Language Division
Yanomaman consists of 4 languages, very similar with each other, sometimes classified as a dialect continuum:
-
- Yanam (AKA Ninam, Yanam-Ninam)
- Sanumá (AKA Tsanuma, Sanima)
- Yanomámi (AKA Waiká)
- Yanomamö (AKA Yanomame, Yanomami)
Sunumá is the most lexically distinct. Yanomamö has the most speakers (17,600) while Yanam has the fewest (560).
Read more about this topic: Yanomaman Languages
Famous quotes containing the words language and/or division:
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between ones real and ones declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.”
—George Orwell (19031950)
“Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears;
Yet slower yet, oh faintly gentle springs:
List to the heavy part the music bears,
Woe weeps out her division when she sings.
Droop herbs and flowers;
Fall grief in showers;
Our beauties are not ours:
Oh, I could still,
Like melting snow upon some craggy hill,
Drop, drop, drop, drop,
Since natures pride is, now, a withered daffodil.”
—Ben Jonson (15721637)