Betoi language

Betoi
Jirara
Native to	Venezuela
Region	Orinoco llanos
Extinct	18th century
Language family	Language isolate
Dialects	Situfa Airico Lolaca Jirara Betoi Ele
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)
Linguist list	qtd
Glottolog	beto1236

Betoi (Betoy) or Betoi-Jirara is an extinct language of Venezuela, south of the Apure River near the modern border with Colombia. The names Betoi and Jirara are those of two of its peoples/dialects; the language proper has no known name. At contact, Betoi was a local lingua franca spoken between the Uribante and Sarare rivers and along the Arauca. Enough was recorded for a brief grammatical monograph to be written (Zamponi 2003).

Betoi is generally seen as an isolate, though Kaufman (2007) included it in Macro-Paesan.

Bibliography

• Fabre, Alain (2005). Diccionario etnolingüístico y guía bibliográfica de los pueblos indígenas sudamericanos: BETOI (PDF). 
• Zamponi, Raoul (2003). Betoi. 428. Languages of the World/Materials. Lincom. p. 66. ISBN 3-89586-757-8.