Otuke language
extinct language of Brazil
Otuke (Otuque, Otuqui; Ayoreo: Louširu) is an extinct language of the Bororoan language family, formerly spoken in Brazil and Bolivia. Its closest relatives, the Kovareka (Covareca) and Kuruminaka (Curuminaca) languages, both extinct and poorly known, have sometimes been considered dialects of it.
History
The name Otuqui was first mentioned in a 1726 book by Jesuit priest Juan Patricio Fernández, listing the names of various rancherías in the region inhabitedd by the Chiquito (Chiquitano) people, including the ranchería of Otuquimaaca. However, the connection with the Otuke people and language is unclear. A more evident connection to Otuke was made by Lorenzo Hervás's 1784 book Catalogo delle lingue conosciute. In 1838, Georg Ludwig Kriegk also mentioned the Otuquis Province in his book Das Land Otuquis in Bolivia based on reports by its secretary at the time, Moritz Bach. An extract in the Chiquitano language of the region was also given, which Kriegk thought incorrectly to be an attestation of Otuke.
Documentation
The only contemporaneous documentation of Otuke was done by Alcide d'Orbigny in 1831. At the time of his visit, the Otukes lived in the Jesuit mission of Santo Corazón, one of the Jesuit Missions of Chiquitos. By then, only two elderly people could speak the original Otuke language, and the rest had all switched to Chiquitano.
“Otuke language” enters the record as extinct language of Brazil. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Otuke, language and extinct can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7110049. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1726, 1784, 1838 and 1831.
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This entry incorporates text from “Otuke 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.