandalo (1995) note parallels between Bororo and the Guaicuruan languages.[13] Kaufman (1994) has suggested a relationship with the Chiquitano language,[14] which Nikulin (2020) considers to be a sister of Macro-Jê.[3] Furthermore, Nikulin (2019) has suggested that Bororoan has a relationship with the Cariban and Kariri languages:[15]

glossProto-BororoKaririProto-Cariban
tooth *ɔdza*(j)ə
ear *bidʒabeɲe*pana
go *tu*tə
tree *idzi*jeje
tongue nunu*nuru
root mu*mi(t-)
hand (a)mɨsã*əmija
fat (n.) *ka*ka(t-)
seed *a*a
fish *karo*kana
name *idʒedze
heavy *motɨtɨmadi

An automated computational analysis (ASJP 4) by Müller et al. (2013)[16] also found lexical similarities between Bororoan and Cariban.

Language contact

Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Guato, Karib, Kayuvava, Nambikwara, and Tupi language families due to contact.[17]

Cariban influence in Bororoan languages was due to the later southward expansion of Cariban speakers into Bororoan territory. Ceramic technology was also adopted from Cariban speakers.[17]: 415  Similarly, Cariban borrowings are also present in the Karajá languages. Karajá speakers had also adopted ceramic technology from Cariban speakers.[17]: 420 

Similarities with Cayuvava are due to the expansion of Bororoan speakers into the Chiquitania region.[17]: 416 

References

  1. 1 2 ,Guérios, R. F. Mansur F. (1939). "O nexo lingüístico Bororo/Merrime-Caiapó (contribuição para a unidade genética das línguas americanas)". Revista do Círculo de Estudos "Bandeirantes". 2: 61–74.
  2. 1 2 Ribeiro, Eduardo Rivail; Voort, Hein van der (2010). "Nimuendajú was right: the inclusion of the Jabutí language family in the Macro-Jê stock" (PDF). International Journal of American Linguistics. 76 (4): 517–70. doi:10.1086/658056.
  3. 1 2 Nikulin, Andrey (2020). Proto-Macro-Jê: um estudo reconstrutivo (PDF) (Ph.D. dissertation). Brasília: Universidade de Brasília.
  4. ↑ Mason, John Alden (1950). "The languages of South America". In Steward, Julian (ed.). Handbook of South American Indians. Vol. 6. Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office: Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 143. pp. 157–317.
  5. ↑ Camargos (2013)
  6. ↑ Combès, Isabelle. 2010. Diccionario étnico: Santa Cruz la Vieja y su entorno en el siglo XVI. Cochabamba: Itinera-rios/Instituto Latinoamericano de Misionología. (Colección Scripta Autochtona, 4.)
  7. ↑ Combès, Isabelle (2012-01-01). "Susnik y los gorgotoquis. Efervescencia étnica en la Chiquitania (Oriente boliviano)". Indiana (in Spanish). 29: 201–220 Páginas. doi:10.18441/IND.V29I0.201-220.
  8. ↑ Feest, Christian. 2014. Johann Natterer. Bororo Wordlists and Ethnographic Notes. Bororo Wordlists and Ethnographic Notes. The Ethnographic Collection of Johann Natterer.
  9. ↑ Castelnau, Francis de. 1850-59. Expédition dan les parties centrales de l'Amérique du Sud : de Rio de Janeiro à Lima, et de Lima au Para exécutée par ordre du gouvernement français pendant les années 1843 à 1847, sous la direction de Francis de Castelnau. P. Bertrand. Paris
  10. ↑ Camargo, Gonçalo Ochoa. 2014. Boe ewadaru = A língua bororo : breve histórico e elementos de gramática. Campo Grande, MS: Universidade Católica Dom Bosco (UCDB). ISBN 9788575981603
  11. ↑ Loukotka, Čestmír (1968). Classification of South American Indian languages. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center.
  12. ↑ "Historical Occupation and Modern Deforestation: Evidence from Indigenous Extinctions in the Amazon | TSE". www.tse-fr.eu. 2024-06-04. Retrieved 2025-09-12.
  13. ↑ Ceria, Verónica G.; Sandalo, Filomena (1995). "A Preliminary Reconstruction of Proto-Waikurúan with Special Reference to Pronominals and Demonstratives". Anthropological Linguistics. 37 (2). [Anthropological Linguistics, Trustees of Indiana University]: 169–191. ISSN 1944-6527. JSTOR 30028310.
  14. ↑ Kaufman, Terrence. 1994. The native languages of South America. In: Christopher Moseley and R. E. Asher (eds.), Atlas of the World’s Languages, 59–93. London: Routledge.
  15. ↑ Nikulin, Andrey V. (October 17, 2019). Классификация языков востока Южной Америки [The classification of the languages of the South American Lowlands: State-of-the-art and challenges]. Illič-Svityč (Nostratic) Seminar / Ностратический семинар.
  16. ↑ Müller, André, Viveka Velupillai, Søren Wichmann, Cecil H. Brown, Eric W. Holman, Sebastian Sauppe, Pamela Brown, Harald Hammarström, Oleg Belyaev, Johann-Mattis List, Dik Bakker, Dmitri Egorov, Matthias Urban, Robert Mailhammer, Matthew S. Dryer, Evgenia Korovina, David Beck, Helen Geyer, Pattie Epps, Anthony Grant, and Pilar Valenzuela. 2013. ASJP World Language Trees of Lexical Similarity: Version 4 (October 2013).
  17. 1 2 3 4 Jolkesky, Marcelo Pinho de Valhery (2016). Estudo arqueo-ecolinguístico das terras tropicais sul-americanas (Ph.D. dissertation) (in Portuguese) (2 ed.). Brasília: University of Brasília.

Further reading

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boróroan_languages