Guinau language
extinct language of Brazil
Guinau (Temomeyéme, Guinau: Temoːme̥yé̱ːmẽ̥) is an extinct Arawakan language of Venezuela, formerly spoken along the Merevarí River, a tributary of the Caura River. It has been sometimes considered a dialect of closely related Baré. It is classified in the Rio Negro branch by Ramirez and França (2019). The Guinau were absorbed into the Yeꞌkuana before 1991.
Robert Hermann Schomburgk described the Guinau and their language as follows:The Guinaus inhabit the mountains, between the fourth and fifth parallel of north latitude, and the meridians 631⁄2° and 65° west from Greenwich. The greater number are settled on the banks of the Merewari (Mareguare of the Spanish maps), and its tributaries, which, with the Erevato, form the river Caura or Caora, a tributary of the great Orinoco. This tribe is not numerous, and their settlements are frequently intermixed with Maiongkongs. They are famed for the manufacture of blowpipes, which they exchange for Urari poison, that of all Guianians the Macusis know the best to prepare. Their language contains words of Caribi-Tamanakan origin, but it possesses many peculiarities which stamps it as a dialect that is only distantly related to this section, and may hereafter be separated from it.
Vocabulary
Schomburgk (1848)
⟨ae, ui⟩ represent one sound.
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This entry incorporates text from “Guinau language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.