Taruma is a nearly extinct, divergent language isolate of northeastern South America, today spoken in the Wapishana village of Maruranau, south of Aishalton, in Guyana. Its speakers historically lived near the mouth of the Rio Negro before migrating south to Guyana in the late seventeenth century. As of 2025 only three speakers remained, one able to produce coherent texts and two with much weaker knowledge, making documentation urgent; a proposed connection to the Katembri language has not been sustained by recent scholarship, and Taruma is treated as an independent isolate.
Facts
RegionSouthern Guyana (Wapishana village of Maruranau); formerly near the mouth of the Rio Negro 1 Speaker CountNo year given in the cited extract; the existing entity description gives an as-of-2025 count of three. Proto-Language StatusLanguage isolate; a proposed distant relationship to Katembri has not been repeated in recent surveys of South American languages. 1 In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Taruma Language
Wikimedia FoundationHistory section, sentence 2: migration to Guyana
the speakers later moved to southern Guyana.
Lead section, sentence 2: speaker count
three speakers still live in Maruranau among the Wapishana
Classification section, sentence 2: Katembri proposal
It has been proposed to be distantly related to Katembri, but this relationship has not been repeated in recent surveys of South American languages.
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