Charrúa language

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). More recently, Andrey Nikulin has claimed that the three Charruan languages have little similarity with each other, and therefore unrelated to each other, although Lyle Campbell classifies the three languages as "beyond doubt ... belong[ing] to the same language family". == Geographical distribution ==

The Charrua language was spoken between the Montevideo area and the Uruguay River. == 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. José Pedro Rona and also recorded some Charrua data in 1964 from a speaker in Villaguay, Argentina, 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. == 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. The element in '8' is a multiplicative. '10' is derived from 'hand'. == References ==