Betoi | |
---|---|
Jirara | |
Native to | Venezuela |
Region | Orinoco llanos |
Extinct | 18th century |
Dialects |
|
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 |
None (mis ) |
qtd |
|
Glottolog | beto1236 |
Betoi (Betoy) or Betoi-Jirara is an extinct language of Venezuela, south of the Apure River near the modern border with Colombia. The names Betoi and Jirara are those of two of its peoples/dialects; the language proper has no known name. At contact, Betoi was a local lingua franca spoken between the Uribante and Sarare rivers and along the Arauca. Enough was recorded for a brief grammatical monograph to be written (Zamponi 2003).
Betoi is generally seen as an isolate, though Kaufman (2007) included it in Macro-Paesan.