Social:Kukurá language

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Short description: Spurious Brazilian language, invented 1901
Kukurá
Created bya Kainguá interpreter for A. V. Frič
Date1901
Purpose
fraud
Language codes
ISO 639-3None (mis)
Glottolog(insufficiently attested or not a distinct language)
kuku1286[1]

Kukurá (Cucurá, Kokura) is a spurious language, fabricated by an interpreter in Brazil.

Alberto Vojtěch Frič

History

When Alberto Vojtěch Frič visited Rio Verde, Brazil, in 1901 he took with him a Kainguá Indian called Guzmán who said he spoke the language of the local Chavante people.

A word list was published for the so-called Kukurá language, thought to be an isolate, in 1931.

In 1932 Curt Nimuendajú, who had visited the Rio Verde in 1909 and 1913, showed that Guzmán's wordlist consisted half of fake words and half of mispronounced Guaraní. There was no resemblance to the Ofayé language that was actually spoken in the region.[2]

Vocabulary

Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items for the spurious language.[3]

gloss Kukura
tongue kasti
stone tatahü
moon malahan
house aul

References

  1. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds (2017). "Kukura". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. http://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/kuku1286. 
  2. Campbell, Lyle; Grondona, Verónica (2012-01-27). The Indigenous Languages of South America: A Comprehensive Guide. Walter de Gruyter. p. 133. ISBN 978-3-11-025803-5. https://books.google.com/books?id=pA-ryJRcG3AC&pg=PA133. Retrieved 2013-04-24. 
  3. Loukotka, Čestmír (1968). Classification of South American Indian languages. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center. https://archive.org/details/classificationof0007louk.