Native to Ecuador Ethnicity Palta people Language family unclassified | Region Amazonia Extinct (colonial era) ISO 639-3 None (mis) | |
The extinct Palta language of the Ecuadorian Amazon is attested by only a few words: yumé 'water', xeme 'maize', capal 'fire', let 'wood' (Jiménez de la Espada, 1586), and some toponyms. Based on this, Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño (1936) classified it as a Jivaroan language. Kaufman (1994) states that there is "little resemblance", but Adelaar (2004) finds the connection reasonable. In addition to these four words are toponyms, which commonly end in -anga, -numa, -namá. The latter two suggest the Jivaroan locative case suffix -num ~ -nam, though Torero (1993) notes that the last resembles Aguaruna (Jivaroan) namák(a) 'river' as well.
References
Palta language Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA