Muran languages

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Muran is a small language family of Amazonas, Brazil.

Contents 1 Family division 2 Genealogical relations 3 See also 4 Links 5 Bibliography

[edit] Family division

Muran consists of 4 languages:

1. Mura †
2. Pirahã (a.k.a. Pirahá, Pirahán)
3. Bohurá †
4. Yahahí †

Most Muran languages have died out due to the recent expansion of Brazilian Portuguese, mainly because they were spoken by so few people. Mura, Bohurá, and Yahahí are now extinct. Pirahã, the only surviving Muran language, is now spoken by just 150 people in eight villages.

Linguistically, the Muran family is typified by agglutinativity, a very small number of phonemes (11 compared to over 40 in English), and the use of tones.

[edit] Genealogical relations

Muran is often proposed to be related to Matanawí. Kaufman (1994) also suggests a connection with Huarpe (in his Macro-Warpean proposal).

[edit] See also

• Pirahã language
• Endangered language
• Extinct language

[edit] Links

• PROEL: Grupo Muran
• Ethnologue: Pirahã

[edit] Bibliography

• Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
• 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.