The Hup language is one of the four Nadahup languages. It is spoken by the Hupda

Hupda

The Hup people, or Húpd’əh, are an Amazonian indigenous people who live in Brazil and Colombia.-Residence and neighbors:The Hupda people live in the region bordered by the rivers Tiquié and Papuri, tributaries that join the left hand bank of the river Uaupes in the Upper Rio Negro region of the...

 and Yohup, indigenous Amazonian peoples who live in Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

 and Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

. There are at least three main dialect

Dialect

The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...

s of Hupdë, of which Yohup (Yuhupde, Yahup) is so distinct that native speakers

First language

A first language is the language a person has learned from birth or within the critical period, or that a person speaks the best and so is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity...

 report limited mutual intelligibility

Mutual intelligibility

In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is recognized as a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related languages can readily understand each other without intentional study or extraordinary effort...

. Hupdë is considered an inferior language by the neighbouring peoples of the Hupda. This has led to all adult Hupda becoming bilingual

Multilingualism

Multilingualism is the act of using, or promoting the use of, multiple languages, either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers. Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. Multilingualism is becoming a social phenomenon governed by the needs of...

, speaking both Hupdë and Tucanoan

Tucanoan languages

Tucanoan is a language family of Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru.-Family division:There are two dozen Tucanoan languages:*Western Tucanoan**Correguaje **Tama **Macaguaje ...

. The bilingualism is one-sided, however, as native speakers of Tucanoan do not believe Hupdë to be a language worth learning. Hupdë is a nominative–accusative language, with a highly developed evidentiality

Evidentiality

In linguistics, evidentiality is, broadly, the indication of the nature of evidence for a given statement; that is, whether evidence exists for the statement and/or what kind of evidence exists. An evidential is the particular grammatical element that indicates evidentiality...

system.

External links

• Hup Vocabulary List (from the World Loanword Database)