| Resígaro | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Peru |
| Region | Department of Loreto |
Native speakers | 1 (2017)[1] |
Arawakan
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | rgr |
| Glottolog | resi1247 |
| ELP | Resígaro |
Resígaro is anArawakan language spoken in thedepartment of Loreto inPeru. It is believed to be nearly extinct as of 2017 with only one remaining speaker.[2][3]
Aikhenvald (1999)[full citation needed] classifies it among the Western Nawiki Upper Amazonian languages. Kaufman (1994) had made it a separate branch of Upper Amazonian.
During thePutumayo genocide, many Resígaro people were enslaved byJulio Cesar Arana'srubber company. Resígaros entrapped by Arana's company were dedicated to the extraction of rubber at the stations of La Sabana and Santa Catalina, which was managed by the Rodriguez brothers.[4] In 1910, a manager of Arana's company toldRoger Casement that the Rodriguez brothers had killed hundreds of indigenous people.[5]
On November 25, 2016, the last female speaker of Resígaro, Rosa Andrade, was brutally murdered in a beheading at the age of 67. Her niece reported “She was beheaded. Her head was not found, neither her heart.”[6][7]
The only other remaining speaker known was Andrade's brother, Pablo Andrade, who still lives. He and his late sister had been preparing a project with theMinistry of Culture to document their language since October 2016, and to update books on grammar and an outdated dictionary made in the 1950s by theSummer Institute of Linguistics, that promoted the translation of theBible.[6]
Resígaro has many morphological borrowings fromBora, such as pronouns, number markings, and case markers. However, there are relatively few lexical loanwords.[8]
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | u | |
| Mid | e | o | |
| Low | a |
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