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Charrúa is an extinct Charruan language historically spoken by the Charrúa people in southern Uruguay.[2][3] The language is poorly attested, known from only a few wordlists, and has been extinct since the 19th century.[1]

Classification

Historically, Charrua, and the rest of the Charruan languages, were grouped with various other language families of the region. Daniel Garrison Brinton originally classified Charruan as an independent language family, but later grouped it with the Tupian languages. Both Samuel A. Lafone Quevedo and Rudolph Schuller grouped Charruan with the Guaicuruan languages. Some, including Alcide d’Orbigny, sought to group the languages with Gününa Küne (Puelche), and others with Araucanian (Mapudungun).[4] More recently, Andrey Nikulin has claimed that the three Charruan languages have little similarity with each other, and therefore unrelated to each other,[5] although Lyle Campbell classifies the three languages as “beyond doubt … belong[ing] to the same language family”.[6]

Geographical distribution

The Charrua language was spoken between the Montevideo area and the Uruguay River.[7]

History

Teodoro Vilardebó recorded some vocabulary of Charrua in 1842, fearing that the language would become extinct soon after. These words were republished in 1937.[8] José Pedro Rona and Eugenio Petit Muñoz [es] also recorded some Charrua data in 1964 from a speaker in Villaguay, Argentina,[9] intending to publish their results, although publications have yet to be made. The Charrua people are thought to have also spoken Guarani and Güenoa by the time of Uruguayan independence, as the three groups had been coexisting for some time then.[7]

Vocabulary

Numerals

Numerals collected by Vilardebó from two informants, the seargent Benito Silva and an Indigenous woman from the ranch of Manuel Arias, are presented below.[7][10]

Charrua numerals[10]
Number Silva Woman of Arias
1 yú yu
2 sam sán
3 detí datít
4 bétum betúm
5 bétum betumiú
6 betum sam –
7 betum detí –
8 betum artasam –
9 baquiú –
10 guaroj –

The element -arta- in betum artasam ‘8’ is a multiplicative. guaroj ’10’ is derived from guar ‘hand’.[10]

References

  1. ^ a b Coll, Magdalena (2014), Callahan, Laura (ed.), “Representation of Charrúa Speech in Nineteenth-Century Uruguayan Literature”, Spanish and Portuguese across Time, Place, and Borders, London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 78–92, doi:10.1057/9781137340450_6, ISBN 978-1-349-46484-5, retrieved 2026-05-03{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)
  2. ^ Serrano, Antonio (1946). The Charrua. U.S. Government Printing Office. p. 192.
  3. ^ Mackintosh, Fiona (2011). “Walter Owen, Scottish Translator of Tabaré”. Sentir el lugar: Diálogos Uruguay-Escocia: 127–140.
  4. ^ Chamberlain, Alexander F. (1911). “On the Puelchean and Tsonekan (Tehuelchean), the Atacameñan (Atacaman) and Chonoan, and the Charruan Linguistic Stocks of South America”. American Anthropologist. 13 (3): 458–471. ISSN 0002-7294.
  5. ^ Nikulin, Andrey V. 2019. The classification of the languages of the South American Lowlands: State-of-the-art and challenges / Классификация языков востока Южной Америки. Illič-Svityč (Nostratic) Seminar / Ностратический семинар, Higher School of Economics, October 17, 2019.
  6. ^ Campbell, Lyle (2024-06-25), “Indigenous Languages of South America”, The Indigenous Languages of the Americas (1 ed.), Oxford University PressNew York, pp. 182–279, doi:10.1093/oso/9780197673461.003.0004, ISBN 978-0-19-767346-1, retrieved 2026-05-03{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)
  7. ^ a b c Núñez-Méndez, Eva, ed. (2018-09-07). Biculturalism and Spanish in Contact: Sociolinguistic Case Studies (1 ed.). Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315100357-11. ISBN 978-1-315-10035-7.
  8. ^ Gómez Haedo, Juan Carlos (1937). “Un vocabulario charrúa desconocido” (PDF). Boletín de Filología. 1 (4–5). Montevideo: Instituto de Estudios Superiores: 323–350. Retrieved January 22, 2021.
  9. ^ Rona, José Pedro (1964). Nuevos elementos acerca de la lengua charrúa. Publicación del Departamento de Lingüística. Vol. 19. Montevideo: Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias.
  10. ^ a b c Viegas Barros, J. Pedro (2025). Los numerales de las lenguas Charrúas. XIX Congreso de la Sociedad Argentina de Estudios Lingüísticos. San Juan: Universidad Nacional de San Juan.