The Yuwana language, more commonly called Hodi and also known as Waruwadu or Chikano, is a small unclassified language of the Hodi people of central Venezuela, spoken mainly around San Jose de Kayama and Cano Iguana. Linguists have proposed various possible connections for Hodi, including to the Piaroa-Salivan languages, the Nadahup languages, and the Yanomaman languages, but none of these proposals has achieved consensus, and apparent similarities to Piaroa-Salivan appear to be loanwords resulting from contact rather than evidence of common ancestry. The language is endangered, with about six hundred forty speakers recorded as of 2007, mostly monolingual hunter-gatherers living in a small number of communities.
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