Pirahã

Facts

  • Language: Pirahã
  • Alternate names: Pirahán, Piraha, Múra-Pirahã, Mura-Piraha, Pirahá
  • Language code: myp
  • Language family: Muran (SIL classification)
  • Number of speakers: 389
  • Vulnerability: Vulnerable
  • Script: Latin script.

More information:

    In 1960s the population dwindled to 80 due to high infant mortality, death of mothers giving birth, and disease. Modern medicine helped population growth.

    Everett (2008) does not believe in a Muran family; rather, he believes that “Pirahã and the now extinct related dialect, Mura, form a single language isolate, unrelated to any other known language” (Everett 2008: 28), that they are “two very similar dialects of a single language” (2008: 29). Mason (1950: 285) also considered the three Muran "languages" as dialects. Ethnologue (2013) also to group Pirahã and Múra together as a single language (for which they give Múra-Pirahã as an alternant name).