Piro is an Arawakan language of South America,
spoken by only a few tribal elders in eastern Peru. Piro is very closely related to the neighboring Iñapari language,
and some consider them to have been dialects of a single language. The Mashco Piro language is also frequently
confused with the much more widely-spoken Yine and Machinere languages, both because members of all three
groups are generically referred to as "Piro" and also because the identifier "Mashco" is rejected as derogatory by
many Piro speakers. Piro is a polysynthetic language with predominantly SOV word order.
Piro Words:
Our list of vocabulary words in the Piro language, with comparison to words in other Arawakan languages.
Piro Numbers:
Worksheet showing how to count in the Piro language.
˜Piro Language Resources –
La Lengua Piro:
Information on Piro and Machinere including a text sample and linguistic map of Peru. Page in Spanish.
Mashco Piro LanguageIñapari Language:
Demographic information on Piro and Iñapari from the Ethnologue of Languages.
Iñapari:
Wikipedia article on the Iñapari language.