Guató language

Guató is a possible language isolate spoken by 4 of the Guató people of Brazil. It has variously been claimed to be of Macro-Jê or isolate affiliation.

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Portuguese. (April 2025) Click [show] for important translation instructions.

View a machine-translated version of the Portuguese article.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 628 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Portuguese Wikipedia article at [[:pt:Língua guató]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|pt|Língua guató}} to the talk page.
For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. (September 2024)

Quick Facts Native to, Region ...

Guató
Native to	Brazil, Bolivia
Region	Mato Grosso do Sul state: Paraguay River banks and up São Lourenço River, along Bolivian border;^[1] also Santa Cruz Department (Bolivia): Uberaba Lake^[2]
Ethnicity	370 Guató people (2006)^[1]
Native speakers	5 (2012)^[1]
Language family	Language isolate (Macro-Jê?)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	`gta`
Glottolog	`guat1253`
ELP	Guató

This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Language contact

Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Bororo, Tupi, and Karib language families due to contact.^[5]

An automated computational analysis (ASJP 4) by Müller et al. (2013)^[6] found lexical similarities between Guató and the Zamucoan languages. However, since the analysis was automatically generated, the grouping could be either due to mutual lexical borrowing, genetic inheritance, or chance resemblances.

Distribution

Today, Guató is spoken in Guató Indigenous Territory and Baía dos Guató Indigenous Territory.^[7]

Loukotka (1968) reported that in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, Guató is spoken on the banks of the Paraguay River and up the São Lourenço River, along the Bolivian border.^[1] It is also spoken at Uberaba Lake^[2] in Santa Cruz Department (Bolivia).

Phonology

	Oral	Nasal
	Front	Central	Back	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ	u	ĩ	ɨ̃	ũ
Mid	e		o	ẽ	ã
Open	ɛ	a	ɔ

Oral

	Labial	Denti- alveolar	Post- alveolar	Velar	Labio- velar	Glottal
Nasal	m	n
Plosive	voiced	b	d	dʒ	ɡ	ɡʷ
voiceless	p	t	tʃ	k	kʷ
Fricative	f					h
Sonorant	w	ɾ	j

Vocabulary

Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items for Guató.^[2]

More information gloss ...

gloss	Guató
one	chenéhe
two	dúni
three	chumó
tooth	makuá
tongue	mundokuír
hand	mara
woman	muazya
water	mágũ
fire	matá
moon	múpina
maize	madzyéro
jaguar	mépago
house	movír

For more extensive vocabulary lists of Guató by Palácio (1984)^[8]^[10] and Postigo (2009),^[9] see the corresponding Portuguese article.

Classification

Language contact

Distribution

Phonology

Vocabulary

References

Further reading

External links

Wikiwand - on