Waikuri language
Waikuri is an extinct language of southern Baja California spoken by the Waikuri or Guaycura people. The Jesuit priest Johann Jakob Baegert documented words, sentences and texts in the language between 1751 and 1768.
Waikuri may be, along with the Yukian and Chumashan languages and other languages of southern Baja such as Pericú, among the oldest languages established in California, before the arrival of speakers of Penutian, Uto-Aztecan, and perhaps even Hokan languages. All are spoken in areas with long-established populations of a distinct physical type.
Name
The ethnonym Waikuri and its variants likely originates from the Pericú word guaxoro 'friend'. Variations of the name include Waicuri, Waicuri, Guaicuri, Waicura, Guaycura, Guaicura, Waicuro, Guaicuro, Guaycuro, Vaicuro, Guaicuru, Guaycuru, Waikur.Classification
Baegert's data is analyzed by Raoul Zamponi. On existing evidence, Guaycura appears to be unrelated to the Yuman languages to its north. Some linguists have suggested that it belonged to the widely scattered Hokan phylum of California and Mexico ; however, the evidence for this seems inconclusive. William C. Massey suggested a connection with Pericú, but the latter is too meagerly attested to support a meaningful comparison. Other languages of southern Baja are essentially undocumented, though people have speculated from non-linguistic sources that Monqui, spoken in a small region around Loreto, [Baja California Sur|Loreto], may have been a 'Guaicurian' language, as perhaps was Huchití, though that may have actually been a variety of Guaycura itself.The internal classification of Guaicurian languages is uncertain. Massey, cited in Campbell, gives this tentative classification based on similarity judgments given by colonial-era sources, rather than actual linguistic data.
- Guaicurian
- *Guaicura branch
- **Guaocura
- **Callejue
- *Huchiti branch
- **Cora
- **Huchiti
- **Aripe
- **Periúe
- *Pericú branch
- **Pericú
- **Isleño
Phonology
Consonants
Consonants were voiceless stops p t c k and maybe a glottal stop; voiced b d, nasal m n ny, flap r, trill rr, and approximants w y.Vowels
Waikuri had four vowels, /i, e, a, u/. Whether or not vowel length was phonemic is unknown.Grammar
The little we know of Guaycura grammar was provided by Francisco Pimentel, who analyzed a few verbs and phrases. Guaicura was a polysyllabic language that involved much compounding. For example, 'sky' is tekerakadatemba, from tekaraka and datemba.Beagert and Pimentel agree that the plural is formed with a suffix -ma. However, Pimentel also notes a prefix k- with the 'same' function. For example, kanai 'women', from anai 'woman'. According to Pimentel, the negation in -ra of an adjective resulted in its opposite, so from ataka 'good' is derived atakara 'bad'.
Pronouns were as follows :
Vocabulary
Waikuri vocabulary from Zamponi, which was compiled primarily from 18th-century sources by Johann Jakov Baegert, as well as from Lamberto Hostell and Francisco de Ortega:Sample text
The Pater Noster is recorded in Guaycura, with a literal gloss by Pimentel.Additional reading
- Laylander, Don. 1997. "The linguistic prehistory of Baja California". In Contributions to the Linguistic Prehistory of Central and Baja California, edited by Gary S. Breschini and Trudy Haversat, pp. 1–94. Coyote Press, Salinas, California.
- Massey, William C. 1949. "Tribes and languages of Baja California". Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 5:272–307.
- Mixco, Mauricio J. 2006. "The indigenous languages". In The Prehistory of Baja California: Advances in the Archaeology of the Forgotten Peninsula, edited by Don Laylander and Jerry D. Moore, pp. 24–41. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.
- Swadesh, Morris. 1967. "Lexicostatistical Classification". in Linguistics, edited by Norman A. McQuown, pp. 79–115. Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 5, Robert Wauchope, general editor. University of Texas Press, Austin.
Category:Extinct languages
Category:Language isolates of North America
Category:Languages extinct in the 18th century
Category:18th-century disestablishments in North America