Harman Patil (Editor)

Betoi language

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Native to
  
Venezuela

Extinct
  
18th century

ISO 639-3
  
None (mis)

Region
  
Orinoco llanos

Language family
  
Language isolate

Dialects
  
Situfa Airico Lolaca Jirara Betoi Ele

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.

References

Betoi language Wikipedia