Yuracaré
Yurakaré, Yurakar, Yuracare, Yurucare, Yuracar, Yurakare, Yurujuré, Yurújare
Yurújare
Pronunciation	[juˈɹ̟uhaɹ̟e]
Native to	Bolivia
Region	Cochabamba Department
Ethnicity	3,300Yuracaré people (2004)[1] 3,394Yuracaré people (2012) (INE Census)
Native speakers	2,700 (2004)[1]
Language family	Language isolate
Official status
Official language in	Bolivia
Language codes
ISO 639-3	yuz
Glottolog	yura1255
ELP	Yuracaré

Yuracaré (alsoYurakaré,Yurakar,Yuracare,Yurucare,Yuracar,Yurakare,Yurujuré,Yurújare^[2]) is anendangeredlanguage isolate of centralBolivia inCochabamba andBeni departments spoken by theYuracaré people.

Speakers refer to their own language asYurújare [juˈɹ̟uhaɹ̟e].^[2]: 1323

There are 2,000–3,000 Yurakaré speakers in the upperMamoré River valley of eastern Bolivia. They live along theChapare andIchilo Rivers inCochabamba Department, as well as along theIsiboro andSécure Rivers inIsiboro-Sécure National Park.^[2]: 1325

Loukotka (1968) reported that Yuracaré was spoken at the sources of theSécure River, and on theChapare River andChimoré River.^[3]

Suárez (1977) suggests a relationship between Yuracaré and theMosetenan,Pano–Tacanan,Arawakan, andChon families. His earlierMacro-Panoan proposal is the same minus Arawakan (Suárez 1969).

Jolkesky (2016) also notes that there are lexical similarities with theMoseten-Tsimane languages.^[4]

Two dialects, now extinct, were:^[3]

• Western - Mansiño, Oromo
• Eastern - Mage, Soloto

Coni,Cuchi, andEnete are possible dialects (Brinton 1891).^[5]

There are approximately 2,500 speakers. These numbers are in decline as the youngest generation no longer learns the language.^[6] (SeeLanguage death.)

Yuracaré is documented with a grammar based on an old missionary manuscript by de la Cueva (Adam 1893). The language is currently being studied by Rik van Gijn. AFoundation for Endangered Languages grant was awarded for a Yuracaré–Spanish / Spanish–Yuracaré dictionary project in 2005.

• The glottal stop [ʔ] only occurs in intervocalic positions.
• /n/ may be pronounced as [ŋ] when preceding /k/.

• /ɨ/ may also be heard as a front-rounded [y], in free variation among speakers.
• Sounds /e, o, a/ may also be heard as [ɛ, ɔ, ɑ] when in closed syllables.^[7]

This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding to it.(April 2025)

• Verb-initial
• agglutinating
• prefixes,suffixes
• reduplication

Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items.^[3]

gloss	Yuracare
one	letha
two	läshie
three	lívui
tooth	sansa
tongue	erume
hand	té-banau
woman	señe
water	záma
fire	áima
moon	shúhui
maize	sil
jaguar	samo
house	siba

• Yuracaré

• Adam, Lucien. (1893).Principes et dictionnaire de la langue Yuracaré ou Yurujuré composés par le R. P. de la Cueva et publiés conformément au manuscrit de A. d'Orbigny. Bibliothèque linguistique américaine (No. 16). Paris: Maisonneuve.
• Adelaar, Willem F. H.; & Muysken, Pieter C. (2004).The Languages of the Andes. Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge University Press.
• Campbell, Lyle. (1997).American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press.ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
• Kaufman, Terrence. (1990). Language History in South America: What We Know and How To Know More. In D. L. Payne (Ed.),Amazonian Linguistics: Studies in Lowland South American languages (pp. 13–67). Austin: University of Texas Press.ISBN 0-292-70414-3.
• Kaufman, Terrence. (1994). The Native Languages of South America. In C. Mosley & R. E. Asher (Eds.),Atlas of the World's Languages (pp. 46–76). London: Routledge.
• Ribera, J.; Rivero, W.; Rocha, A. (1991). Vocabulario yuracaré-castellano, castellano-yuracaré. Trinidad: MISEREOR.
• Suárez, Jorge. (1969). Moseten and Pano–Tacanan.Anthropological Linguistics,11 (9), 255-266.
• Suárez, Jorge. (1977). La posición lingüística del pano-tacana y del arahuaco.Anales de Antropología,14, 243-255.
• van Gijn, Rik. (2004). Number in the Yurakaré Noun Phrase. In L. Cornips & J. Doetjes (Eds.),Linguistics in the Netherlands 2004 (pp. 69–79). Linguistics in the Netherlands (No. 21). John Benjamins.
• van Gijn, Rik (2005). Head Marking and Dependent Marking of Grammatical Relations in Yurakaré. In M. Amberber & H. de Hoop (eds.) Competition and Variation in Natural Languages: The Case for Case. (pp. 41–72) Elsevier.
• van Gijn, Rik (2006) A Grammar of Yurakaré. Ph.D. dissertation Radboud University Nijmegen.hdl:2066/27381

Wiktionary has a word list atAppendix:Yuracaré word list

• Proel:Lengua Yurakare
• FEL Grants 2005 (Foundation for Endangered Languages)
• DoBeS :General presentation of the Yurakaré language and people
• Lenguas de BoliviaArchived 2019-09-04 at theWayback Machine (online edition)
• Yurakaré DoReCo corpus compiled by Sonja Gipper and Jeremías Ballivián Torrico. Audio recordings of narrative texts, with transcriptions time-aligned at the phone level and translations.

• Language isolates of South America
• Indigenous languages of the South American Southern Foothills
• Languages of Bolivia
• Endangered language isolates
• Endangered Indigenous languages of the Americas
• Mamoré–Guaporé linguistic area

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