Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Maypure Tongue Is Still Spoken At Atures, Although The Mission Is
Inhabited Only By Guahibos And Macos.
At Maypures the Guareken and
Pareni tongues only are now spoken.
From the Rio Anaveni, which falls
into the Orinoco north of Atures, as far as beyond Jao, and to the
mouth of the Guaviare (between the fourth and sixth degrees of
latitude), we everywhere find rivers, the termination of which, veni,*
(* Anaveni, Mataveni, Maraveni, etc.) recalls to mind the extent to
which the Maypure tongue heretofore prevailed. Veni, or weni,
signifies water, or a river. The words camosi and keri, which we have
just cited, are of the idiom of the Pareni Indians,* (* Or Parenas,
who must not be confounded either with the Paravenes of the Rio Caura
(Caulin page 69), or with the Parecas, whose language belongs to the
great family of the Tamanac tongues. A young Indian of Maypures, who
called himself a Paragini, answered my questions almost in the same
words that M. Bonpland heard from a Pareni. I have indicated the
differences in the table, see below.) who, I think I have heard from
the natives, lived originally on the banks of the Mataveni.* (* South
of the Rio Zama. We slept in the open air near the mouth of the
Mataveni on the 28th day of May, in our return from the Rio Negro.)
The Abbe Gili considers the Pareni as a simple dialect of the Maypure.
This question cannot be solved by a comparison of the roots merely.
Being totally ignorant of the grammatical structure of the Pareni, I
can raise but feeble doubts against the opinion of the Italian
missionary.
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